Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1332040
9 4 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 1 Saint Teresa's Center for Mental Health was to be the first big build: an old nunnery now functioning as a specialized catholic hospital led by mysterious former nun, Dr. Louise Hastings. This backdrop allowed for some darker gothic flourishes. For Saint Teresa's gothic faade the production used a 1930s stone and mortar building on a nearby campus, built to house the theology department. The stage build of Saint Teresa's main floor featured corridors of dark wood arches, polished linoleum, stained-glass transoms, antique church hardware and vintage reproduction light fixtures. The set housed various types of patients in its many rooms and hallways, and featured several additional staging areas: a terrazzo hanging stairwell (matched to a location) with floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows, a moody gothic reception area, a vintage waiting room and elevator, a security monitoring room and Dr. Hastings' Ivy League officewhere several ethical debates take place. It was here in this first set that I established a pattern for the series: an innocuous entrance that leads deeper and deeper into horror as one moves through its interior. Deep in the bowels of its corridors, Saint Teresa's hid a horrifying secret. The secure ward, off limits to visitors, held a possessed woman. Multiple disturbing scenes of a strained family reunion would be shot in a padded cell. Victoria's cell had to belong to Saint Teresa's architecture, so I designed it as a former chapel room with renaissance-style murals on the ceiling and gothic arched windows with bars added, now mostly covered by grungy vinyl padding. Victoria's possessor, known only as 'Mother,' lurches between catatonic and violent, turning on a dime, her theatrics both cunning and repellant. So I wanted the space to have an almost stage-like quality, simple and Shakespeareanyet filthy and upsetting. Who would clean a room with a demon locked inside of it? Her adult children, that's who—the only ones powerful enough to try. Daimon, now an ethics professor, learns from Dr. Hastings that some patients have escaped, killing a guard on their way out—and the wall of his mother's cell now features an unknown glyph, drawn in blood. He knows he has to call his estranged sister, who he has barely spoken to since the horrific events of their childhood. Ana now lives in San Francisco, running an elite auction house that specializes in ancient weapons of war. Here she attracts the worst of humanity, luring them into a trap where she and her cohort Chris Yen await, like glamorous spiders in a high-tech web. Exiter's Auction House (another Easter egg) was designed to match their banter as a modern, tongue-in-cheek take on Raiders of the Lost Ark: hundreds of artifacts and artworks stored in a slick warehouse of packing crates and tall rows of shelves. It also featured temperature-controlled glass storage rooms, a modern auction floor, a luxe bar area and a rooftop garden with fire pits overlooking the city. The basement housed a secret vault for items of supernatural origin, including Ana's childhood jewelry box filled with tokens and trinkets gifts from her father. Or as we would learn, from his many victims. A. SAINT TERESA'S CENTER. SECURE WARD HALLWAY. SET PHOTO. B. SAINT TERESA'S CENTER. MOTHER'S ROOM, A FORMER CHAPEL WITH RENAISSANCE- STYLE CEILING MURALS, REWORKED INTO A PADDED CELL. CONCEPT ART BY JAIME GERVAIS. C. THE GALLERY FLOOR OF EXITER'S AUCTION HOUSE. PRODUCTION STILL. D. EXITER'S AUCTION HOUSE BASEMENT STORAGE AREAS INSPIRED BY THE WAREHOUSE OF ARTIFACTS IN THE ORIGINAL INDIANA JONES. PRODUCTION STILL. E. AN ANCIENT DEMON LANGUAGE INITIALLY DRAWN BY DESIGNER TODD FJELSTED AND LATER REFINED BY ASST. ART DIRECTOR SEAN GOOJHA, SEEN THROUGHOUT THE SERIES AS OMENS PORTENDING THE ARRIVAL OF VARIOUS CHARACTERS FROM THE COMICS.. F. A MAUSOLEUM SET USED ON LOCATION AND ONSTAGE, LEADING TO ANCIENT CATACOMBS BELOW THE CEMETERY. SET PHOTO. A B