Perspective Magazine: Dave Blass Articles

Unlikely Heroes

THE PRODUCTION DESIGN OF THE BOYS

BY DAVE BLASS, PRODUCTION DESIGNER

What if superheroes were real?

It’s a simple idea, which takes you deep down a rabbit hole of logic questions and design possibilities.

Suspend belief and what would the world be like?

Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy really changed the game for graphic novels. How did Bruce Wayne get the Batmobile and why wear a cape? Creating the backstory to these classic elements paved the way for the current “Era of the Superhero.” It took logical questions that people had glossed over for years and brought them into a tangible world. My first foray into the superhero genre was Roger Corman’s The Black Scorpion for the Sci-Fi Channel back in 1995. Whenever I would say, “Hey…this doesn’t make any sense,” the writer would always say, “Well, it’s comic book logic” and that would be it. But I wanted it to make sense, and I think fans do too. Enter The Boys, a new R-rated series for Amazon about a team of superheroes and the band of misfits who are working to take them out.

What if superheroes were real... Well, they would probably be egotistical jerks that would embody the idea of absolute power corrupting absolutely. They would be a Kardashian mixed with a pro athlete combined with a politician; capable of doing whatever they wanted. That was the idea at the core of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s series The Boys. It was my third time taking a

Garth Ennis project from page to television. I had previously designed Constantine and Preacher; Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg also produced the latter. I knew with their guidance that the level of insanity would be pushed on every level. Showrunner Eric Kripke really pushed to ground the show in the present day. No future tech, no floating space stations, it was going to be just like a switch was flipped and the heroes were real. In our first meeting we talked about the realities, of the world building. There wouldn’t be any Batcaves or Fortresses of Solitude, it would be a business environment run by a megacorporation. Apple meets Marvel. The show’s Vought Corporation is part law enforcement and part advertising company. They rent out the superheroes to cities to solve their crime problems and add the marketing spin as well. The heroes would have their own movies just like Marvel and would be slapped on billboards hawking whatever they could sell. The offices had to be slick and unique. I didn’t want to go futuristic, it had to feel like Vought had just called up Zaha Hadid or Santiago Calatrava and threw a ton of money at them for the tallest, most forward-thinking building in New York.

A. THE SEVEN COMIC BOOK COVER. GRAPHIC LAYOUT BASED ON ONE OF THE ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK COVERS BY DARICK ROBERTSON.

B. PANORAMA OF VOUGHT TOWER BOARDROOM, BLENDING THE NEOCLASSICAL STYLE OF WASHINGTON, DC WITH AN OVER THE TOP AESTHETIC WHERE THE SUPERHEROES SEE THEMSELVES AS GODS. PART POLITICIAN, PART REALITY STAR.

PHOTO BY JAN THIJS.

A. THE PENTHOUSE AREA VOUGHT TOWER. CONCEPT ART BY HENRY FONG. THE APEX OF THE TOWER FORMS A GIANT ILLUMATED “7” FOR THE VOUGHT 7.

B. VOUGHT TOWER SHOWING THE VFX EXTENSION OF THE PRACTICAL SET SHOT AT ROY THOMPSON HALL, ALL THE WAY UP TO THE PENTHOUSE BOARDROOM FOR THE “VOUGHT 7.” THE WIDE SHOT SHOWS THE SWOOPING GOLD “7” THAT IS ILLUMINATED AT NIGHT. CONCEPT ART BY HENRY FONG.

I always approach my designs based on reality. One can design whatever they want, but if it is unaffordable or has limitations that can’t be met on a TV schedule or budget, then they have put themselves into a corner from the beginning. I knew it would be necessary to go in and out of a practical building, and that would really set the tone. Several weeks were spent looking at possible venues but nothing was found that really worked. Then one night I was driving past Roy Thomson Hall, all lit up and I knew that was our spot. It had been crossed off the list early because of its association to X-Men, but I thought it deserved a second look. For me, the logic worked perfectly. Of course, the audience would believe that superheroes could work in this building. They had ALREADY seen superheroes here and accepted it. All of the show’s heroes were a satirical version of other heroes, so its locations could be too. I worked with Concept Artist Henry Fong who created an epic phallus that spiraled to the heavens and turned into a giant “7” at the top to symbolize the seven superheroes.

Once I had landed on the starting point for the architecture, I knew that the building could be twisted and changed. The penthouse area would house the boardroom of The Seven. They are the seven top superheroes in the world, brought together to protect America. I wanted their space to be bold. It wanted to play to their egos. I looked to Hollywood and Washington for inspiration. What do the homes of the rich and famous look like, and what do they have in connection with the White House? The idea was that sycophants catering to their every whim would surround these heroes. Stroking their egos. There would be statues and murals to celebrate their godlike abilities.

Working with Henry Fong, a round colonnade with a massive floor to ceiling vista of New York City was created. I would like to say that the Doric columns were a stunning design choice, but they were a simple necessity. The set would be built in an old warehouse with support beams every twenty feet, so something was needed. Rather than running from it the issue was embraced. The view of the city would be an issue as well as two of the structural columns would end up right outside the windows. Henry came up with this wonderful swooping column detail that not only hid the posts but also added a beautiful foreground element to break up the massive backdrop.

While designing the boardroom, the graphic design team headed by Paul Greenberg had the epic task of creating…Epics. They needed to create marketing campaigns for seven superheroes. Movie posters, billboards, magazine covers and lunch boxes, all would be needed. Anything one could slap a sticker on. The tiny graphic design team had to churn out the entire Marvel franchise worth of artwork in a matter of months. Each hero had their own branding that had to be unique to them, but also work in conjunction to the rest of the group. Homelander was the all-American Superman-type character, Queen Maeve was the Amazonian warrior, The Deep, an aquatic superstar, A-Train was the show’s speedster, Black Noir was a bit of a Batman meets ninja, Starlight was the newest to the group, with her Midwest cheerleader charm, and Translucent the invisible man. The final hero was Lamplighter. In the story, Lamplighter is being replaced by

Starlight, so he is never seen in the show, which was great for everyone except the Art Department. For us, he was like a retired superstar. Every image of The Seven that would be seen in the set would need to include this character…who wasn’t a character. No need to cast an actor or design wardrobe, or at least not a priority. It was for us, however. I had to beg with costume designer L.J. Shannon to work with us on an outfit design that we could use. They created a rough hooded figure with a flowing jacket concept that we took and ran with. From there, Henry Fong took the look they sketched and brought it to life. He had already created a stunning 14-foot-tall sculpture design of The Seven, and we chose to put Lamplighter in the back to hide him as much as possible so we could develop the rest. It was all coming fast and furious at this point. While one group was working on the sculpture, another was doing giant 23-foot domed fresco of The Seven that would

C. HOMELANDER STANDING AT THE WINDOW IN THE VOUGHT TOWER WITH A PANORAMA OF NEW YORK CITY AND THE IDEA THAT THIS BUILDING IS THE TALLEST IN THE CITY.

D. CUSTOM BUSTS OF THE SUPERHEROES IN THE VOUGHT BOARDROOM SCULPTED BY GREG ARONOWITZ.

E. CONCEPT ART OF THE VOUGHT TOWER BOARDROOM SCULPTURE OF “THE SEVEN” CREATED BY HENRY FONG.

hover over the room, and the hero statues were being hand sculpted by Greg Aronowitz based off of early concept art and photos of the actors. We still had no idea what the actors would look like in their costumes. Thank goodness Translucent was invisible, because he wasn’t cast at this point, so every piece of art just became an empty jumpsuit. The pace was near insanity.

At the center of the room would be the boardroom table. Always a tricky piece of furniture as something custom and unique is needed. Is it round, is it rectangular? How is the power divided between the individuals at the table, are they equal or is there a power division? (And seven is an odd number.) In The Seven, it was clear that the character Homelander was the leader and let everyone know it. I thought about a V-shaped table with him at the apex with three other members on either side. It would give the room a strong presence and all of the actors would have the skyline as a background. The table would be almost superheroic in its design, a giant 17-foot glass and

steel structure that cantilevered from the base where Homelander sat. While designing it, we landed on a logo for Vought and The Seven which was a combination of V and 7 that took me to the next level of self-indulgence, and the whole table was turned into the Vought logo. It was massive and elegant at the same time.

For the backing, I called Phil Greenstreet at Rosco to help us with a day/night Softdrop. I have used these on my past six shows, and they have been a game changer in terms of speed and efficiency. One large 120x22 foot panorama of New York City was created, along with smaller 8x22 foot backing from a slightly different direction for one the of the executive offices. There were weeks, not months to get it done and I still can’t believe it happened in time. A Google Earth scout of Manhattan was used to pick a rough location for the building, and Phil and his team did the rest.

The Vought complex needed a few more sets. First was Stillwell’s office. She was the CEO of

A. THE MASSIVE VOUGHT CONFERENCE ROOM TABLE 18 FEET FROM TIP TO TIP MADE OF STEEL AND GLASS FORMING THE VOUGHT LOGO.

B. THE APOTHEOSIS OF SEVEN—THE DOMED CENTER OF THE VOUGHT TOWER FEATURED FRESCO OF OUR 7 SUPERHEROES.

C. THE APOTHEOSIS OF SEVEN, MURAL ART BY HENRY FONG.

Vought who would interface and ‘control’ the superheroes. She was part studio executive, part agent. Showrunner Eric Kripke was keen to make her seem as real as possible. No crazy architecture. He wanted it so grounded that we put a crib in the corner of the room, as her character was a single mom with an infant, and she might bring the child to work. The walls were filled with the graphics team’s creations. Posters of the heroes, framed movie posters and a stunning portrait of Homelander that looked like it came right from a Zack Snyder film. This office flowed into a grand “walk and talk” hallway lined with more marketing artwork. The Art Department was able to get the actors in costume for one 3-hour photo session where we were grabbing them in every possible position to use in ads, posters, newspaper clips and anything we could think of. I put in a call to Darick Robertson who created all of the artwork for the original graphic novels. He created ten custom pieces for the show based on the original book covers, but with the shows’ actors integrated into the artwork. These were framed and lined the

D. STILLWELL’S OFFICE. ILLUSTRATION BY HENRY FONG.

E . STILLWELL’S OFFICE. SET PHOTO.

F. SUPERHERO-BRANDING GRAPHICS BY DAVE BLASS.

G . VOUGHT HALLWAY WITH SUPERHERO GRAPHICS AND CUSTOM VACUFORM WALL TILE. SET PHOTO.

H. MAGAZINE COVER. GRAPHIC LAYOUT.

hallways as part of the Vought marketing collection. The “Real Life Adventures of The Seven.”

At the end of the long hallway was the one of the most unique sets I have had the chance to design. There have been many designs for superhero lairs, but I got to design the first superhero bathroom. The script called for two scenes in two bathrooms, but we were tight on space. I pitched the idea that these were powerful personalities and since there was only one female member of The Seven, she wouldn’t give the guys the satisfaction of being shy. A grand unisex bathroom was designed with jutting marble panels with LED accent lights. Set decorator Cheryl Dorsey found amazing pedestal sinks in the shape of a 7 that worked perfectly to set tone. The stalls were designed to mimic the massive door in the boardroom, and the stalls included an amazing

“Cape Clip” that would hook onto the cape and automatically pull it up so the person could sit and do their business. Sadly, they never got a chance to get used.

Oddly the hero of the show isn’t a superhero at all, but a mere mortal named Hughie Campbell. In the comics, he was drawn to look like Simon Pegg, but that was twelve years ago, and Simon was too old to play Hughie, but was perfect casting for Hughie’s dad. For the father and son pair, a Brooklyn apartment was designed that juxtaposed against the steel and glass of Vought Tower. It had a vintage 1970s retro feeling, like the family had wanted to upgrade but never gotten around to it. Old turned spindles divided the living room from the dining room and wood tones and faded wallpaper helped set the tableau of the home of an unlikely hero. ADG

A. SUPERHERO BATHROOM. SET PHOTO.

B. SUPERHERO BATHROOM. ILLUSTRATION BY HENRY FONG.

C. HUGHIE’S HOUSE. SET PHOTO.

D. PRODUCTION STILL OF HUGHIE’S APARTMENT WITH JACK QUAID AS HUGHIE.

E. SKETCHUP MODEL OF HUGHIE’S QUEENS APARTMENT BY SYLVAIN BOMBARDIER.

F. CONCEPT ART OF VOUGHT TOWER BY HENRY FONG.

Above: A high dynamic range photograph by Mr. Blass of the exterior of All Saints Church. The cemetery with the full-size church behind it was built just behind Q Studios in Albuquerque, NM. The road, cemetery and trees were brought in and made ready for fi lming in 28 days. Opposite: Construction drawings for the church were created in Revit ®, modeled on the comic book’s fi rst cover. Ten or twelve proposed designs were drawn based on different roof pitches, steeple heights, window placement and other details. Bottom: This small detail of the church exterior showcases the weathering and patina lead scenic painter Virginia Hopkins and her team brought to every set.

I often try to summarize the story of Preacher for people; it’s nearly impossible. It’s a series about a preacher and his girlfriend, on an epic adventure to find God, with his friend who’s a vampire. And then there are angels who regenerate when they’re killed. And there is the Saint of Killers, an invincible cowboy from 1881. Oh, a guy who has a fetish for meat. A kid named Arseface whose face looks like...well... The search for God is not metaphorical; the preacher wants to find God and kick his ass. What happens and how it happens is the stuff of legends. But first, I had to create the world of Preacher

The season was to center around the small rural town of Annville, Texas. The hero, Jesse Custer, has just returned to his hometown to take over his father’s old church.

Preaching to the Choir

by Dave Blass, Production Designer

This was my second comic book adaptation—after Constantine for NBC—and I had learned quite a bit about fan expectations and the backlash you can face for getting things wrong. There are recognizable images that people are so attached to that you just can’t mess with them. For Preacher , it’s the first edition cover art by Glenn Fabry. It’s Jesse hovering over his church which has a simple center steeple. I told the author Garth Ennis when I met him that I always felt that that image was basically a giant middle finger to the world, which I felt described much of the tone of the books. Garth, Glenn Fabry and artist Steve Dillon had also worked on Hellblazer which was adapted into Constantine , so I had spent quite a while pouring over their artwork and wanted to do it justice. The pilot had featured a visual effects church with an off-center steeple that just wasn’t as dramatic, but convincing executives to go back and pay to redo tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of set extensions just because I didn’t feel it served the stylistic integrity was probably a bad way to start a project. Nonetheless, I knew in my heart it was the right

© American Movie Classics

Top: The interior of All Saints Chapel, built on Stage 1 at Albuquerque Studios (aka Q Studios). Above: Vectorworks® construction drawings of the church. The Church was based on the Mission Chapel of Our Lady of Light in Lamy, New Mexico, that was shot in the pilot. A foyer and balcony staircase to the attic were added and the foyer was duplicated on the fullsize exterior set to allow seamless entrances.

decision, pushed the concept, and I was surprised when they relented. It wasn’t till six months later, when the billboard for the series appeared on Hollywood Boulevard, and the single image they chose to represent the series was a shot of the church giving its pronounced middle finger to the world, that I knew the fight was worth it.

Meanwhile, two miles away onstage, Art Director Mark Zuelzke, who I have worked with on a number of projects, and Assistant Art Director Kirsten Oglesby were tackling the interior of the church. A vestibule was designed into the exterior church that would allow the actors to walk up into the church, or play scenes looking out to the exterior. That vestibule was replicated in detail onstage as well so there was a bridge between sets. The interior of the church was a modified replica of the Mission Chapel of Our Lady of Light, built in 1926 in Lamy, about fifteen miles southeast of Santa Fe. The stained-glass windows were printed on both sides, the leading on one side and the textured glass on the backside. In an initial lighting test, cinematographer John Grillo was striving for shafts of refracted colored light through the windows, but the massive lights actually melted the plexiglass, so they were then rebuilt using laminated tempered glass.

I have spent many years building decrepit scenery; it’s harder than it looks. Finding the right balance in the

patina of water stains, cracked plaster and grime is what keeps me up at night. I worked with lead scenic painter Virginia Hopkins to create a style-board of age-related cracks and decay. We would walk around the set and black-marker spots on the new flats to add lath and plaster blowouts. Too much character and it looks like you’re building a haunted house, too little and the details get missed. In the thirty-two days before principal photography, there was quite an array of changes and augmentations. First, the church was to have a basement common area with a kitchen where AA meetings and such could take place. The vampire Cassidy also would live in the attic, getting high by smoking the insulation and trying to fix the air-conditioner. Then the producers wanted to add a residence, as Jesse’s bedroom had been briefly seen in the pilot. A three-level spiral staircase from the basement to the attic was devised and a three-tier set was designed, rendered, priced...and rejected as too expensive. We went back to the drawing board in the ninth hour with the clock ticking away.

I sold the producers on a single-story concept that would allow people to flow from the Sanctuary into a kitchen or a meeting room for religious consultation. Now from the back of the kitchen, you could see all the way to the front doors, giving extraordinary depth to the set. Show runner Sam Caitlin wanted the residence and common area to have a bit of a

Above, left: The production schedule was so tight that the first phase of the construction of the church began while the floor for the living quarters behind the chapel was laid out and final details were still being approved. Design and building proceeded in chunks. Right: The stained-glass windows were double-printed with thick 3D textured ink on the front for the leading and colored window details on the back. Below, left and right: The common room of the church was built onstage as a part of the main set. Halfway between a public and private space, this was the area where parishioners would congregate after church. The vintage linoleum floor was customprinted and then aged in place. The family living area was designed to allow directors to move from the very front of the church all the way through the living quarters in one shot. The decor gives a frozen-intime look to Jesse Custer’s childhood in the early 1990s.

vintage feeling. As a story point, the place had been boarded up in the 1990s and not much had been updated, even before that. Old rotary phones and tube televisions became a signature of our decor style. Decorator Edward McLoughlin and his team worked the balance between giving the set a retro feeling while not being specifically period. It was a delicate balance.

With the exterior church going up on the prairie and the interior now designed and underway, I focused on the next main set, the Sundowner Motel. I was less concerned about doing a rundown motel set, having done dozens of them on five seasons of Justified . Photographer Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places book is a treasure trove of research of the ghosts of Route 66. His images were combined with tear sheets from the Preacher graphic novel to create a wall of inspiration to pitch our concept. This set would have some unique design challenges as it would host the massive fight scene between angels and demons later on in the season. Every wall would need to be destroyed and reset, or augmented for specific stunt needs. I had no idea what the specific needs would be other than an email from the writer saying, “It’s going to be the most epic tiny room fight scene ever.” We chose classic 1970s wood paneling that could be replaced in planks for the fight. The

Main image: Forty-five minutes of running time of 1881 period Western sets were shot in just four days on location at Bonanza Cr eek Ranch, NM. Opposite page: The entire town was dressed, signage added and streets brought to life in under a week. Playing to their str engths, the Art Department artists worked with the series’ writers to script the types of sets that could be done. Signage was designed to mimic the artwork used in the graphic novel, and much of this highly detailed set was only seen briefly as the cowboy rode into town. This page, top to bottom: The hanging tree was deceptively complicated. The perfect tree had to be found to stand alone in the middle of a desola te landscape, something with a unique silhouette. The tree had to be defoliated twice for shooting over the season to give it the proper star k appearance. The painting of the Birth of Venus was added above the bar as a nod to TOMBSTONE and HARD BOUNTY, both Westerns that Dave Blass and construction coordinator Bill Holmquist had worked on, and that shared a mural of that particular piece. Bare skulls and taxide rmy were added to give a sense of macabre to the location where death would take over.

location scouts were still looking for an exterior for the motel when the Art Department came up with the concept of adding concrete breeze block walls outside the doors and windows that would serve a double purpose. This would provide an interesting element to see outside when someone would come to the door, and then this detail could be added to the location, using the structure as a bridge. There was a scene with two inept angels in the motel room that I had read in an outline that I thought would be fun to pitch to take place in the bathroom, with one on the toilet while the other was in the tub. The writers loved it so much that, not only did it make it into the episode, but also became one of the key promotion images for the show.

From the executive producer’s second-floor office at Q Studios, you could see the church going up two miles away. It was like the barn-raising scene in Witness with dozens of carpenters raising trusses and nailing shingles. It was an impressive sight. I was extremely proud of what we had accomplished in such a short period of time. It was standing in that room, looking at the setting sun on the church exterior being built, that they first mentioned the name Ratwater. Having read the comics, I knew that the main villain of the show, the Saint of Killers, was a cowboy in the Old West. His family falls ill and he heads to the town of Ratwater to get medicine. He falls prey to some evil townsfolk and by the time he gets back to his family, they’re all dead. He returns to Ratwater and goes on a killing spree of epic proportions that culminates with him being sent to hell, where he kills the devil as well. I had thought that the writers would wait for the second season before introducing the Saint of Killers character, as the scope was staggering. It was decided that this storyline would play interstitially throughout the first season, but the kicker was that we would have to film forty-five minutes of 1881 period Western sets in the middle of shooting the rest of the series.

I had several aces in the hole, so I wasn’t worried. Set decorator Edward McLoughlin had just wrapped the Western Jane Got a Gun and construction coordinator Bill Holmquist had done one of my favorite Westerns, Tombstone , so I very quickly went from nervous to excited. I set out scouting in the snow with location manager Dennis

Muscari looking for just the right Western vista. New Mexico is one of the go-to destinations for Western films. After a week of looking at all of the options, we settled on Bonanza Creek Ranch. The juxtaposition of the saloon to a building that could be turned into the apothecary, and a schoolhouse worked best, and the farmhouse was a near match for the one in the comics. The ranch also had another key element: the hanging tree, which was used as a bridge from the town of Ratwater to the present-day Annville, built on the same location. The tree needed to look not just dead, but ominous. The dedicated greens team that had just spent weeks building a row of trees leading up to the church, now had the task of defoliating and pruning the hanging tree from a beautiful oak to a visage of death incarnate.

For the town of Ratwater, I wanted to play to our strengths. Edward McLoughlin, Mark Zuelzke and I sat down and went over the list of what could reasonably be in the town and, more importantly, what we could do best. I often use the term “paint with a bigger brush” to highlight areas that would play in the background or were less emphasized; providing big impact with fewer details. The scene in the comic took place in the snow at Christmas. We didn’t want to create snow, but I did want to have a nod to the comics, so sad Christmas decorations and a stack of Christmas trees were added to one of the buildings that was turned into a lumberyard. Keeping with the bigbrush idea, I went with an undertaker’s shop with caskets on display, a big vintage Chinese laundry with boiling pots, the Hex Livery in the comics which was a nod to Jonah Hex . I added that as an Easter egg for the fans, and peppered other shops and stores that I knew could be outfitted as well.

After ten episodes, the season came to a close and, like the town of Ratwater, the new town of Annville was wiped from the earth by a horrific disaster. There was a running theme throughout the season that the towns were modern-day versions of Sodom and Gomorrah, one destroyed by a tornado and the other by a methane explosion. The season did turn out to be insanity beyond anything I could have imagined, and then the city of Annville was wiped out in an atomic bomb-style explosion. I hope the bar was raised on the mixture of lunacy and highly detailed craftsmanship that can be created on a one-hour drama. If not, Season Two premieres on June 25 and we get to do it all over again. ADG

Opposite page, top to bottom: The interior/exterior of a farmhouse shot on location at Bonanza Creek Ranch, NM. An existing str ucture was augmented to have more of a log cabin feeling as opposed to the stuccoed adobe that was common in the Southwest. The set was de signed to feel isolated and match what had been established in the comics. Construction drawings of the farmhouse were created in Revit. The interior of the cabin was shot in one location and the exterior in another, so horizontal logs were added to the façade to tie the locat ions together, along with a door at the center of the structure and plant-on windows. Due to the tight production schedule, two units shot simultane ously and the interior of the farmhouse needed to be built closer to the town so the actor playing Cowboy could run back-and-forth between se tups to shoot scenes with the other unit. This page, top to bottom: A concept rendering of the interior of the Sundowner Motel stage set, cre ated by Mr. Blass in Thea working over a SketchUp® model. The room is the scene of an epic fight between Jesse and both replicating angels and a demon, causing mass destruction. Wood paneling and carpet tiles were designed into the decor to allow for bloody resets. Perforated breeze blo cks were added to the location to allow a good match with the stage set. This photograph, shot onstage, shows how the blocks bridge between th e stage set and the exterior location.

Mark

Kirsten

Tyler Standen, Brandon Arrington, Graphic Designers

Taura C.C. Rivera, Set Designer

Paulo DeFreitas, Jr., Amy Lynn Umezu, Storyboard Artists

Edward McLoughlin, SDSA, Set Decorator

Dave Blass, Production Designer

Zuelzke, Art Director

Oglesby, Gregory G. Sandoval, Derek Jensen, Assistant Art Directors

tThe Anatomy of an Anti-Hero

by David Blass, Production Designer

“When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other, we feel not safe, but better. ‘It’s all right’ we whisper, ’I’m here, I love you.’ And we lie: ‘I’ll never leave you.’ For just a moment or two, the darkness doesn’t seem so bad.”

Previous pages: High dynamic range (HDR) photograph of the finished set for the main room of Constantine’s Mill House. Above: A concept sketch of the Mill House interior, initially drawn in SketchUp ® and then enhanced with Photoshop ®, by Simon Goinard. Opposite page, center, top to bottom: Three more HDR photographs of the main room of the Mill House showing the map table in the central bay, the seating area by the fireplace, and his library filled with antique books.

That somber quotation from Hellblazer author Neil Gaiman was the genesis of the tone for my shadowy adaptation of his graphic novels for NBC’s Constantine John Constantine is an anti-hero, just as likely to sacrifice his friends to demons as to try to save them. He is a con artist who battles the dark arts, not out of the goodness of his heart, but through a desire to redeem his soul. As with any comic book adaptation, there is always that fine line, remaining true to the source material, while not being handcuffed by it. Do you put Superman in red underwear or not? Is Constantine tromping around in a cobalt blue suit? How far do you go? The Hellbazer books are set in London, so the fact that the series would be filmed in Atlanta made for the first adjustment. The upside to Atlanta is that the city is teeming with abandoned, creepy locations that provide the perfect backdrop for visceral demon battles.

THE MILL HOUSE

Constantine’s home base is the Mill House, which was left to him by a mage named Jasper Winters, a friend who collected occult artifacts and practiced scrying, seeing visions in reflective or translucent substances such as water, fire or a crystal ball. Writer/producer Daniel Cerone described Mill House as a cross between the Winchester Mystery House and Hogwarts. It’s a place steeped in deadly secrets where Constantine can discover

enchanted relics that will help him in his battle with the netherworld. Mill House was a redesign of a location that Designer Aaron Osborne had used for the pilot. The separate exterior was an old gristmill with a giant water wheel that tied into the interior constructed set with a massive set of gears, connecting the upper and lower floors. I added a worktable made from an immense old millstone to complete the theme. Construction coordinator Mike Wheeler found a giant stash of reclaimed barn wood that gave the structure a rustic patina throughout the expansive two-story set. As with any permanent set, the Mill House needed not just to work for the few episodes that were scripted, but to provide a maze of possibilities for adventures not yet written. It was a perfect world-building opportunity. The kitchen pantry has a trapdoor in the floor that could lead to a hidden room. A secret dumbwaiter, just big enough for someone to climb into when needed, connects the upper and lower levels. A push on a particular brick causes the wall to slide open, revealing a murky passage, while other bricked-in alcoves became tombs for demons—or friends—who need to be kept at bay. I learned early in my career that it’s always good to have a few extra doors on a big permanent set. It always happens: sometime in season three someone will ask, “Where’s the bathroom?” and there you go.

© NBC

Above: Research photographs of period gristmill stones. A similar stone serves as Constantine’s map table, and helps identify his home as a Mill House.

Below: A concept sketch of the map table drawn by David Blass in SketchUp and Photoshop.

Above: A SketchUp and Photoshop rendering by Tomo Imai of the mezzanine level of Constantine’s Mill House, with its gears and belt pullies, along with an HDR photograph of the finished set. The Mill House, like all the constructed sets, was built in a warehouse near Atlanta. Mr. Blass writes: “We had to create a studio, hang a grid, do everything including laying a floor and making the building soundproof.”

Set decorator Natalie Pope and her talented team of buyers and set dressers brought real character to the set. They spent weeks hunting down details for every nook and cranny, scouring thrift shops and attics to find just the right items. The massive bookcase featured layer upon layer of custom leather-bound books, mystic items and occult relics, each chosen specifically with the knowledge that extreme close-ups would be the norm for these sets. Every corner of the Mill told its own story and held its own secrets, from the map room and the farmhouse kitchen, to John’s loft bedroom.

EASTER EGGS

Constantine was my first experience with the wonderful world of Easter eggs. The days of “Oh, no one will ever see that” are long gone, replaced by the almighty hash-tagging bloggers who freeze-frame the HD 2K image and pick up on any and all details you miss...or that you surreptitiously add. Constantine always tried to showcase a few bits from the Hellblazer or DC Comics world in each episode. The sight of the Medusa Mask,

the TwinBlade or a magazine that was also featured in The Flash television series would spark delight amongst viewers who scoured each scene trying to be the first to find a hidden clue. Often, we would look through the Hellblazer books for inspiration. Translating a specific frame or a theme from page to screen was a great way to pay homage to the origin story. The Zed character was an artist, who sketched and painted her visions of Constantine. It made sense to incorporate artwork created over the run of the comics, so actor Matt Ryan’s face was integrated into classic pieces of Hellblazer artwork. Live tweeting became just another part of the job once the episodes were airing. The transmedia world is upon us, and it’s not going away.

A ROAD SHOW

Once the Mill House was completed, I thought I would have time to catch a breath, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Constantine was envisioned as a road show, which meant that other than the Mill House, the character wouldn’t be returning to any of the same locations. The first season never returned to the same set twice. This required the Art Department to think three episodes down the line to maximize budget, stage space and time. What is the best way to turn a giant Halloween maze into a coal mine in five days? Or find a location that would work for the current episode, but would be even more perfect for an episode a month away...and come up with a tactful way of telling the director that he can’t have that location because another director will need it more a month from now.

With every script came new challenges. One week found us creating Sudanese villages, the next a

New Orleans hotel or an abandoned Mexican convent. In Los Angeles, this variety would have been quite a bit more manageable, but the lack of major prop houses and support services in Atlanta became a huge issue. On a pilot or feature, there is more time to ship materials and dressing in from Los Angeles, but on an eight-day shooting schedule, the cost of getting vacuform skins, wallpaper or key medical props always became a massive undertaking. Art Director Hugo Santiago was joined by local Atlanta Art Director Drew Monahan as the workload built. They alternated episodes so that one person could oversee both prep and shoot of each episode; that continuity became a key to our success.

Swing sets were more extensive than on most series. Every week Constantine confronted a new demon, with its own backstory and unique environment. The midseason finale required an elaborate maze of sewer system tunnels under Mexico City. Constantine and his cohorts had to chase through the tunnels to rescue kidnapped babies from the demon Lamashtu. In designing any tight space, the goal is always to make it feel confined, but also make it production-friendly. This particular set spanned two episodes and each director had a very specific vision of how it should be shot. Add 2600 gallons of water, pyrotechnics, and real infants and the challenges increased exponentially. The maze was first designed in SketchUp ® so that details and sequences could be previsualized with everyone involved. The tunnel walls were modular so that we could create different options. The base of the structure was fabricated with faux-concrete barriers that would contain the water while allowing the wall behind to be removed. The ceiling was supported separately so a long section of the tunnel wall could be removed for a tracking shot. To keep the foreboding atmosphere, shafts of lights were motivated through what would have been manhole access ports. Just add some smoke and it was the perfect place to confront a demon.

Top and center: The sewers under Mexico were built as a tank set in the warehouse with water, fog and steam. Above: The exterio r entrance of a coal mine was built in Bellwood, a century-old granite quarry about a mile from downtown Atlanta, and the (inset) interior on the same warehouse stage.

Above, clockwise from top left: A 3D concept design for the Wheel of Nyorlath prop, drawn by Adil Muschelewicz and Joshua Cole at Hex Mortis, the Atlanta fabrication shop that built many of the specialty props. Pieces of the Black Diamond Shard Box in progress, generated on a 3D printer at Hex Mortis. Most of the props, like these copies of the newly-finished Black Diamond Shard Box were made in multiples, because the 3D printing process makes it so easy. The fabrication shop printed most of the props on a MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop printer.

HOMEMADE PROPS

Each episode featured hero props that needed to be designed and prototyped as well. There were prominent pieces from the DC Comics universe and occult artifacts, each a mini work of art that had to be turned around in a very short time. Prop master Dort Clarke coordinated with fabricators to make sure that each item did what he needed it to do, and the Art Department worked with them on design. It was my first introduction to 3D printing and rapid prototyping on an episodic basis. A local Atlanta 3D fabrication company called Hex Mortis specializes in creating highly detailed replicas of props and costumes from other films. It was wonderful how quickly they were able to build intricate pieces from sketches or a Photoshop comp. The initial sketch can be converted into an alpha, which is a two-dimensional image that distorts voxel-based geometry (voxels are essentially 3D pixels); the white areas move out, black stays put and you suddenly have a 3D object that you can begin to work with. Using software on tablets to digitally sculpt prototypes makes the design/modification/ approval stage much shorter. I would be driving around in a scout van and get videos showing 360-degree views of the prop and its details that I could share with the director, make notes and a few hours later, a final concept would be ready for the 3D printer. How often do we see a final prop and think, “Hmm, that would be

great if it were just a bit smaller...or longer.” Here we had the ability to make those changes in a matter of minutes, with the click of a mouse. A broad combination of programs was used, letting artists model in whatever made them comfortable. They could hand-draw the alphas, or create them digitally in Photoshop, and then apply that to the mesh in ZBrush ® as a sculpting guide. If it were something super-accurate, they would use Maya ® , Cinema 4D, Blender—again, whatever each artist felt worked best. It’s like traditional illustration: sometimes you use markers, other times you go for pencil or gouache. Once the .obj or .stl files were ready, they were turned into “virtual clay” in ZBrush to get a human feel to sculpt. The machines used for fast overnight pieces were the ABS-based MakerBot Replicator. The parts for John Constantine’s TwinBlade were printed at 0.1mm resolution for the detailed parts and 0.2mm for the larger forms, then washed with acetone, and detailed with files and careful sanding. Printing a 3D prop overnight gets you something quick but requires a few hours of perfecting and assembling. Out of the printer, it looks like a resin casting pulled from a mold. The technology is only as good as the artist. It is evolving quickly, though, with great potential for our industry. The ability to print with metal, rubber or clear resin on a desktop in the Art Department will be here in the near future, and the possibilities are endless. ADG

David Blass, Production Designer

Hugo Santiago, Drew Monahan, Art Directors

James Addink, Danny Brown, Assistant Art Directors

Carrie Gale, Chris Hunter, Graphic Designers

Simon Goinard, Tomo Imai, Illustrators

Jeff Ginn, Set Designer

Adil Muschelewicz, Joshua Cole, Travis Wood, Troy Harding, 3D printed props

Natalie Pope, Set Decorator

Top, far left: A concept design of Constantine’s TwinBlade prop. Near left: A screen capture of the fully-rendered TwinBlade prop. The remaining three images to the left show 3D-printed parts of the TwinBlade, ready to be assembled into a finished knife. Above: Pieces of the Phurba Dagger, ready for assembly, placed on a laptop for scale; along with two copies of the finished prop.

HurtsBeauty

by Dave Blass, Production Designer

I have scouted my share of prisons over the years. I have even walked into cells, and shut the door, trying to get a sense of the claustrophobic confinement. What does it feel like, emotionally, physically and spiritually? How does the physical space change a person, and what would the transition back into a world of light and color feel like? These questions are at the heart of Rectify , creator Ray McKinnon’s passion project, a sixepisode series for the Sundance Channel. Each chapter showcases a single day in the life of Daniel Holden, a man who has spent the last nineteen years inside a nine-by-twelve cell on Georgia’s death row, accused of murdering his girlfriend, but who now has to put his life back together after DNA evidence calls his conviction into question.

The scripts took me to some of the deepest depths I have plumbed. They read like a Terrence Malick feature, done at an episodic pace. Five of the six scripts were ready very early on, so I was able to get a big jump on creating a fully immersive world for the characters. So often in television you don’t know what’s coming around the next bend for the thirteen or twenty-two episodes, but this was basically a six-part miniseries and the finished scripts were a great help.

To call Ray intense is an understatement. He has been focused on this project for over a decade, and he has gotten so deep into the head of the characters that I often thought I was talking to Daniel in our meetings. When I asked if Daniel did it…the answer was “Well, do you think he did it?”

The first concept of mine that went out the door was trying to make the prison look interesting and

unique. The action spends quite a bit of time in these cells, and I felt it was important that they were visually stimulating. Ray thought the exact opposite. He wanted to make Daniel’s experience on death row as painfully boring as possible; he wanted to remove all visual stimulation as part of the punishment. I wasn’t sure the audience should share this punishment as well, but I drank the KoolAid. This one discussion changed the entire look of the show.

Together, we wanted to look at the series as a whole, as a journey through visual stimulation where color, space and audio would be part of Daniel’s migration back into society. The prison world would be devoid of color and architectural detail. Right angles and frames within frames were a visual key. In the opening shot of the series, Daniel is framed in a cell door observation window, framed by a hallway where a scene is playing out, framed by another doorway. The idea was to create a certain prison-like feeling within the shots themselves and maintain this throughout

Opposite page: t he final cell door window was a detail that was tweaked for weeks as it established the frame-within-a-frame storytelling device and would become a focal point of the show. Below: An early s ketch u p ® rendering, lighted in IDX r enditioner by Dave Blass, identifies the area where the set extension would be added. t he straight geometric quality of the death row design allowed for simple perspective replication which was visually interesting and costeffective. Bottom: t he set extension’s near-infinite line of cells, showing that Daniel’s story is just one of hundreds playing out each day. t his is an early concept sketch done as a team effort by the entire Art Department.

“It’s the beauty, not the ugly that hurt the most.”

Above: A sketchup study by Dave Blass showing the cell-wall camera pass through technique that would become a major storytelling aspect throughout the show. right: the design of the cells allowed directors to pan through walls on all axes, allowing for a variety of angles that would keep the viewer engaged, while maintaining the visual tedium. Opposite page, top to bottom: the completed death row set in shades of grey, lacking detail, and emphasizing the monotony of Daniel’s existence, built on stage in Griffin, GA. Prisoners communicate with each other through wall-mounted vents; this device kept the modern look of the prison while allowing for dialogue between the inmates. Daniel’s 9’ x 12’ home for 20 years, lacking any color or emotion, forces him into his own mind for stimulation.

the series, to make the audience voyeurs as well as prisoners in the drama, evoking a visual confinement that opens slowly as Daniel moves out into the world.

The walls became neutral grays with no accent colors, always at right angles to each other, creating visual planes. Sliding through walls from cell to cell became a storytelling technique that played throughout the series. Each piece needed to

wield easily to facilitate a variety of camera angles: front, side, top and back. Everything needed to move and move quickly—the grips hated me.

In the script, Daniel talks with the prisoners on either side of his cell. We initially talked about bars on the cells to facilitate this dialogue, but that was so 1930s’ Green Mile . I felt strongly that if we were going to tell a contemporary prison story about the modern-day death row, we had to move

Photographs © Sundance Channel

the prison set vernacular into the modern era. That meant doors and not bars, electronics not keys, and a modern approach to the prison set. Touring several prisons to get a sense of the modern penal system, I found that the modular concrete construction of the cells allowed for a common air duct that could allow the inmates to talk to each other. In one prison, I learned that inmates would plunge the water out of their toilets and then use the bowls and drain pipes as conduits to speak to the inmates around them. The “chrome throne phone” as it was dubbed, while interesting, was deemed visually unattractive, so we went with the ducting. The show would deal with the minutia and I knew ECU shots would come out of nowhere, so all the details had to be spot on. Art Director Drew Monahan worked with prison suppliers to make sure all the doors, hardware, screws and scores of other details were accurate.

Daniel’s induction back into society comes very slowly. In the second episode, he has moved back into his old house. Unsure about his surroundings, it takes almost an episode for him to adjust enough to leave his room. The idea was to move him from one cage into another, so his room was designed to echo the architecture of the cell. The bed and door were positioned in the same place and the room was scaled up just a bit to 12’ x 15’. The color palette was kept the same as the cell, and the furnishing was sparse.

For the rest of the house, set decorator Amy McGary and her crew created a world frozen in 1992. We thought that Daniel’s mother would have stopped decorating or updating or caring about anything, as she was in limbo, waiting for Daniel to either be freed or put to death. How can you focus on changing the wallpaper when your son is on death row? Since Daniel wasn’t my son, and I was just the designer, I focused on the wallpaper, trying to continue the prison theme whenever possible. Wide spaced, vertical stripes in the house and hotels gave each set a bit of a cell bar feeling. To keep the frame-within-a-frame concept going, I chose six light windows to give more of a cage feel to the house. I gave the episodic directors the options of playing a scene inside looking out, or outside looking in, all with the idea of “who is the prisoner” in a particular scene. In these scripts, every character is in his or her own personal version of purgatory.

The other fun set that Amy and her crew put together was the attic of the house. Piles of clothes and furniture, leftover Christmas decorations, and all of Daniel’s personal memories clutter up the darkness. A couple of dormer windows and a peaked roof were high enough that Aden Young, the actor playing Daniel, could move about freely and improvise.

The town sheriff and Daniel’s step family are not immune to imprisonment either. The sheriff faces the knowledge that he may have helped wrongly convict a young boy and sentence him to death. The step family has taken over the life and business that Daniel never had. To bring them both into the prison world, locations were chosen that had similar architecture to the death

row complex. Both the family’s tire store and the sheriff’s office had matching low-profile block walls and monochromatic color palettes, and vertical lines in each frame accented the prison feeling.

Water and the color blue became the symbols of hope, forgiveness and redemption. If you are going to use color this way, I think it’s important to keep it simple. Blue was featured at the tire store that now supports the family. It is seen as the true killers are dealing with their regrets. It also becomes the school color where Daniel’s new half-brother (the reincarnated version of Daniel in many ways) deals with his issues. And I wanted it as the color of the big box store that shocks Daniel’s senses as he comes out into the world. Yes, I did have to fight for Walmart, as opposed to Target (which was in the mix for letting us close down a huge corporate store on a cableseries budget. Explaining my color theory was not an easy thing, but location manager Jared Kurt worked his magic and got an entire store with blue accents for the day. I ramped up the color saturation slowly as the series progressed. Monochrome for the prison changed to muted colors in the home and culminated in the visit to Walmart with its kaleidoscope of color. The sets that featured the antagonists were kept in a warmer palette. The mother of Daniel’s ex-girlfriend lived in an organized hoarder’s paradise, with rows and rows of sets of collectibles, all kept in just the right place, never a stray ceramic clown left askew. Daniel’s step brother inhabited a chain bar, again in warm woods and golden hues, and a modern updated bedroom that stands in contrast to the frozen-in-time world of his family.

The ultimate challenge was “the statue.” In the fifth episode, Daniel is deprived of sleep because he hasn’t really adjusted to his new surroundings. He is led on an episode-long hallucinogenic journey by a vision, a shaman, a madman…seriously, I have no idea what. When I asked, “Is this real?” I never got a straight answer. Even Daniel asks at the end of the episode, “Are you real?” and he doesn’t’ get an answer, either. Now I was really turning into Daniel. All I knew is that his fugue state belended reality and emotions. He is brought blindfolded through a field in the middle of nowhere to a statue: it’s a girl top: Frames within a frame. Even after Daniel is released, the theme continued, confining one group inside a prison-like frame. t he muted tones of the dining room reflect the early phase of his journey back into life. Center: trapped in time, a 1990s’ kitchen features striped wallpaper to echo the prison theme. t he open floorplan allows for more frames-withinframes as action plays out in both the foreground and background. Left: t he attic, a time machine with layers of Daniel’s past created by set decorator Amy McGary and her crew, and built on stage in Griffin, GA.

holding the head of a half-girl, half-goat that is both his past girlfriend and his present soul mate, who may actually be a resurrection of his dear departed love. Deep stuff. The only description in the dialogue to help me was “Somebody made that up…it’s the beauty that hurts you most son, not the ugly.”

I knew I was in trouble as my conversations with Ray were more like a dream than a direction. The entire Art Department did sketches, concepts, tear sheets...and nothing was right. I was trying to recreate a dream that had been viewed through a kaleidoscope and nothing would ever quite match it. I searched online for days to find sculptors who might capture the ethereal qualities of Ray’s vision. Finally, I stumbled upon a photo of a piece by a local Georgia sculptor, Debra Fritts, and I knew I had found my muse. Her pieces had a sadness, a longing, a hope that would not be answered, and they spoke in a language that none of our sketches could communicate. I brought her into the mix and pitched her the idea, told her the back-story of Daniel and his journey, and set her to work. I told Ray that the piece would be delivered and would be what he wanted. No more sketches or approvals. It was done. I had passed his vision off to an artist who got it and we, as mere idea guys, needed to move on. He was skeptical, but gave me the space to create, and that is a true sign of a visionary. He stepped back and let me hold the map to his labyrinth for a bit. While Debra worked, I focused on finding a location for the statue. It had to be something spiritual and visually dynamic. I looked for an empty field with a single tree, a lake, a wheat field, but nothing clicked. Why here? Why was this statue here? It was only two-feet tall and it had to look like it was put there rather than left there. It was a minute distinction, but very important to convey.

Actor availability changed the schedule and now the statue, the location, and this special moment was coming a week early. Debra was in Santa Fe, and would have to transport the recently fired ceramic piece overnight. I was told that there was a 50% chance that the altitude would cause the trapped air in the clay to explode…nothing to worry about though, it’s all good. Jared Kurt finally called to say that he had found the perfect location. I saw it as the sun was setting, and damn if he wasn’t right. An abandoned pecan tree farm with rows and rows of symmetrically planted, wiry trees created the architecture of a nature-covered cellblock. I finally understood Ray’s message. The sculpture was planted into a broken stump so that

it looked like it was growing out of the earth at the crossroads of these trees. Was it a sculpture or a dream? At this point I wasn’t sure myself, but it shot the next day, and finally it was ready.

There are very few moments you will remember throughout a career. This was one of mine. Ray walked through the pecan grove to the crossroads of this amazing landscape. He gazed at the sculpture for a long time without saying a word, looking at it from every angle, examining every detail, and then he just walked away. I caught up to him and asked him what he thought. He said it disturbed him, and that’s all he would say. “It was the beauty, not the ugly that hurt the most.” We had taken the most obscure emotional thought of a wildly creative artist, and transformed the vision into reality. To me, that is the ultimate expression of what we do as artists and designers. ADG

Below and inset: t he Goat Girl grows out of a rotten stump in a beautiful pecan orchard in Griffin, GA, as if it has always been there, a tortured vision of beauty created by local sculptor Debra Fritts.

PERSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE

Just How GREEN VALLEY? Is Your

by Dave Blass, Production Designer

After another day-long scout, driving the winding roads north of Santa Clarita, California, I watch as we hit an invisible barrier and all at once the twelve other people in the van jump as if being attacked by ants—we have crossed back into the technological world, and every cell phone in the vehicle is exploding with vibrating information: twenty text messages, thirty emails, and a bevy of voicemails. “They changed the scene; it’s only two pages now, not ten?” “What do you mean first unit’s not moving to the second set?” “Whoa... the interior coal mine set, is now an EXTERIOR coal mine set?” Like many, I wonder how we ever did our jobs without our electronic tethers, but when your backlot is Green Valley, you don’t have to wonder any more. There is no cell reception, no texts, and no emails beamed right to your hip. Smartphones get pretty dumb out there in what we have come to call Harlan.

The FX series Justified , based on the books by Elmore Leonard, is a modern-day Western with a hillbilly twist. During the first season of the show, the storyline was more of a procedural with a few ongoing threads. There was a bad-guy-ofthe-week, and the hero, Raylan Givens, usually shot him at the end of the episode. The shooting would always be justified, of course. It was pretty obvious to everyone though, when Raylan heads down to Harlan, the show really catches stride. In the stories, Givens grew up in the Appalachian mountain area, made famous in the 1976 documentary Harlan County, USA . He leaves as a young man and comes back as The Law. His father and all of his former friends are now the outlaws, and he has become the

official U.S. Marshals Service Hillbilly whisperer. The unique Appalachian flavor of dialogue, texture and characters is what makes Justified a unique show, and provides the biggest design challenges.

When gearing up to start the second season, I talked with executive producer Graham Yost about what he felt the new season would bring. “A lot more Harlan,” was the direction. There would be a new clan called the Bennetts and they would become a major adversary for Raylan. So, having never been there, I thought it was time for a little hillbilly vacation, and headed down to Harlan.

The core of my design process has always been research. To me there is nothing better than immersing myself in reality, and using that as a guide to create the fantasy. It’s the comfort of being at a table full of people arguing in full certainty “The prison wouldn’t be like that in a small town like Harlan,” and slapping down a binder full of photos and notes from talking to the guards for hours “This IS how it is…so let’s start from here and create our version of this world.” The truth is in the details. The real Harlan has layers and layers of truth, piled under a ton of junk. In what are known as the “hollers,” people live a simple life, some in the same 10’ x 20’ homes as their parents’ parents, descendants of people who worked a lifetime for the coal companies, and were paid only in coal scrip, redeemable only at the company stores, which kept them from leaving. We take for granted that the trash truck comes every week. In the hills, that is a luxury that either doesn’t exist, or costs more than they can afford. They don’t pity themselves, they

Opposite page, top: A photograph overlooking the small town of Green Valley, CA, which closely resembles the title sequence for JUSTIFIED, shot in the real Harlan, KY. Opposite page, bottom: The final interior set of Ellstin’s Joint BBQ Restaurant, shot as an HDR image and showcasing the work of decorator Shauna Aronson and her set decorating department who spent countless hours adding layer upon layer of history to the set. This page, inset: A photo taken in Jones Creek Holler in Harlan County during a research scout, showing the years of collecting, recycling and repurposing that go into creating the texture of an authentic holler house.

Above: A SketchUp study by Blass, for use in the Art Department, of the Bennett General Store. He started with a panorama photograph in Green Valley that had an old garage once used as a parts store. The front of the building was raised to add scale and to hide a terra-cotta-tiled building on the hill behind, He used the panorama as a virtual translight to design the store against, then exported the image using IDX Renditioner before importing it into Photoshop to add textures and detail. A final pass using Photoshop Action Presets gives the image a slightly painted feel.

make do, they adapt and reuse, and pile their lawns with what they can’t get rid of. Recycling, not to save the planet, but to get by. Coffee cans become containers for flour, tube televisions become stands for new flat screens, old bathtubs become planters to keep gophers from digging under and eating the vegetables, and rusted cars and trampolines are the lawn ornaments of choice. Everything is cobbled together to create a unique slice of Americana that I just knew I had to bring to the show. I also knew the set decorators were going to hate me for it.

Back in Los Angeles, I teamed up with producer Don Kurt, showed him what I had come up with, and together we went out to try to find Harlan, Kentucky, in Los Angeles. The first day was a big reality check. After you have shot in town for twenty years or so, you know most of the standard country spots. You check out all the studio ranches, head out to Ventura Farms, Tujunga and everywhere in between. We even checked out Malibu, which—as we were based at Santa Clarita Studios—would be a huge challenge, but nothing quite worked. We needed an area with clustered homes, that didn’t look like SoCal tract houses, no Spanish-tiled roofs or palm trees, some areas of rural commerce,

and most of all...green. We were just coming out of a toasty Southern California summer and the color of every landscape we saw was shades of brown and gold. To find Harlan we were going to have to move beyond the normal areas. Don mentioned that he had heard of a place with the optimistic name Green Valley, so we headed into the mountains north of Santa Clarita to see just how green the valley was.

We hit the jackpot. About twenty-two miles into the hills, we found Harlan. Green Valley was exactly what was needed, a small town of houses teeming with the same textures I had found in Kentucky, a valley kept green by the rivers surrounding the Bouquet Reservoir, filled with a few small businesses, unpaved roads and streams that mimicked the hollers. It was on this first trip to Green Valley that I discovered the invisible technology barrier. Coming out of the mountains my phone nearly blew up with an influx of information. The first script and outlines had arrived, and the entire world was abuzz with two words: coal mine. At the end of the first episode, one of the recurring antagonists, Boyd Crowder, is in a coal mine, setting off an explosion. Justified was now in the coal business.

But first thing’s first: I needed to create the Bennett General Store in Green Valley. The country store was to be the base of operation for the Bennett clan, who were now running the crime business in Harlan County. Both an actual business, and a front for their marijuana and other dealings, it became the centerpiece of the Green Valley project. In choosing the interior/exterior location, I wanted something that made the thirty-fiveminute drive up to Green Valley worth it, and now that I learned mountaintop removal mining was to be a center story point for the show, I wanted the green mountains to be an ever-present character. The location I chose had a 180° view of the surrounding peaks, and overlooked the main road into town. I drew inspiration from some of the old family-owned stores that I had seen in the south: tin roof awnings, clapboard siding and hand-painted signs that had been made decades before. I designed the large awning to work both as a visual detail, and to assist with lighting. The production would end up shooting day-for-night interiors in the store, so we were able to tent the awning and still have some room for lighting for entrances and exits.

I had been given a heads-up by the writers about the General Store, but the coal mining took me by surprise. Less than three weeks out from shooting and I had no idea what it was or should be, could be, might be. With one script and an outline for Episode 2 in hand, I dove deep into the world of coal mining. Research...research...research... coffee...research...Google...Flickr...YouTube... call the guy I met in Harlan who knows a guy, whose cousin works at the mine there...more coffee. Coming out from the rubble, I designed a model for a mine that would be used in digging a three-foot seam of coal, which would work with our story. The vision of the vast gold mine shafts with carts running thought that I had seen in films was the wrong direction for a modern-day mining operation of this scale. Modern coal miners work in mile-long low shafts, some only four or five feet high, the ceilings gouged in long groves by huge machines called continuous miners.

When designing a set I always start in SketchUp ® , using it as a virtual white model, but with this set,

Top: A photo of the finished Bennett General Store set. Aged wood siding combined with vintage hand-painted signs and other authentic details from the region captures the feel of small family-owned general stores in the real Harlan. The image was taken as a bracketed group of photographs combined in the HDR program Photomatix, Above: The side of the building featured a huge American flag, weathered and worn. Blass writes, “The snow was provided by Mother Nature, and melted before that day. Images like this showcase just how outside of Los Angeles our show is shot.”

Top: A Photoshop sketch using the existing structure in Green Valley, painted over to create the coal mine. A high-resolution texture file of a cliff from an Appalachian coal mine was blended in with the metal archway and the concrete retaining wall was added. Vehicles and people were then placed for scale. Above: A photo-stitched panorama of a parking lot in Green Valley. The metal Quonset hut reminded Blass of a photo he had seen of an actual mine in Harlan.

I ran into a polygon wall. I could get the overall size and look of the set, but not the texture. I designed a long shaft with several T-sections that could be altered and expanded to work with future stories, but to get the feel for the irregularshaped walls, it was one of those situations where I was using the wrong tool for the job. I handed my thumbnail sketches over to Art Director Gina Cranham who is also an amazing Set Designer with a pencil. She translated my research photos, overall dimensions and notes into some great textured plans that were later turned over and made into construction drawings. Each eight-foot segment of the mine had removable panels to allow for shooting from each side as well as from above. Without knowing what future episodes would bring, we had to be adaptive.

Once the set was designed, it became a daily task to working with carpenters, plasterers and painters explaining how the coal would look opposed to the stone, the textures, the gloss on the black, and the groves in the ceiling. Prop master John Harrington jumped in at this point since the background mine workers would be interacting with the set. While I researched the big picture, he focused on the details of the cribbing his extras would be putting in to shore up the ceiling, and how they would be to be setting explosive charges. Often the scripts would call for ten extras to be “working” in the background…but what were they doing... and why? Each week, John and I would bring the new director and actors up to speed on the what, how, and whys of the mining world. Due to budget constraints, my twenty-foot-wide mine became a ten-foot-wide mine. I tried to argue that it

Top: A frame capture from the finished episode. The unfiltered high-resolution texture files that Blass used to create the sketch were also used by the visual effects department to create the set extension. The concrete wall was constructed, while the cliff face was added in post-production. No green screen was needed; the matte was pulled off the straight top line of the wall.

warranted a bigger set as it was in the first two episodes at least, but the battle was lost. Maybe they knew something I didn’t.

With the store in progress and the interior coal mine set underway, I ventured back up to Green Valley to find what would become another recurring set, Coover’s House. Keeping the idea of the mountain view in mind, location manager Jared Kurt and I found an empty house nestled on a ridge overlooking the mountains that would be a great starting point. At this point I was deep into the country store, the coal mine, and five other new sets all in the first week so my directions to set decorator Alex Carle were pretty simple. I handed him a photo that I had taken of my favorite house in the hollers of Harlan, full of the textures and details that I knew we had to bring to the show. I put it next to a picture of the empty location, and said, “We need to make this…look like that.” His jaw dropped, as it would every time I would come back from a scout with an impossible mission, and every time he would amaze me with the results. Coming back down the hill, I hit the technology barrier again. “Wait, the interior coal mine set is now an exterior coal mine set in Episode 2?”

Back at the studio I looked at an almost completed interior coal mine set that would now only be used for a short half-page scene, and walked into a panicked Art Department office. “We’ve been trying to get you on the phone for hours.” “Green Valley,” I mumbled. Locations people came running

Above: A modular coal tunnel set, built on stage at Santa Clarita Studios. The long shafts were built in ten-foot increments. The photograph is a good example of what can be created with an HDR image, lit only by the three bulbs in the shot.

© FX Productions/Sony Pictures Television

Top: A concept sketch for Ellstin’s Joint, conceived as both a place of business and a hangout for Ellstin Limehouse and his gang who live in a small holler occupied by descendants of emancipated slaves. The interior/exterior set was built in Green Valley, CA, as part of a cluster of sets there. I wanted to blend the restaurant with the surrounding trees, giving it a very enclose feeling, and the idea that the building had been around as long as the trees. Middle: A SketchUp model of the interior layout of the restaurant. Large hinged windows were created to work as design details as well as camera portals, and the end walls were designed to hinge open for shooting.

Bottom: A SketchUp model of the restaurant’s electric sign.

in with photos of old gold mine entrances from various ranches. I sat down and read the new script where Boyd now exited the coal mine into the bright morning sun, the area teeming with equipment and men. Back to the drawing board…or Wacom ® Tablet. Research, research and more research.

Don Kurt and I looked at a number of options close to the stage, but nothing had the feel of Kentucky, and the production requirements dictated that it needed to be tied to the other exteriors in Green Valley, so we headed back up to find a coal mine. It’s that old adage, “I don’t know what I want until I see it.” We know we are looking for a coal mine exterior, but what are we really looking for? No coal mines near Santa Clarita...maybe an aggregate plant or an old military base? After the third time someone mentioned the Bronson Caves, I thought my head would explode. Don had gone to a mine in Pennsylvania where they shot the pilot for Justified . There you enter a large building and go down a freight elevator to the tunnel, so maybe a large industrial structure was the key. On the other hand, I had seen photos of mountains with tunnels carved into the side of them, with men walking directly into the tunnels. We didn’t have either option. What we had was a bunch of old houses, a country store, and—in the one open area that was now being used as parking for our production trucks—a huge Quonset hut garage which housed RVs owned by some of the locals. Seeing that structure triggered a memory of a photo I had seen of a mine in Harlan, with a corrugated retaining roof surrounded by the mountain. “That’s it, that’s the mine.” Don looked

at me as if I was smoking some of the Bennett family weed. We rushed back to the office and I did a Photoshop/SketchUp rendering of my proposed coal mine on top of the photograph I took of the location. I took that, along with the research photo that had inspired my vision, to the production meeting to get it approved. “Here’s what a real coal mine in Harlan looks like, and here is what our Coal Mine is going to look like.” Idea approved...budget disapproved...revisions... and we are finally on track.

Working with visual effects producer Elan Dassani, I created a previs model of the set and the shots for the first episodes that we used to create a working design concept. The structure of the mine centered around a huge archway made from the existing structure, a sixteen-foot concrete retaining wall with a nice straight top allowing us to forego the need to green screen the top, and a construction trailer at the far end. The straight top line allowed us to pull an easy matte line as long as we kept all motion below the top of the wall. I supplied texture map images and references for the matte work and Elan’s team did a seamless job of creating the extension, both flat and off axis.

But something was missing. We needed a mantrip. Mantrips are the short, stout vehicles that carry the men deep into the mines. They are not something you can get at Cinema Vehicles or any of the other places in town. We placed a call to Johnson Industries in Kentucky, who supply the vehicles to the real mines there. They were excited to be part of the show, and a week later we had our own mantrip, and a completed coal mine set.

Top: An image of the completed BBQ restaurant set, on location in Green Valley. Large barbecue smokers were built out of reclaimed 55-gallon drums, propane tanks, and automotive salvage. The photo is a processed high dynamic range (HDR) image created with Photomatix Pro. With HDR, an over-exposed image, an under-exposed image and a neutral-range image are processed together to blend the highs, lows and mid tones.

Above: One of the monster BBQ smokers that were built for the BBQ Joint. Local Green Valley artist Jay Ryatt built the unit from scratch reclaimed materials. Old wheels were used as pulleys working

with railroad tie counterweights to raise the massive steel doors. Exhaust pipes from a Chevy truck serve as venting tubes, and a salvaged propane tank was used as the main body.

Left: Set Designer Masako Masuda’s digital drafting of the BBQ restaurant is filled with construction, dressing and paint notes.

Above: An HDR processed photo of Audrey’s Bar, built on location in Green Valley. The main area of an empty house was gutted to create a makeshift whorehouse/bar. Both liquor and prostitutes are illegal in Harlan County, so the bar needed to feel like a coal miner’s version of a speakeasy combined with a whorehouse. The interior was layered with coalmine memorabilia and details to reflect the clientele, and the history of the area.

From there everyone launched into full hillbilly mode, going deeper and deeper into the culture to bring the flavors of Appalachia to the show, creating the backwoods brothel, Audrey’s Bar, the Bennett family farm, and every shack, shanty and bar in between. There would be days when we would do a set that really needed a special look, and I would have to take paint forman Kathy O’Loughlin and the rest of the Art Department and sit them down for lunchtime viewings of photos from photographer Shelby Adams, or documentaries like The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia , and then coach the team: “Yeah, we need to up our level of hillbilly.” By the end of the second season, we had gone from having two permanent sets in season one to eighteen in season two, most built as fully immersive interior/exterior sets on location. Going hillbilly paid off, as Justified was nominated for four Emmy Awards ®, and gained critical acclaim as one of the top shows on television.

As season three was launched, I was again given a brief look at the new season. There would be an antagonist, Ellstin Limehouse, who would own a barbecue joint with a pig slaughterhouse deep in hills of an all-black holler of Harlan. Pour on

the research and the BBQ sauce. We learned our lesson from the previous season and started with the location and from there grew our backlot. We found a holler road in Green Valley that had a great 360° view surrounded by rich textures, green mountains, and started our new season from there. The slaughterhouse location was a reclaimed barn outfitted with a concrete slab floor with drains and chutes for the waste, a large rolling rack for hanging the meat, and scalding pots rigged for steam to give the set a menacing feel. Not knowing how often it would be used we opted to fabricate our slaughtered pigs, rather than wasting real meat. We would also be able to have them on hand at a moment’s notice, as things tend to change often in the hollers.

The barbecue shack proved a bit more challenging as it needed to be both a place of business and a secluded hangout for Limehouse. It wasn’t a joint that just anyone would roll up to, but it had to have a sense of purpose. I loved the look of the roadside shacks of the BBQ belt, and tried to pull in other design elements of southern culture. The counter was built from old reclaimed doors. The idea was that they would have salvaged what they could from surrounding homes and built using what they had available. We followed the hillbilly

way, cleaning out a bunch of the scene docks at Santa Clarita Studios of all their old doors. I had seen a Shelby Lee Adams photo of a woman in a shanty house with newspaper covering the walls, that I just loved. It was common back in the day (and still today in many places) to insulate old homes with layers of wallpapered newspaper to protect from the elements. I wanted a similar detail in the interior of the barbecue joint, and so I devised the idea of pages of a book layered on the top of the counter covered in a thick resin. We upped the ante by creating a backstory that the matriarch of the family had glued the book there so that it could never be taken away from them. I bought a ratty 1852 copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for $8 on eBay to use for the project. We layered old Kentucky licence plates combined with antique coal posters on the walls, that were built of lumber from a reclaimed deck. The idea for the vented windows came from a place in Atlanta I had photographed while on another show. Other details came from Art Director Oana Bogdan, Set Designer Masako Masuda, and Assistant Art Director Melody Harrop. Even actor/producer Tim Olyphant got heavily into the creation of this set, bringing in photos and ideas from joints he had visited in New Orleans. Set decorator Shauna Aronson combed the website www.etsy.com for unique folk art pieces and worked with a local Green Valley metal artist to custom fabricate some huge BBQ smokers and grills. He was given the direction that he couldn’t buy any of the metal, everything had to be found.

A favorite moment in the show came while creating a small house set for Walt McCready, an out-ofwork marijuana grower and part-time drunk. I had requested a huge plasma television for this tiny holler house (yes, they do have plasmas there, and no, I don’t know how they afford them). I told leadman Marc Meisels and his dressers to put it on the mantle above the stone fireplace, and he replied, “It doesn’t fit; the mantle isn’t wide enough. I’ll have to go to Best Buy and get a bracket.” I said, “Yes, I know it doesn’t fit, but no, you don’t get to go to Best Buy. Imagine you live in Harlan and just bought that television and the UK Wildcats game is on in twenty minutes. Whacha gonna dew.” On many shows, putting a new flat screen up with a couple of nails, a broken drawer, and a few bungee cords wouldn’t be acceptable, but in Harlan and on our show…it’s justified. ADG

Top: Mags Bennett is the matriarch of a clan that rules the hills of Harlan County, and her parlor is layered in dark woods, leather, brick and antique photos to add weight to a room where business deals—both legal and not— are struck. Above: The interior of the Ellstin Limehouse’s slaughterhouse, built into an empty barn adjacent to the BBQ restaurant, was filled with freshly butchered pigs, hanging carcasses dripping with blood, shadows, and sharp implements—all the things of horror.

Hospital EXt. NiGHt

by Dave Blass, art Director

by Dave Blass, Art Director

1 EXT. HOSPITAL - NIGHT 1

CARTER and the staff race into the ambulance bay as the wounded begin to flood into the hospital. Sirens announce more ambulances on the way.

Previous spread: A SketchUp® model by Dave Blass of the ambulance entrance to ER’s hospital. The illustration reveals a combination of drawn elements and texturemapped photographs of the backlot street. Additional building height has been modeled, along with a moving elevated train. Below: The backlot New York street at Warner Bros. in Burbank has been home to the ambulance entrance of the fictional County General Hospital, set in Chicago, since the debut of the series in 1994.

Just another night at the hospital ... but it wasn’t just another night, it was the last night. It was the end of an era. It was the last shot of ER , a show that for fifteen years had come to exemplify the best in television. In its heyday, it pulled in twenty-five million viewers each week and won one hundred and sixteen Emmy ® awards. And now, the pulse was getting faint.

Just another night at the hospital...but it wasn’t just another night, it was the last night. It was the end of an era. It was the last shot of ER, a show that for fifteen years had come to exemplify the best in television. In it’s heyday it pulled in twenty-five million viewers each week and won 116 Emmy ® awards. And now, the pulse was getting faint.

A big, wide establishing shot of the hospital. Now for any typical television show or film, a big wide establishing shot of the main location is, well, pretty common. It’s usually something you see in the first couple of minutes; but here we were, fifteen season s later, and there had never been a single big wide establishing shot. For the run of the show, the ambulance bay on the Warner Bros. lot had served as the main exterior of the series. From George Clooney to John Stamos, the cast had wandered the ha lls and ventured out into the Chicago-like backlot, but never had a full exterior shot been atte mpted. As the final episode was nearing, it seemed the time had come to end where many shows begin: a big, wide establishing shot.

A big, wide establishing shot of the hospital. Now for any typical television show or film, a big, wide establishing shot of the main location is, well, pretty common. It’s usually something you see in the first couple of minutes; but here we were, fifteen seasons later, and there had never been a single big, wide establishing shot. For the run of the show, the ambulance bay on the Warner Bros. lot had served as the main exterior of the series. From George Clooney to John Stamos, the cast had wandered the halls and ventured out into the Chicago-like backlot, but never had a full exterior shot been attempted. As the final episode was nearing, it seemed the time had come to end where many shows begin: a big, wide establishing shot.

For a show that set its style in 1994, just after the dawn of big-budget computer imagery ( Jurassic Park was released in 1993), the technology was normally kept on the operating table. Although the show had featured some amazing digital sequences over the years, there was no set digital pipeline. The ripple of change came swiftly, however, when, after three hundred and twenty-four episodes of shooting on four-perf 35mm, the last seven episodes were scheduled to be shot with the Red One™ digital camera. Bigger ideas began to develop for the final episode.

Production Designer Charlie Lagola, who had designed the series for the last six years, brought me in as an Art Director on these last episodes to help him pre-visualize several key new sets. One of these—the final shot—was huge, not just in scale, but in importance, and Charlie wanted to make sure his vision of this single complete image of the hospital was executed with as much precision as possible.

For a show that set its style in 1994, just after the dawn of big-budget computer imagery ( Jurassic Park was released in 1993), the technology was normally kept on the operating table. Although the show had featured some amazing digital sequences over the years, there was no set digital pipeline. The ripple of change came swiftly, however, when, after 324 episodes of shooting on 4-perf 35mm, the last seven episode s were scheduled to be shot with the Red One™ digital camera. Bigger ideas began to develop for the final episode.

Production Designer Charlie Lagola, who had designed the series for the last six years brought me in as an Art Director on these last episodes to help him pre-visualiz e several key new sets. One of these—the final shot—was huge, not just in scale, but in importance, and Charlie wanted to make sure his vision of this single complete image of the hospital was executed with as much precision as possible.

Director Rod Holcomb had taken a st ill photograph of the backlot ambulance bay street that extended back to include the elevated train tracks and surrounding buildings. Charlie worked with him to design the shot and the overall look of the hospital and its surrounding area. Was there a skyline? How tall was the actual hospital? What would its architectural features be? And how would we blend the real with the digital?

Using SketchUp™ to create the shots building blocks, I started with the basic blueprints provided by Set Designer Eric Warren, and then I pulled up a G oogle Earth Photo of the lot to use as texture, and help with layout. From there it was just a matter of point and shoot...and shoot...and shoot. With a ladder and a still camera, I took parallel-axis views of the entire street that would be included in the shot. I dumped these images into Photoshop® and composited them into JPG textures th at were then imported into SketchUp.

For me SketchUp works like a free-form foam core model. You cut, you paste, you move, you adjust. It’s not about the minutia; it’s about the fo rm, the feel, the look. From Eric’s blueprints and my photos I created elevations of the back-lot street and the ambulance bay. The important thing to remember is that this is television, not previs for a 2009 Avatar or even a 1994 Jurassic Park . We had to get all of this done in two days and deliver

Director Rod Holcomb had taken a still photograph

of the backlot ambulance bay street that extended back to include the elevated train tracks and surrounding buildings. Charlie worked with him to design the shot and the overall look of the hospital and its surrounding area. Was there a skyline? How tall was the actual hospital? What would its architectural features be? And how would we blend the real with the digital?

Using SketchUp ® to create the shots building blocks, I started with the basic blueprints provided by Set Designer Eric Warren, and then I pulled up a Google Earth Photo of the lot to use as texture, and help with layout. From there it was just a matter of point and shoot ... and shoot ... and shoot. With a ladder and a still camera, I took parallel-axis views of the entire street that would be included in the shot. I dumped these images into Photoshop ® and composited them into JPG textures that were then imported into SketchUp.

For me SketchUp works like a free-form foam core

model. You cut, you paste, you move, you adjust. It’s not about the minutia; it’s about the form, the feel, the look. From Eric’s blueprints and my photos I created elevations of the backlot street and the ambulance bay. The important thing to remember is that this is television, not pre-vis for a 2009 Avatar or even a 1994 Jurassic Park . We had to get all of this done in two days and deliver it to the producers so that we could meet the new network deadlines. Charlie showed me some reference thumbnails of the top of the building and decided to use the rail of the elevated train as the matte line between the CGI and the backlot street. The train would be added as a separate element in the digital shot. The elevated train trusses that had seen fourteen seasons of use would finally see a train.

Some molding on the top of the buildings, a window here, a lamppost there, let’s add a sign, make it bigger, and it’s time to show the producers.

Above: The Google Earth image of the Warner Bros. backlot reveals what a wonderful new tool it is for designers to lay out location plans. A few dimensions, and a tracing of the image, are all that is needed for a quick, and quite accurate, spotting plan. Below: Parallel axis photographs, spliced together in Photoshop® , of the south side of the street shown in the photograph on the opposite page.

So there we stood on the shooting site with a laptop, a five hundred dollar program, and the final shot of of one of the most successful programs on television. Hi-tech at its best. Yes, I was wishing I had upgraded my RAM, video card ... and everything else. Damn the disappearing kit rentals. Using the SketchUp version 5 Film and Stage plug-in (no, they don’t have a version for the current SketchUp 7, you have to retrofit), I plugged various lenses and heights into SketchUp. “What if we use a 24mm at six feet. Wait, what about an 18mm at three feet? A flurry of thoughts and ideas flowed continuously as we walked through the shot frame by frame. Though the plug-in works, it has its bugs in version 7, but I managed to avoid the spinning beach ball of death, and we locked down the final shot of the series. Charlie spoke with Sam Nicholson at Stargate Studios (who would be doing the final VFX work for the shot) and they tweaked the design. He talked, too, with director of photography Arthur Albert about lighting nuances, both on the practical set and on the set extension.

For a five hundred dollar program, SketchUp is exceptionally versatile. It’s cross-platform ability allows you to export your model in a variety of vector formats that can then be imported into Illustrator (as an EPS), Maya ®, Vue, 3D Studio Max ® (OBJ), or Autocad ® and Vectorworks ® (DWG). I provided Stargate with a variety of files on a disk, and then headed back to the drawing board ... or the Wacom tablet as it has become.

Over the next day I worked with Charlie, adding nuance and details to the buildings, the skyline and their surroundings. The shot would start in the ambulance bay and pull out to reveal the complete set. I wanted to do the moves in either Motion or Antics to add some people and ambulance movement, but there just wasn’t time, so I used a simple SketchUp animation export that worked fairly well to do what pre-vis needs to do: to convey the idea of a scene and its motion, to get everyone on the same page in terms of angles and camera movement, and to help Stargate create a precise budget for the shot.

I refined the pre-vis and created a nighttime sketch of the hospital exterior, dumping the final SketchUp image into Photoshop. I then did some test renders with my renderer of choice, IDX ® Renditioner, but that program flattened the lighting more than the sketch feel I was looking for. Staying in Photoshop, I added some highlights, shading, and filters using my Wacorn Cintiq ® and created a final idea of what we were looking for. In just two days, Charlie and I took a snapshot and turned it into a full-motion pre-vis for the epic ending to an amazing show. ADG

Opposite page: Four stages, from top to bottom, showing the evolution of the SketchUp model of the hospital’s ambulance entrance, alley and loading dock, beginning with a photograph of the backlot set and progressing to a full three-dimensional model of the existing set and dressing. This page, top: The completed SketchUp model of the hospital, including height extensions to it and the adjacent building, and a moving elevated train. Above: A screen capture from the finished shot reveals the additional skyline, added by Stargate Studios, and a view for the first time of the entire County General Hospital.

©Warner Bros. Television