Dive deeper into this episode with exclusive sketches, production designs, and fun facts delivered directly from the Outlander crew.
Edinburgh
“The area of Edinburgh that was used to create the bustling street market en-route to the print shop has its own publishing history dating from the early 1800s. It is also the scene of one of Edinburgh’s most notorious and unsolved murders.”
-Hugh Gourlay, Supervising Location Manager
The royal Mile
“For the long-awaited return, we needed to drop Claire suddenly right in amongst the hustle and bustle—and grime—of 18th Century Edinburgh, into the famous and well-recognized ‘Royal Mile’.
The real place being such a busy and rather confined street in modern Edinburgh, it was entirely impractical to actually stage there, especially for scenes playing over multiple episodes that would have required cleaning up shots to remove modern artifacts. The decision was made to digitally recreate the street as a 3D CG environment that we could move our cameras around in as we pleased and generally have much more freedom during filming. The cast and some appropriate crowd were filmed at the studio on a short cobbled section of street, created especially. This was almost wholly, apart from the immediate street surface and a couple of small stone-textured flats (for close-up coverage) a green screen environment, with green screens positioned as required for each framing.
Using a process called photogrammetry, many thousands of detailed photographs were taken of the real location and surrounding streets, from multiple angles. Specialized software is then used to derive and calculate a 3D geometry or form.
Cleaned of modern artefacts like signage or lights, the photos going through the photogrammetry process, are blended into large textures that can be effectively ‘projected’ onto the derived geometry. Taking note of extensive historical research by the Art Department, we also added some components to upper floors that for the most part, no longer exist to photograph, and replaced all windows.
The result is convincing 3D photo-real buildings that we can view from almost any angle.”
Richard Briscoe, VFX Supervisor
Matthew B. Roberts
“Here a Jamie ‘double’ waits for his turn at the printing press as the printer is being set up for him, ready to create artwork for the title cards of Episode 306 (using the printer itself). The result is below…” -Matthew B. Roberts, Executive Producer
Printed artwork, created for the title cards in 306. -Matthew B. Roberts, Executive Producer
Rumor has it there’s a hidden letter ‘J’ and ‘C’ in this sign…can you spot it? -Matthew B. Roberts, Executive Producer
Print Shop
“In the print shop every little thing is made, the printing presses, all the thousands of letters, all the trays—hundreds of those—the cabinetry, all the stuff that goes around the printing press…it’s all made from construction to prop builders to prop men. There’s tons of stuff that’s made that you think ‘oh, they just rent that from a prop house.’ Well, that’s not true. When it’s period, it’s hard to find the right stuff usually.” -Jon Gary Steele, Production Designer
“We’ve had to make all the type, of which there are thousands of pieces that have to go in all the typeset cases—all the little bits and pieces that you need for the massively complicated process of actually printing in those. We had to create everything. -Gina Cromwell, Set Decorator
The Printing Press
“We started working on the print shop last season because we knew it was going be quite a complex, really of the time. We were lucky enough to find a man called Alan May, who has made printing presses before. He had made a printing press like the ones we have in the print shop, which are based on the Benjamin Franklin patent for making printing presses.
So, he made two of them for us and they function and they print, which is really exciting because I think anything that actually works that has moving parts that work takes it to a whole new dimension. We’ve had to make virtually everything in this print shop because it just doesn’t exist in shops. So, we got all the reference together, and with the help of Alan, who made the printing press, and Martin Andrews, who’s at Redding University, they helped us put together what we needed. Everything was made from scratch and it is a proper functioning print shop, and really true.”
Pulling off a print from the actual printing presses and knowing that you’re doing something in exactly the same way they would have done it 250 years ago, I get a real thrill from that. You learn so much from how people lived by the tools that they had. For me, it’s kind of special.
-Gina Cromwell, Set Decorator
Special Effects
