Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1043753
For a medium budget feature, there were a tremendous number of custom elements to be designed and produced. The responsibility for coordinating the flow of information and its timely execution and delivery fell to Art Department coordinator Michael LaCorte and his assistant Corrin Beatty. The house chosen for the film was known historically as the Parrot-Soucy house, and had been renovated as a bed and breakfast (B&B) in the 1980s. To turn it from a B&B into a haunted house, a brick and iron fence with massive wrought iron gates were added, along with a dark, distressed paint job and masses of overgrown plants and vines. The interior of the house was built on two stages at Atlanta Metro Studios, a new facility in Union City, Georgia. The central design challenge of the film was to find a tone that would serve the expectations and conventions of both the haunted house genre and the classic American family story upon which Steven Spielberg has built the Amblin brand. For me, the solution to these challenges came down to the specific choices made in the design and execution of the sets; I find research to be the essential foundation of this process. A B Quantrell Colbert/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment