AV News 180 - May 2010
We also had great difficulty in
photographing the Enigma machines
themselves as they are all in glass
cases, which produced awful reflections.
Fortunately, on our second visit, the
Education Department kindly gave us
access to a working Enigma machine
to photograph. Even so, the lampboard
didn’t look all that convincing in the
stills, so the effect of the letters lighting
up was recreated later in Photoshop.
We were also on the lookout for
electronic junk to illustrate the section
about the codebreaking machines being
destroyed at the end of the war. First
visit no luck. But the second time,
coming out of one of the huts, we
spotted a pile of old components and
wiring lying in a corner, which proved
ideal. A demonstration of the value of a
shooting script, as I’m sure a casual
visitor would have passed by something
which proved invaluable to the story.
On our first visit, we spotted a row of
old bicycles lined up. Knowing we
had a line in the script about Alan
Turing wearing a gas mask whilst
cycling, on the return trip we took a
gas mask with us and set it up on one
of the bikes.
Another prop used was the letter from
the War Office inviting Joan Clarke to
an interview. I found a few images on
the internet of original War Office
correspondence to use as references
and then recreated a similar letter head
in Photoshop.
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