Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1124104
A S E R I E S O F U N F O R T U N A T E E V E N T S | P E R S P E C T I V E 5 5 In season two and three, all the interiors and exteriors would be built on stage, which was going to require more stage space, so a fifth large stage was added, and those five stages were further supplemented with an additional two to three stages for the larger episodes. The scale and volume of scenery being turned over every four to five weeks was incredible, at times filling 135,000-sf of stage space at once, and then literally the day after shooting was complete, the sets would be struck and the process would start over. What this meant for me was tracking a mind- boggling critical path of design/draw/build/paint/ dress/rig/light/rehearse/shoot/strike at a rate unprecedented in my career. Most of my experience prior to A Series of Unfortunate Events was doing large feature films (2012, Elysium, Tomorrowland, Star Trek Beyond) so I was accustomed to doing a "critical path" document which basically lays out the various departments' preproduction time required leading up to shooting each set. It is a spreadsheet that is extremely detailed and extremely useful. On A Series of Unfortunate Events, it went to a whole new level. A huge part of my job became "set choreography"—literally seeking permission to strike sets within minutes of dailies being released so the next one could be started, which in most cases, had to be largely prebuilt off site to save installation time. I would also spend a lot of early preproduction on each book, sitting with the first assistant directors to try and build a schedule that we could work with and would allow time to get the sets ready. Complicating this choreography was that a couple of the large stages were rigged to be lit as exteriors, and because the changeover timeframes were so tight, the exterior sets all needed to be built on these pre-lit stages, and almost every book had big exteriors builds. There was Briny Beach with its trolley track, Uncle Monty's mansion, including its front drive and sculpted serpent topiaries, the entire Lake Lachrymose seaside village, the front of Prufrock Prep, including driveway and quad, the Prufrock Prep field and an entire block off A. HOTEL DENOUEMENT ROOFTOP POOL. SKETCH BY BO WELCH. B. HOTEL DENOUEMENT ROOFTOP POOL. ILLUSTRATION BY WARREN FLANAGAN. C. HOTEL DENOUEMENT ROOFTOP POOL. SET PHOTO. D. CARNIVOROUS CARNIVAL ENTRANCE. SET PHOTO. E. 667 DARK AVE. LOBBY. SKETCH BY BO WELCH. F. 667 DARK AVE. LOBBY. ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIE RAMA. G. 667 DARK AVE. LOBBY. SET PHOTO. F E G