Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1332040
I came up with a plan for the basement band room that trusted the simple oppressiveness of a small brick room, though it still had a larger footprint than George wanted. The old stage had a beautiful patch of original brick still on the floor, so I planned to position the set there to take advantage, but the build had not started yet. On Tobias' first day, we paced the space with movable flats so George could feel the wallsand they were quickly walked in even more. Based on the sparring, fights and dance among the band members, he saw the room as a boxing ring, and we ended up with an area not much bigger, with four-corner columns defining the ring for action. Supervising Art Director Jim Truesdale and I found stunning timbers in a salvage yard, with knots and deep cracks, and construction coordinator Lou Taylor agreed to hollow them out so they could wild. Robert Winn, April Freeman and their miraculous scenic team made art out of plaster and paint and the entire set hinged and slid open like a Chinese puzzle. Somehow I even convinced George to let Tobias have one very small, high caged window. Visual effects added feet passing and activity up there, and the eventual light studies expressing the passing day corresponded richly to the emotion of the action. When Constanza Romero, August's wife and a producer on the film, watched the band room come to life, she enthusiastically told me it was "all about that window..." When the theater location the production planned for Day One proved too problematic at the last minute, we punted it in the schedule and constructed the entire thing in an adjoining stage. When we built a pedestrian stairwell in the middle of the street under a railway to create the "L" train, the paint was still wet when we shot the next day. When the wooded location we had for Ma's traveling tent show flooded, we found an alternate just beyond a baseball outfield and carnies Wini McKay and Chester Cable came along from L.A. Circus Company to make sure it all got stood up right. When we printed large-scale billboards for the background of our upscale Bronzeville A. BAND ROOM. SKETCHUP MODEL BY WES HOTTMAN. B. BAND ROOM. PRODUCTION STILL. C. & D. THEATER INTERIOR. SET PHOTO AND PRODUCTION STILL. E. BRONZEVILLE STREET. CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY JOANNA BUSH. F. BRONZEVILLE STREET. PRODUCTION STILL. G. ELEVATED TRAIN ENTRANCE. CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY JOANNA BUSH. H. ELEVATED TRAIN ENTRANCE. PRODUCTION STILL. I. VIOLA DAVIS AS MA RAINEY INSIDE HER PERFORMANCE TENT. PRODUCTION STILL. A B C D