Working Hollywood: Gábor Tóth runs the carriages in 'The Raven'

Like any good gothic thriller, the first five minutes of “The Raven” open with a woman’s unhinged scream, copious quantities of blood and dark carriages thundering down a wet, cobblestone street. And while 33-year-old Gábor Tóth assumes no responsibility for the first two items on the list, he’s the first person ever to serve as a carriage coordinator in his native country of Hungary, where much of the film was shot.

In theaters April 27, “The Raven” stars John Cusack as author Edgar Allan Poe, who dons a detective cap when his grisly fiction becomes the inspiration for a serial killer. Carriages play such a big role that the production decided they needed to be under the supervision of a separate coordinator, who didn’t have the additional responsibility of set dressing and props.

Enter Tóth, who found himself with an unusual set of responsibilities: supervising the repair and transformation of a dozen carriages, coordinating the schedules of drivers and their horses, organizing the transport of the entire fleet between locations and ensuring safety on slick, cobblestone streets.

Luckily, Tóth had plenty of experience. When he was 11, he started visiting movie sets to help out his father, a set decorator. In the years since, Tóth has worked in set decoration and props on films including 2006’s “Day of Wrath” and television series such as the BBC’s “Robin Hood.” “The Raven” introduced him to a new aspect of the movie industry.

“It was nice to be so close during the shooting,” he said. “When I work in set decoration, I’m never present during the shooting. On ‘The Raven,’ I had the radio, and I was giving the sign for the carriages to start and stop. So it was quite interesting to be close to the fire.”

Improve your carriage: After property master Ray McNeill located about a dozen carriages and shipped them to the film’s location in Budapest, Hungary, Tóth’s work began. “The carriages were replicas [of models from the mid-1800s], so they were not real antiques,” said Tóth. “So we had the chance to transform them slightly as we needed. We were storing the carriages in a film studio, where there are local workshops, so there was some damage to the outside paint, and we had to repair them. We changed some of the covers of the seats inside. And we had to make it safe to stand at the back for stunts, so we made some metal bars to stand on, and we put some roof racks on the top to grab. Later on, we had to cover what the stunt people were standing on with rubber, so it wasn’t too slippery.”

The long lens of the law: The interior of a carriage isn’t the most spacious filming location, but Tóth did his best to make it easy for the camera department. “There were three quite similar dark carriages, and we had to paint them black and put a police logo on them,” he said. “And one of these was the hero one [used by the main characters], which was almost like the other two, but the carpenters had to make some windows openable for different camera angles from outside. We had to make the front window open and close, so they could place the camera on the driver’s seat looking back into the carriage.”

In the driver’s seat: These days, finding a good carriage driver is even harder than finding someone who knows how to drive stick shift. But Tóth knew exactly who to ask. “Horseback riding is quite a big part of Hungarian history,” he said. “I can’t ride a horse, but I know many people who work with horses. So there were two big runs when stunt people were driving the carriages, but other than that, the owners don’t really like to leave the horses to someone else. You need to know the horses and work with them a lot to see every sign of a problem or something. I just had to make sure everyone — horses, carriage drivers and carriages — got there on time, and the drivers [who were the owners] went through dressing and makeup and hair before they turned up on set.”

Rubber sole: A combination of rain, snow and cobblestones provided the perfect atmosphere for a film inspired by Poe’s work, but it was less than ideal for Tóth’s four-legged fleet. “The carriages have suspension, so when you’re sitting in the back, you don’t even really feel the cobblestones,” he said. “But it was quite bad for the horses. We had to put some special rubber horseshoes on, because on the wet cobblestones, the metal horseshoes were slipping too much. So this helped make sure none of the horses or the stunt people got hurt.”

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Photo: Carriages on Baltimore streets set the atmosphere for the gothic thriller "The Raven." Credit: Larry Horricks / Amontillado Productions

Working Hollywood: An armory of costumes for 'Wrath of the Titans'

In a Hollywood obsessed with futuristic CG effects, Simon Brindle does things the old-school way — really old school.

As the costume armor supervisor for “Wrath of the Titans,” the sequel to the 2010 Warner Bros. film “Clash of the Titans” due out March 30, Brindle and his team fashioned the suits of armor worn by Sam Worthington and other actors using leather and wooden mallets and other tools and materials employed by the ancient Greeks.

For the 44-year-old Brindle, it wasn’t too long of a journey from his parents’ farm near Liverpool to the mythological Mount Olympus. As a young boy, he took advantage of the ample space and old pieces of leather and wood that surrounded him to develop his skill for hand-crafting goods.

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Armed with a passion for sculpture, history and epic films such as 1963’s “Jason and the Argonauts,” Brindle pursued a degree in fine arts sculpture at Manchester Polytechnic. After graduation, he got his first taste of costume design and manufacturing when he landed a job at a theater company that mounted historical productions.

Since then, he’s fashioned armor for films such as 2001’s “A Knight’s Tale,” 2004’s “Alexander,” “Clash of the Titans” and the HBO series “Game of Thrones.”

“I love to create things, and this gives me the opportunity to do that,” he said. “But the best part of it is to see your lead guy or your key actors try their armor on and stand up straight and really get a feel for the characters they’re going to play.”

Greek to him: For “Wrath of the Titans,” Brindle’s 15-person team fabricated armor for the principal actors and prototypes for the armies based on costume designs by Jany Temime, who had recently completed work on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” “A Greek picture requires essentially Greek skill sets, so it’s literally using wooden stakes, wooden forms, hammers and mallets; trimming away with sharp knives; and shaping and forming and so on,” Brindle said. “So the tools are quite basic — hammers and files, sandpaper, nothing too complex. It’s really what you do with them that counts.”

Best chest forward: To lend authenticity, much of the armor was inspired by the Greek muscle cuirass, a type of armor molded to fit and mimic the wearer’s torso, nipples and all. “They’re based on a perfect anatomical model in a piece of beaten bronze,” Brindle said. “They have a wonderful sculpted chest and abs, and they enhance the appearance of the wearer.”

Flax your muscles: As the king of the gods, the character of Zeus, played by Liam Neeson, required special armor. “Zeus is in a woven, soft-bounded leather and a compressed linen, which is another Greek armor technique,” Brindle said. “They compressed dozens of layers of linen together under an awful lot of weight, and it actually became impervious to blades. So Zeus’ armor was layers of linen and felt and woven leather with fine metal bounding running up and down the surface of the armor — just little bright details that catch the light every now and then.”

Fit for a lady: Brindle constructed Andromeda’s armor from a combination of rigid and soft leathers with etched brass metalwork around the neck and waistline. “The etchings were ancient Macedonian warriors in procession from archaeological finds, Greek vase paintings,” he said. “And that was really nice armor to make, because it’s very well tailored and fits well. It’s got a great line and silhouette to it, and it’s lovely deep reds and burgundies. It looks regal like a piece of armor, but it’s still quite feminine.”

Scale model: The character of Perseus, played by Worthington, needed particularly tough armor given his habit of battling sea monsters and gorgons. “Perseus’ armor is a lamellar armor, which is a series of overlapping leather scales that slide across each other,” Brindle said. “They were something like three by two inches, so it was hundreds of overlapping scales meticulously laced together. And lamellar armor was used in Greece, and it was also used in ancient Japanese culture. So it has an almost slightly samurai silhouette to it.”

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Photos: Left, Simon Brindle, costume armor supervisor for "Wrath of the Titans." Credit: Nicky Jones. Right, Sam Worthington, as Perseus, wears lamellar armor in a scene with Danny Huston playing Poseidon. Credit: Jay Maidment / Warner Bros.