Anglesey, North & South Wales

November 2023, I spent a week scouting locations in North Wales working with a very talented scout Imogen Forbes. We only had an outline script and the director Claire Oakley was vague about where she wanted to set her original script ‘Under Salt Marsh’. She knew the region but only from short visits and in her mind’s eye the fictitious town of Morfa Halen was an amalgamation of a few places see saw in passing.

We scouted the whole coastline first documenting town and villages from the North of Anglesey to mid Wales building a visual database for Claire to work from. The sea or water was the overriding element in all the location briefs either being close to the coast or with a view of the sea. We came back again in February 2024 for a two week period scouting with defined briefs. The setting of Morfa Halen had quickly materialised from the initial scout so we based much of the next period of scouting around this town. We also had to consider South Wales, for logistical reasons as our studio base was here, we scouted around Cardiff for North Wales looking locations which proved much harder than we expected, it has a very diffident look! While all the time Claire was writing the script, looking at our incoming locations and redefying the briefs for character houses, places of work and the spots where a crime had taken place. This was fed back to us on a weekly basis to a creative loop was between director and us.

Finally in April we went full time and then in May we started preparation for an October and December shoot in the North with a two week period in November in South Wales before a further two months in early 2025. Meanwhile the designer, Stevie Herbert, needed to build a replica part of the town which could be flooded for the final episodes. Filming in October in North Wales we had some beautiful days but equally the weather could change very quickly. Filming in December was a much harder event with two names storms coming on shore from the Irish Sea resulted on one day having 90mph winds and a ‘shelter’ warning on our phones, filming on that day was curtailed!

I would like to add a big thank you to the village by the sea which became our Morfa Halen, they really where invaded by the film crew and I hope they enjoy this exceptional piece of film making.