bloodandchocolatefans

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It's my 3 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

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CHOCOLATE SHOP FACADE

The Set Concept Sketch about the Chocolate Shop Interior

CHOCOLATERIE

The location of the chocolate shop was replaced by a grill bar called Bodega "La Mahala" in Bucharest.

(Location: Strada Covaci 8, București 030167, Romania)

sources:

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Thank you @minhasreleiturasdavida and everyone who got me to 10 reblogs!

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More about some locations and scenes...

Kevin Phipps, who has worked as an art director on some of the most stylistically distinct films of all time, crafted a world of shadow and muted color for the wolves to inhabit. “He is one of the best art directors in the business and this is his first job as production designer,” says executive producer Hawk Koch. “The sets he created on this film were simply spectacular.”

Phipps was able to use the visual richness of existing locations in Bucharest to the production’s advantage in many instances. He transformed a former heating plant into the Brookwood Absinthe Distillery, which serves as Gabriel’s lair 

and created the Dacian Club by modifying a derelict half-finished concrete structure: Ceaucescu’s (the former leader of Communist Romania) Biblioteca Nationala (the National Library). 

Dancy attests to the seamless integration of Phipps’s sets with the city itself. “The attention to detail is such that the sets fit in perfectly with the city as it really is.”

The filmmakers’ urgent need to provide a secure shooting environment for the wolves as well as for the cast and crew resulted in Phipps’s greatest challenge: the creation of several naturalistic forest sets, including a creek and a river, on MediaPro’s soundstages.

Phipps and his team rose to the challenge by using some 2000 cubic meters of soil, 50-60 real trees along with some polystyrene and fiberglass trees to reproduce a Romanian forest so authentic that it soon attracted its own mosquitoes, lizards as well as a resident owl. He recalls, “The first time we had a show-and-tell on that forest set, suddenly I looked up and there was an owl flying around in the canopy of our trees. Katja looked up and saw the owl and said ‘Kevin, you know that’s a really good sign that we’ll be really happy shooting on this set.’”

Once the creek and river sets were conceived, Phipps worked closely with SFX supervisor Allder on the mechanics, the water system, the pumping system, the filtration and the volume of water that would bring the sets to life.

The filmmaking team had already previsualized the world of the film using small scale models. “You can get down and get your lens into the model and really see how the set is going to shoot and what will be in each frame,” explains Phipps. “This approach was especially useful given the amount of running in the film. Everybody knew what they were getting – stunts, camera, lighting, even the actors.”

sources:

https://www.vladvieru.com/blood--chocolate---2005.html

http://www.kevinphipps.com/b-l-o-o-d--c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t/b-l-o-o-d--c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t/

http://blood-and-chocolate.katja-von-garnier.com/

http://madeinatlantis.com/movies_central/2007/blood_and_chocolate.htm

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Just a silly quick fanart I made 7 years ago ❤️🐺🐺❤️ Happy new year! 🥳🎉🎊

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Am I the only one who loves the way he looks at her?😳🥺😭

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Rufus is the name of the wolf who played Gabriel. He was trained by Hungarian trainers. How cute! 🤗

The title says "Blood & Chocolate - training: wolf stops and watches" in Hungarian.

Transcript:

actor: Én résen vagyok! Na jöhet! (I’m on the lookout! Come on!) cameraman: Forog! (Action!) actor: Rufus, ne! (Rufus, don't!) cameraman: Nagyon jó! (Very good!) actor: Rufus! Jól van! Ez az! Ügyes! Megvan! (Rufus! It's all right. That's it. Clever. It’s done.)

Video was uploaded by Horkai Animal Training Center.

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It's just... Wow. Love it!

The title says "Blood and Chocolate 2nd Unit - movie scenes - wolves" in Hungarian.

Video was uploaded by Horkai Animal Training Center.

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This was so interesting to watch. Like a 'second' part of the movie..

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Some cool pictures from the shooting. Enjoy! 🥰

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lt's all in the eyes...

Although the book is originally set in Maryland, USA, “most of the movie was shot in Bucharest while the rest was on a sound stage.”

It is not a coincidence.

Film director Katja von Garnier wanted to work with “real” wolves, and she found an excellent animal trainer in the person of Zoltán Horkai in the neighboring country, Hungary. (Not gonna lie: as a Hungarian, I feel very honored that the directors used - fictional - history of my nation for this wonderful work.)

“During the shoot they used 23 wolf and wolf-hybrids, including one who had one blue eye and one brown, which inspired the contacts worn by Rafe (so the human and the wolf playing him would match.)”

So this could further explain why all the wolves in the movie have golden eyes, and why their eyes turn golden also in their human form when they smell blood.

The director's statement did not end here: she wanted to examine the werewolf (or in this case, shape shifter) mythology behind the loup-garou. Discussing werewolves she said, “Usually it’s like a curse… I wanted the transformation, the change, to be something that’s beautiful, that’s liberating”.

I'm sure that is. I'm so sure.. it almost hurts.

~~~

By the way, Zoltán's animals also excelled in other movies: Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), The Secret of Moonacre (2008), The Way Back (2010), Hercules (2014), On Body and Soul (2017), etc.

~~~

sources:

openbooksociety.com

blood-and-chocolate.katja-von-garnier.com

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How is this for a resting place?

'It was built in the 13th century, supposedly on soil brought from the Holy Land. So many people wanted to be buried here that the cemetery overflowed. So they improvised.’

The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: Kostnice v Sedlci; German: Sedletz-Beinhaus) is a Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints (Czech: Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých), part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. The ossuary is among the most visited tourist attractions of the Czech Republic, attracting over 200,000 visitors annually.

History:

In 1278, Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia. He returned with a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe.

In the mid 14th century, during the Black Death, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, many thousands were buried in the abbey cemetery, so it had to be greatly enlarged.

Around 1400, a Gothic church was built in the center of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during construction, or simply slated for demolition to make room for new burials.

After 1511, the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk of the order.

Between 1703 and 1710, a new entrance was constructed to support the front wall, which was leaning outward, and the upper chapel was rebuilt. This work, in the Czech Baroque style, was designed by Jan Santini Aichel.

In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order, yielding a macabre result. The signature of Rint, also executed in bone, appears on the wall near the entrance to the chapel.

Four bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. A chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a coat of arms of the House of Schwarzenberg, and the signature of František Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.

Along with Sedlec Abbey and the rest of the Kutná Hora city centre, it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, because of its unique Baroque architecture.

---

The exterior of the ‘Biserica Silvestru’ (Silvestru Church, located in downtown Bucharest in the movie) is actually a church, the Capela Sfânta Treime - Holy Trinity Chapel - in Stirbey Palace, Buftea, which is located tens of kilometers west of Bucharest.

Source: Wikipedia

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The hunt was held in an area called Parcul Bazilescu (Bazilescu Park). “Bazilescu Park is a park located in the northwestern part of Bucharest, in the Bucurestii Noi neighbourhood. This park has an area of 13.5 hectares and was set up in 1954. It is a park where there are also several old trees, remnants of Codrii Vlasiei, a secular forest that in the past existed over a very large area around Bucharest.

Theater Building Inside the park is the Summer Theater, built in 1953 and inaugurated at the World Youth and Students Festival, which had a capacity of 2000 seats. It was a perfect place for outdoor art events in the summer. Concerts and theatre performances! After 1989 the theatre was abandoned. Since then the building has been degraded and wild vegetation, trees have begun to conquer space.”

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Vivian’s full name is Vivian Gandillon - the writer created Vivian's character as a descendant of the medieval Gandillon family who, in the late 16th-century France, were accused and executed for being werewolves. The term “loup-garou” is used several times in the movie, meaning werewolf in French.

This is a painting of Henri Boguet, the French judge who recorded the Gandillons’ story and took part in their trial.

https://bizarreandgrotesque.com/2016/10/30/the-gandillon-werewolf-family/

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The church where Vivian and Aiden first meet is actually a Romanian Orthodox church in Bucharest called Catedrala Sfantul Spiridon Nou, but its exterior is the Orthodox Biserica Răzvan.

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Aiden’s graphic novel “The Lady of the Lake” is actually an Arthurian legend. The Lady of the Lake, also known as Viviane or Nimuë, is an enchantress who lives in a castle beneath a lake surrounding the island of Avalon. According to legend, she is most famous for giving Arthur the magical sword Excalibur, for fostering Sir Lancelot after his father's death and for imprisoning Merlin in a tree.