In the Blackpool sequence, which was all shot in one day, we had a severe weather change. It started fine and... and then it clouded over and... and became rainy. And, we... we could see this about to happen, so we decided to... to shoot the... the first part of the sequence is show... is shot second. So the... the first thing we shot was all the hand-held stuff of them... of them walking along the... the Promenade in Blackpool, and we just had a few extras who we put behind the... or crowd artistes, I should say, whom we put behind the main players. But it was used in the technique of insinuating players into the real... into the real background, which I'd already used in Morocco and in other documentaries. So that all came in very handy for Taste of Honey, and it's a very effective sequence, which is largely improvised, and which is shot very quickly. Also we... we came across that extraordinary performance where they... they show a woman being garrotted and that sort of strange stage show where the... a half-nude girl is on the bed and... and the... and the commentary, actually, was faked. It was done afterwards because they didn't want to use the original voice, and used a rather gravelly, sort of, funny sort of woman's voice for the commentary. But that... he stumbled upon that and he said, 'Oh let's... let's do that, let's grab that'. As is, of course, the hall of mirrors which isn't easy for camera, again. But it... it was managed. I managed that. And then, the rest of the... the sequence, which in the movie comes first, is... is on the pier and was actually filmed in the rain, well, drizzle. And there's a line put in somewhere about, you know, it's going to rain again in a minute. Do come on, it's going to rain again in a minute, something like that. Which they often did... that kind of dialogue is often inserted in movies to cover a weather change. But there's one other interesting weather change happens in that film where I made use of the... of the weather change. We were shooting in a place which is called Under the Arches, which is a disused railway bridge and there's a huge brick arch... very tall brick arch, with landscape behind. On one side there's a sort of rubbish dump, but on the other side is open landscape. And, Murray and Rita are off on their excursion into the Pennines and, the scene starts in greyness. So the bit where she's leaning against the arch and she says, I don't want to have this baby and all that, you know, this baby's going to be born deaf and daft, and stuff like that, and it's a bit of depressing dialogue was... the scenery was depressing and the light was depressing, and there was one instance where she had to be silhouetted against the background, and it was impossible in that particular situation, even if you put the camera right in the ground, right on the ground, it was impossible to get a silhouette against sky. Sky being at the other... at the other end of the arch. But I couldn't silhouette her entire figure. I could only silhouette her up to about the knees. So below the knees I needed something light so that she would pick up in silhouette against that. So I had a lot of light-coloured sand put down. So that's a piece of lighting with sand. Instead of lighting with light or with lamps, that's a bit of lighting with sand. So she appears as a... as a whole silhouette. And then the weather came to our rescue, or rather we adapted. I could see the weather was breaking so there's a scene where her mood changes and, and she says, We're extraordinary people, you and I, and they run through the arch. And when they come out the other end the sun is shining, and that transition is beautifully managed. They always say, well, scenes like that you may have to re-shoot the whole thing because you can't go suddenly from in the middle of a scene from... from grey light to sunlight. Which is untrue in reality, because with... with... on a day where those clouds are scudding by... scudding by, you go continuously from... from sunlight into cloud. But there, in that particular instance it was... it was nicely incorporated into the story.
