The Making of The Massacre
By Dean Rose

There were very many composites produced for The Massacre reconstruction. In fact almost 450 composites were used in total, averaging over 100 new pictures per episode (surprisingly, well above the usual number of telesnaps per episode) providing a more than adequate coverage of the story. It would take far too long to discuss the numerous composites in detail, but here are a few of my favourites:

I was particularly pleased with the street sign for 'Rue des Fosse St Germain'. One of the original set photographs for War of God shows a street sign for 'Rue de Bethisy'. Using Photoshop I was able to extend the length of this street sign and by careful manipulation of the available letters produced a new street sign for 'Rue des Fosse St Germain'. This looked particularly effective especially when placed behind a twisted vine. The camera script describes how the street sign is seen at the beginning of the attempted assassination scene so it was a nice touch to include this.

For the reconstruction of the Crusade we managed to gain access to original telesnaps for the first time. In amongst the telesnaps held by the private collector was a complete set of telesnaps for The Time Meddler. Although the episodes exist we scanned the telesnaps more for historical interest than anything else. When we came to the scenes featuring the Abbot it seemed obvious to use screen captures from the Time Meddler showing the Doctor dressed in the monk's habit. Surprisingly, screen captures from this story came out extremely poorly. As an alternative I tried a few composites using the scanned telesnaps and the results were remarkable with extremely clear composites being produced from the telesnap source material. This was particularly useful for composites featuring the Abbot and Steven when he disguises himself in Priest of Death.

There are a few authentic photos showing Jackie Lane taken at the time of her photo call on location for The Massacre. For the final scenes where Steven exits the TARDIS and Dodo enters I thought it would be a nice touch to show glimpses of the actual location used. I knew that Stephen Carter's location web site included a few modern day photos of the actual location. I knew Stephen fairly well having supplied him with some of my personal location photos in the past. I contacted him and asked him if he would mind if I used some of his photos for the reconstruction and if he could send me higher resolution pictures of the locations than those posted on his web site. Stephen duly obliged and these were incorporated into rather nice composites showing the actual location on the scanner screen and also the view through the open TARDIS doors.

Much to our amazement The Massacre reconstruction does not use any specially filmed material.