There are no sausages and mash available before 5 p.m. Aside from that, Somerset welcomed Maciej, Emily and me with beautiful British weather and some lovely twisty roads—with fewer potholes than the junction of Grange Road and Madingley Road.
Midway through a conversation about hypertrophy training and the best sources of protein, we arrived at a stone‑built, old countryside farm. The first to greet us was, ironically, rich in protein—a slightly scruffy, scar‑covered little piggy. She slowly moved towards the fence, and I immediately felt a connection with nature. I also knew what I wished for dinner.
Our car was full of fancy equipment because we drove all this way not to fine dine, but to make a movie. We were bang on time, and so was Matt, and our hands shook in a friendly gesture. Meeting him in person felt both new and oddly familiar. We had planned this trip for many months over Zoom, and we were keen to jump straight into filming.
The sliding barn door opened, and we were in our location for the next three days of shooting. Not too little, not too big. I strip it down with my eyes as a filmmaker. I notice power plugs on the wall; this is good. Two large windows in the roof—good, maybe, I don’t know. They could cause a problem with light and shadows.
Meanwhile, Maciej and Emily are chatting with Matt while I walk through the place like a decorator wishing to extend the space and move the wall away. We don’t have the budget for it. “Tea? Coffee?” is the question, and we all gladly take the offer.
Matt has a busy week; he has just bought a car and immediately the gearbox went south. Not a biggie, as the dealer offered to fix it all. There is also a massive surge on Matt’s Instagram, and we all wonder what caused it. I somehow doubt it’s the presence of a filming crew from Cambridge.
This place used to be an old art school; now it’s rented by a local artist. I notice a lady leaning by an easel, deeply in thought. It’s a very inspiring place to work, and a few moments later we manage to set up our cameras, lights, and audio. We are ready to roll.
So… what’s your name, and what made you interested in stone carving?
“I’m Matt Loughlin, a stone letter cutter in Somerset. I moved from New York to the UK after ten years in fashion, looking for something new.”
That was a good take, but let’s have another one so I have something to choose from. Maciej asks the question again and we film another take. Same same but different, and we happily continue working through a long list of questions. It all sounds good.
We are using two sets of mics: one, a tiny mic hidden under Matt’s coat, and another on an extended boom hanging over his head. This is my favourite microphone. It has a pleasant, rich sound. Apart from his voice, I can also hear in my headphones birds singing and chirping outside in the fields, and the crackling of a wood‑burning stove.
Matt is comfortably overheating by the fire while Maciej, Emily, and I slowly feel the cold creeping up from the floor, through the soles of our shoes and upward.
I am using two cameras and two different angles. One is a close-up portrait shot and the other shows more of the workshop in the background. Both are set to the same white balance, and I hope I won’t have issues with colour grading. The focus is on Matt’s eyes, but this needs to be checked frequently, as it has happened in the past that auto focus technology betrayed me.
“I was wandering the cemetery in a deep depression, complaining about generic gravestones. My wife said, ‘Then make your own.’ And I thought—good idea.”
That’s a good line. Maybe I can get some b‑roll from the Britain’s Brainiest Cemetery on All Souls Lane, show some gravestones like the one standing just behind Matt. There are many other examples of his work around the workshop: beautifully carved letters or artwork, some just stone and some mixed with brass.
Maciej continues asking questions from his iPad. Emily, an evolutionary morphologist who joined the project to study the variations of letter shapes, sits on my right side. She holds a single crochet hook, quietly making leaves of a Monkey’s Tail cactus. She can do it almost on autopilot, all while listening intently to Matt speaking. That part is important, as I often lose the plot of the narration—my focus is on focus, light, batteries… the list goes on.
“Stone carving is slow, rhythmic work. People are surprised how gently I tap the chisel.”
Tomorrow, we continue filming—mainly Matt at work. More b‑roll to tell the story. I look around the workshop and plan what we could capture. It seems to be an easy job; his workshop is full of tools and I’m sure I’ll get what I need.
Suddenly we hear a loud siren, sounding like an air‑raid warning, followed by a massive bang that shook the entire workshop. This was a big one—a loud explosion from the nearby quarry. Nothing to worry about, and we stop for a smoke.
Matt loads his pipe with tobacco. It has a nice aroma, not like the poison some inhale through electronic sticks. I hope for more smoke and maybe that the workshop will catch some god’s rays, but instead we went out to the patio to enjoy the view. It feels like summer. Blue sky, sunshine — how I missed you.
“I knew Baskerville as a font everyone has on their computer, but I didn’t know he was a letter carver.” Slowly, we begin to link the pieces together: the Baskerville font and the Small Performances project.
Small Performances is an AHRC funded collaboration which brings together experts in archaeometallurgy, scientific imaging, printing history, jewellery making, and type design from Birmingham and Cambridge. These folks would often gather in our department, steering a rather complicated project dedicated to reconstructing the lost craft of punch cutting. There was plenty of hands on experimentation too, with engravers, jewellers, blacksmiths, and typeface designers all helping to untangle the techniques of the past.
Our photographic studio in the library also plays its part, helping rediscover the craft, science, and artistry behind the Baskerville typeface. We’ve produced all kinds of 2D and 3D photography—including RTI, which is a bit like 2.5D and lets the viewer move a light across an image to reveal every tiny detail, every scratch. It’s something that really has to be seen on the Cambridge Digital Library:
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/baskervillepunches/1
“But I keep going, because finishing things is the only way you get better.” I feel this will do. It’s been a few hours, and we are in a right place to finish. My cards are full of data, we’ve asked all the questions, and Matt is almost cooked from sitting close to the fire. Just a final check to see if everything is alright, and it’s a wrap.
The next day we continue filming Matt at work, tapping rhythmically on the chisel. Tap, tapping his mark into the stone, one cut after another until a letter is born. He is making good progress, and we can pack the gear and leave. The easy part of filmmaking is behind me; the real work starts when I begin cutting and trimming all my footage into a hopefully watchable YouTube video. And honestly—I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes together.
by Błażej Mikuła