September morning driving through Port Talbot’s rolling green countryside on a
sunny, the initial hint of anything unusual was the sight of two fully garbed,
bewigged Ottoman Janissaries leading their horses right into a motor
carpark.
Once we alighted the minibus, more fifteenth century Turks
arrived to view, one reading the paper on a sunny verge, another texting in the
shade of a double decker coach, a hatless, wigless queue forming at the catering
van…
Led down a leafy sylvan path, the soil underfoot turning out to be
sand, we emerged blinking in to the light of a steep golden dune. Dotted round
the hillside were military banners, decorative earthenware pots, iron braziers,
straw-stuffed training dummies, and a draped Ottoman tent, all topped by way of
a bright strip of cloudless blue sky.
This is Swansea doing its best impression
of Renaissance-era Turkey. Disregard the Janissary wearing Ray-Bans and the
crumpled Costa Coffee cup discarded within an ornate urn, and who’d know we
weren’t on the outskirts of historic Constantinople.
After a nose around
what we learn is Lucrezia Donati’s tent, in which the lighting team was planning
a transition shot from the blinding daylight of a ship’s deck to the tenebrous
tent interior, we were called over to speak to David S. Goyer, Da Vinci’s Demons
creator, and a man with more comic book pies than fingers to stick in
them.
In addition to Justice League, Man Of Steel and The Dark Knight
trilogy’s David Goyer, we spoke to director Peter Hoar, production designer
extraordinaire Ed Thomas (who also designed for Doctor Who and Torchwood),
location manager Gareth Skelding, cast members Tom Riley, Blake Ritson, Lara
Pulver, Elliot Cowan and more.
Over the course of the day we visited
Margam Castle, which stands in for the Medici Palace in the series, as well as
the vast studios at Swansea Gate Business Park, where, inside enormous
warehouses not only sit impressive chunks of Florence and the Vatican, but also
a full-size ship, and - why not - a model of Peruvian temple Machu Picchu.