Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1381679
much else in total they could shoot here—and this was my challenge. Even as I found the idea a bit crazy and maybe a tad out of my scope, I started to inhale the spirit of Beth's world more and realized how interior her disposition is, not only geographically but also psychologically. It's not only the outline of the story, to follow her travelling, ending up in just another hotel and at another tournament. Beth strggles t find nnetin t te rld arnd her. Outside. Or at all. The whole reason for her journeys is to learn, step by step, that there is a world outside and she is welcome to be a part of it. And this is very much the case for every one of us. That's why audiences love her so much. We are all just like her! I knew then that I wanted to do this s and re tat tere as a lt t er ere in and around the city of Berlin. Berlin is a very diverse city in general, mainly because of its history. It was never built or intended to be one big city but has always been a bundle of various smaller towns or municipalities. That's why tere are a ge nmer dierent tn alls administration buildings and all kinds of ballrooms, conference halls, sports centers and all those strange eliar li laes. By European standards, it's also quite a young city. It developed into "Greater Berlin" just around the mid-1920s. On top of that, Berlin has faced some troubled times, massive destruction through World War II, the hasty reconstruction, and the separation between East and West until the 1990s. (Including some crazy exhibitionist architecture afterward on both sides.) Meaning, there are now an awful lot of dierent reall seial laes t la it. And that would be our approach: to play with crazy options! I started by inviting the show's main expert location scout, Stefan Wöhleke, to brainstorm on all kinds of possible tournament and hotel locations and how Berlin could capture bits of Paris, Moscow, Mexico City, Las Vegas—all these exotic places. When Bill Horberg and Scott ran ame r te first time t isit e ere well-prepared and bombarded them with an extraordinary bunch of rather eccentric location suggestions. And they loved them! At that point, the creative team talked about the sirit te str r te first time and agreed tat we would basically tell a fairy tale—still based in this world, but much more importantly, it would Berlin as Paris A. PARIS SHOPPING STREET, CONCEPT DRAWING BY HANNAH BRÜCKMANN. B. PARIS SHOPPING STREET AT KURFÜRSTENDAMM LOCATION. PHOTO. C. PARIS CHESS TOURNAMENT, DRESSED LOCATION AT CAFE GROSZ, KURFÜRSTENDAMM. SET PHOTO D. PARIS HOTEL ROOM, DRESSED LOCATION AT ROBERT KOCH INSTITUT. SET PHOTO. A B C D