Arwel Wyn Jones Q&A transcript from Baker Street Vienna

Hello!



As promised, this is part two to my reports from Baker Street Vienna.

Today was the q&a with Arwel Wyn Jones.

Some of this may be new information, some it may be something he has already said, I will try and write down everything anyway.

Sadly I missed the first few minutes so I will try to recount them from my memory as best as possible. I also added the pictures I took.

221B in the Pilot

As we all know 221B was quite a bit different in the pilot. They tried to give it a more victorian look back then, because originally it was supposed to look like a victorian Sherlock with modern elements in it.

But they realised quite quickly that the modern elements worked actually better in the context and thats why they changed it up like that.





(also have some mark and moffat in there - he said they are the biggest sherlock holmes geeks out there and that they felt right at home in the victorian style apartment)





Concerning that picture of Johns bedroom that is floating around now:

It is Johns room BEFORE he moved into 221B. Arwel said he actually preferred it to the one used in ASiP.

221B how we know it

After deciding that they would make it more modern they went on to design the new 221B.

So the set decor we see in the series is actually inspired by the forties but with elements from the fifties, sixties and seventies. Every person who lived in 221B before left there mark there and they wanted to show that. So thats why there are so many different materials and structures in it.

Their way of working

They have a lot of departments and for everything they do they make different options. They had five design options for a letter from the wellington barracks for example. They are sent to him and then they either decide immediately or show it to the directors and decide together what they will use.

They also have to design everything that is seen in the show - as an example he mentioned that whenever we see Sherlock on his laptop.. his half written speech, the windows we see open behind it, all of that is done by him and his department. (They can’t use real programs because that would mean they are promoting it so they have to make them up)

They need to photograph quite a lot of things to use them.. for example lestrade to use it in the newspaper later on.

Before and After

They usually work with a location scout, who finds them the locations, and then they go there with the producers and work on what they should and could do with it.

For example that was how they originally found Lauriston Gardens

The owners of the house were great according to him, allowed them to make holes into walls and so on. The painters worked two weeks to give it that shady look… and they had four days to bring it back to the original state.

He said it was sometimes weird when the rest of the cast got on set and said “You were lucky to find it like this.” Because well.. they certainly didn’t.

This is the original china town street.. they had to change it in a very small amount of time to this:

Another fun anecdote was that the apartments used in the blind banker

that was the recce picture - so the picture they took when visiting the first time..

and then they transformed it into the apartment for the couple

and afterwards they weren’t able to find a proper apartment for the brother that was close to the railway too.

So the morning before shooting the scene at the brothers - they had just decorated the apartment back to the way they found it - the director just said they should use the same apartment - so they ended up stripping the walls, repainting them, and redecorating it in less than an hour. The paint was still wet when they shot.

Originally where we saw in the episode a flag hanging, Arwel painted this..

But someone thought it was a bit too vain :P So they covered it up.

The recce pack - A location guide for Sherlock.

They make a sort of portfolio with all the locations… where everyone can make notes and so on. I took pictures of the one for TSoT that he handed out and will post them separately later on.

The wallpaper in 221B

Nobody was really convinced it would work, and everyone sort of wondered if arwel was sure and knew what he was doing - so he is even more pleased that it is such an iconic part of the show now.

The brothers on the beach

When they knew they would do the bedroom he wanted a picture of the holmes brothers as kids.. the problem is he can’t show it publicly because he only got the picture from the internet itself - it was only supposed to be a background picture and nothing more..So we will never see that picture from him :P

HoB - Drug effect

To have pictures they could show when they did the search and talked about the effects the drugs had, they ended up making pictures of the staff of sherlock, trying to make faces as if they were tortured. They spend on them, even if they only appeared for a few seconds.

HoB

They ended up having a few Problems with the lift they used - the metal was reflecting like a mirror and made it quite tricky shooting.

They also used plastic bottles as substitutes for jelly fish.

Scotland Yard

The director didn’t like the blue colour that the offices had were they shot the scotland yard scenes in season 1, because it was the colour of the football team that is THE rival of his team - so they created that white and green striped look, which are the colours that his team plays in.

When they had to recreate Scotland Yard in Season 2 they had to completely design the whole space again, because they had to shoot somewhere else, so everything you see in these pictures are props and decor elements put there from the Sherlock team.

The tower of London

They used a location in a castle that is usually booked for weddings and such, so they had it for only one day. The wedding was over at eleven, they went in immediately afterwards and had to strip the whole room and redecorate it all so they could shoot on Sunday. And then they had to bring it all back in order so they could open up again on Monday at 8am.

Irenes house

The house was newly redecorated when they came in to shoot but they had to change a few wallpapers again. The owners ended up liking them so much that they kept them though.

Also an interesting detail. Look at what is behind Irene on the wall.

They are all around the staircase.

Marys file

He made quite a few pictures for her file, but they only ended up using one of them - the reason why she looks a bit meaner is because thats about her darker side.

Of those that wasn’t used or shown was this:

The death mask in Sherlocks room

Mark Gatiss wanted a death mask on the wall of Sherlocks bedroom, so they simply made one from one of Arwels coworkers.

The sherlolly kiss scene

The stuntman was the one who jumped through the fake window, Benedict merely got some glass on his shoulders and into his hair. (which was the reason why we got the hair ruffle ;) )

Andersons flat

The idea was to make it look like Anderson tried specifically to make it look like Baker street… but somehow not quite managing to make it into a home the way 221B is.

Mycrofts office

They decided to change the office from the one in season one and two into the one we saw in season three, because they wanted it to look more dangerous. “Its were he properly runs his empire from.”

Johns picture in the file

To get the picture that Mycroft had in Johns file at the beginning of TeH, with the mustache - Arwel simply followed Martin around on the first day of shooting - which made the paparazzi go crazy because they thought he had some sort of special allowance, not realising that he was part of the crew. So Martin loved driving them nuts :P

John and Marys flat

This was the recce picture - they obviously switched the table for a sofa in the series

The idea was that there was a lamp on the left side of the sofa, which sort of through a smile face on the wall..and then there was a vodka glass skull, which meant to reflect that John hadn’t quite made his escape and was still connected to 221B.

Plumbing on the set of 221B

There is no normal pumbling, things like the bunsen burner of Sherlock and the fireplace are connected to small gas containers that are constantly supervised by a member of the crew who could switch it off instantly.

Sherlocks bathroom

It was only designed because there was a connection door to it from Sherlocks bedroom, and they sort of just… wanted it to have there.

The significance of symbols

One of the audience members asked about the significance of the numbers in TeH. 221B - Then the landmark hotel being number 222, the number 223 being behind one of the clients and of course the bomb stopping at 1:29 (1:28) which is the day they met.

According to Arwel this has no significance whatsoever - it’s all coincidence^^ Sadly he doesn’t have the time to pay that much attention to detail.

Same for the Elephants that appear all over S3 and for example the pictures behind Sherlock and John in Kitty Rileys apartment. He just thought they were pretty.

He did say though that if you look closely at the restaurant scene, you will notice that there are sketches behind Sherlock, when he walks around the restaurant, which show a phoenix rising from the ashes - Sherlock coming back.

Alright so this was basically it. There is a tiny bit more that I will add bit by bit, but I will do that tomorrow.



I hope that some of you at least can do something with this, I had such a lovely time at the con and it was really great how relaxed and open Arwel was about the whole thing. I simply love hearing stories about production.

((I do have an audio of this. If there is any interest in that, I can try to upload it… tell me and I’ll think about it :))