Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1010570
WESTWORLD SEASON 2 Protagoras Observation Chamber D the centerpiece of episode three. Fort Forlorn was based on an adobe-style fort similar to Fort Bent in Colorado. In Westworld, this fort is in continuous battle, so I thought it should really be bombed out and distressed. Luckily, this concept worked as the initial budget had to be cut to a third of the original cost. Working with Set Designer David Moreau, the design was revised numerous times to get it to the minimum needed to pull off a fierce battle assault on the fort by the park's defense team. But the real battle was for the cast and crew as we were building, dressing and shooting in a heat wave of over 100-degree temperatures last summer. Surviving that, the next little project was the Observation Room. The entire production was grateful that it was inside a soundstage and out of the heat. Lisa Joy, one of the show creators, directed this sequence and conceived one long shot that would move over objects in the room, giving clues to the man being observed. Set Designer Ernie Avila developed a circular ground plan inspired by the main control room in the Mesa. The circular ground plan allowed for a long camera move in a relatively confined space. The mechanics of how to look into the Observation Room became the next challenge. My thought was that it should act like a two-way mirror: when you are inside the room, the walls are solid white, but from outside the room they would appear as clear glass. Lots of shot planning went into how to reveal this effect with limited use of digital effects. The big set piece of season two was of course, Shogun World, alluded to at the end of season one. This was meant to be a major showstopper, but the challenge was that it is primarily limited to episode five. It was an intense amount of work for just one use. The parameters of this world are set so that Shogun World is revealed to be a Japanese translation of Westworld. Looking at research of Japanese mountain villages, location scouting was begun up around Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino C E