Facts About Downton Abbey
12 Fascinating Facts You Probably Don't Know About "Downton Abbey"
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Those iconic dinner table scenes are some of the most challenging to film, not least because they involve long hours and real food.
In another behind-the-scenes book, "The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era," the creative team explains that all-day dinner scene shoots pose major challenges. A dinner scene involving 18 people can take around 70 "servings" of food in order to keep refreshing the table throughout several takes, and care is taken to avoid serving particularly smelly foods, even historically accurate ones, that might get extra unpleasant under filming lights for long hours.