Now that I've been able to build (for the most part) a 3D model of the Mayfair house with interiors that can be shown even while the entire house is incomplete, I'm turning more attention to...the Mayfair Witches themselves!
I've included this image and some details about its creation on both Come Into My Parlor In 3D and The Face of Come Into My Parlor's Mayfair Witches. I am working on some other models of the Mayfair Witches alongside the ongoing 1239 First Street in 3D project. From what I can tell, it looks like the Witches themselves are what people really want to see. I can't disagree with that!
That is my ultimate goal--to create the Mayfair Witches as Anne Rice described them. As we begin to look toward a possible Season 2 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC (actual status unknown), I am reminded that reactions to Season 1 were most definitely mixed. People either really loved it or really hated it. Some of the most important main characters were missing completely, there were jumps from one plot line to another that made no sense, among other things. Most of all, there was a diversion from the source material (the novels themselves) that was too much of a diversion and made people ask a number of times, "Did the writers even READ the books?!"
To be fair, The Witching Hour is a long book. It's challenging to bring a book so long with four different parts to it to the screen, even as a television series. There is so much material there that I would imagine it's hard to determine what to somehow translate to the screen and what not to. I don't know; I am not a filmmaker.
One thing I keep meaning to do is to expand more on the differences between the books and the series so far. There are some things from the series that I actually loved seeing, because they did give me a new feel for the atmosphere of the settings of the story. Another was that Suzanne, the village midwife of Donnelaith, Scotland and the first Mayfair Witch, was brought to the screen. Then, though I was confused about a few details at first, there was the inclusion of the Mayfair Emerald as a literal key. Which, symbolically speaking, is what the Mayfair Emerald was.
I decided to limit what I included from the series in the model itself. One thing I did decide to do, since recreating the mural on the walls of the dining room would be a challenge, was to find a suitable panoramic image for the mural. Also, I would include framed portraits of each of the Mayfair Witches on the walls of the dining room, which is what was done in the AMC series.
One of the photographs Rowan finds in Ciprien Grieve's cellphone is an old one that appears to have been taken in the 1920's. Guess who that has to be? Yes. Stella. The novels refer to photos taken of Stella's Roaring Twenties parties in the Mayfair house, including the last party she threw before her murder in the parlor of the house in 1929. Photos are mentioned again in connection with some pearls and a Victrola once owned by Julien Mayfair. The photos were also of Stella and others, like Ancient Evelyn as a young woman.
That photo is one you'll no doubt see tucked in somewhere. The other photos and portraits, such as the ones seen in the opening credits mounted on crumbling walls with twisted branches of the family tree, I think are one of the ways the Mayfair Witches' tale has spanned generations of this family. Indeed, there is a lot of interest in the Mayfair family tree.
But let's get back to The Witching Hour. As stated, it is a long book. I understand cast members themselves read the books and are longtime fans of Anne Rice. At the same time, reading a book that long, with so much in it, seems to be something some readers struggle with. That's not a criticism of them as readers, however. The book has so much in it that it can be hard to keep the flow of the story in mind while reading.
This might be a bit overdue, but perhaps it's time the Parlor devoted extra space and time to a more detailed discussion of The Witching Hour?
In fact, I was just reading through parts of it last night when I came across a section I had been meaning to review anyway. The reason being that I have been working on other parts of the Mayfair house and needed to review details on a few things in it so they will be accurate in the model. As to what that might be, I'll give you a hint.
It's something that has me doing yet another search to see if I can find architectural details of the second floor of the Mayfair house. I want to make sure the master bedroom door is in the correct location...