Last weekend, NarniaWeb was on the scene to observe some filming of Greta Gerwig’s upcoming ‘Narnia’ movie. After several weeks of shooting up in Manchester and Bradford, the production returned to London with scenes being shot in the vicinity of St James’s Park in central London. NarniaWeb’s Patreon supporters received real-time updates from the set throughout the day via Discord.
NarniaWeb had also been tracking this particular stage of the location shooting for a while, with Patreon subscribers receiving advanced notification of the event months in advance.
Filming Nears The Palace
So far, we have seen Jadis’ Horse Rampage scene play out over multiple shooting locations, which in aggregate potentially suggests that Jadis, and the captive Digory, are heading into Central London on some purposeful objective. Given that Buckingham Palace is one of the handful of real-world locations mentioned specifically in the book, this could perhaps be a likely destination for Jadis:
“And he knew she meant to conquer our world. At the present moment, as far as he could see, she might be blasting Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament: and it was almost certain that quite a number of policemen had by now been reduced to little heaps of dust.”
The Magician’s Nephew, Ch. 7
Many of the roads surrounding St James’s Park had been closed down especially for the production, and a lot of the same equipment trucks and support trailers from previous shooting locations were all lined up alongside the Mall, right the way up towards Buckingham Palace. This perhaps suggests that the filmmakers made expansive use of the entire area, however if any filming did take place outside the palace, it was likely done in the very early hours of the morning when very few people were around to see it.
Image Credit: UnBoxPHD
The majority of filming across both Saturday and Sunday appeared to be largely confined to the opposite end of the park along King Charles Street: a popular shooting location for many film productions.
Jadis Crashes A Royal Parade (video above)
The entire length of King Charles Street was decked out with many of the same period cars we have seen at previous shooting locations, and appears to have been used to film more of the same Horse Rampage scene which we have already seen play out in the City, at the Tower of London, and in Bradford.
Three police cars were parked askew at one end of the street, suggesting that they had been abruptly halted in their pursuit of Jadis by the presence of the steps which led down into the park. A video showed that several of the Policemen in the chasing pack, who had been pursuing Jadis on their bicycles, unsuccessfully attempted to navigate their way down the stairs, crashing their bicycles in the process.
Image Credit: UnBoxPHD
Jadis and her horse, presumably having made light work of descending the steps, then proceeded to crash her way through a military marching band – a scene which I was fortunate enough to be present for. In fact, over the course of multiple hours on set on Saturday, they performed multiple takes of this one moment, capturing the scene from a variety of different angles and perspectives.
The marching band appears to be modelled after that of the British Army, and the parade appeared to be re-creating a patriotic moment of Royal pageantry, with crowds of 1950s extras all waving their Union flags. A local newspaper billboard carried the headline “London Prepares for Royal Celebration” with the period security barriers all emblazoned with the cypher of Queen Elizabeth II, who ascended to the throne in 1952 and was crowned in 1953.
Although the extras in the marching band were not playing their instruments for real, authentic marching band music was played over the loud speakers on set, which helped everyone keep in time with their movements.
After disrupting the parade, Jadis continued on her rampage into the park, presumably on her way towards Buckingham Palace.
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