Cobalt

Snowberry's Office 05

Added 2016-12-01 17:55:27 +0000 UTC

One of the challenges of working on these sets was that I needed to rearrange my usual thought process, in regards to set design. Working in 3D means you can build pretty much anything you want, and make it as fantastical as your mind can imagine. There is no limit to what you can do. Not even physics.

I needed to break myself of the habit of thinking big, and start thinking small.

There's a story about the making of the Star Wars Holiday special - Lucas had started on the project, before a director had been hired. They made costumes, they wrote scripts, and they built the set for the Wookiee family's treehouse home. They did all the work ahead of time, so that when the director was finally hired, everything would be ready and they could just get down to filming.

The director they hired stepped onto the set on his first day and said "We can't use this."

Why? Because they had built the Wookie's house as a complete building. Four walls. A ceiling. Inside and outside... it was complete, and enclosed. Exactly what you would need for a movie.

But TV cameras are big klunky things. There was no way they'd be able to film this set with one... So, there was only one thing to do...

The director had the set cut in half with a chainsaw, and the roof removed. And they dragged the part they had cut off out to the dumpster and threw it away.

Sets for television are made pretty much the way ones for stage productions are. Three walls, no ceiling. You need to be able to get cameras in from the front, and lights in from above. So they end up with a very distinctive look. And that's what I was out to capture. That 80's TV look.