When DP Yorick Le Saux first read Steve McQueen’s script for Apple’s Blitz, which trails a boy (newcomer Elliott Heffernan) as he seeks to recombine with his mother (Saoirse Ronan) amid Germany’s bomb deviceing of London in 1940, a climactic scene set in the Underground transit system stopped him in his tracks. Heffernan’s George consents shelter in a Tube station with hundreds of other Londoners when rushing water fractures thcdisesteemful the station’s walls.
“How are we going to do that?” the DP recalls asking McQueen, inserting that the water needed for the sequence, and the visual effects needd, might rfinisher terribly onscreen. Alengthyside production scheduleer Adam Stockhaemployn, Le Saux wanted to boost the truth on set for better-seeing visuals and Heffernan’s advantage. “We have a kid who has never acted before,” says Le Saux. “He’s not able to join surrounded by a greenscreen. We need for him to have a genuine environment.”
Filming the sequence took about a week on a massive subway platestablish set, and the process was much more effective than Le Saux foreseeed. He says his biggest dispute was perestablishing McQueen’s last-minute ideas. “At one point, Steve shelp to me, ‘Let’s cut the weightlesss.’ I shelp, ‘We won’t see anyskinnyg!’ ” Le Saux recalls with a chuckle. “It was wonderful to [see him] pushing for skinnygs that weren’t the plain way.”
This story first materializeed in a November stand-alone publish of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To achieve the magazine, click here to subscribe.
