Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545081
serve the story. Day- and-night backings were photographed by Pierre Steel at JC Backings, measuring 143-feet wide. For the night backings, we initially added two hundred fifty LED diodes to enhance the light sources that would naturally bloom when the backing fell out of focus, replicating what bright light sources actually do during night photography. When Marcell Rév saw how effective the diodes were for the night scenes, he increased the count to roughly nine hundred—transforming the backing into a shimmering cityscape that gave the penthouse an almost vertiginous sense of altitude and isolation. Alamo's House The exterior was the Brill House, a 1980s-era 5-bedroom, 7-bath mansion designed by James Herbert Brownell, a renowned modernist architect from Southern California. The home features deliberate and artful woodworking, a spiral staircase, an indoor pool, windows stacked upon windows upon windows and panoramic views of the Antelope Valley. The interior great room was drawn up by Set Designer James Addink and featured a black Jacuzzi overlooking the space like a throne, and a circular sunken living room her apartment as a half-scale miniature for the opening shots, then dressed the New York Street backlot at Warner Bros. for crowd reaction shots. On stage, we commissioned a custom 90-foot- wide twilight backing from JC Backings so that everything could remain in camera. Jules's Penthouse We found our inspiration for Jules's apartment in an empty penthouse on the 35th floor of a Downtown Los Angeles skyscraper—a striking space with impressive views of the surrounding cityscape and a precarious balcony jutting out from the corner of the building. We reproduced the entire space on stage but juiced it considerably, making it far more upscale and luxurious than the original—replete with a European-style bespoke kitchen, dark wood paneling and an ensuite bathroom to die for. The location informed the bones, but the stage set allowed us to craft every surface and detail to A. CASSIE'S DREAM SEQUENCE - BUILT ON STAGE 28 AT WARNER BROS. CAMERA TEST WITH ART DIRECTOR KATRINA SAINZ WALKING THE SET FOR SCALE REFERENCE. B. JULE'S PENTHOUSE WAS A STAGE SET BUILT ON STAGE 9, MODELED AFTER THE PENTHOUSE APARTMENT AT THE VERDOSA TOWER IN DOWNTOWN L.A. SET PHOTO. C. THE INTERIOR OF ALAMO'S HOUSE WAS BUILT ON STAGE 28 AT WARNER BROS. IT FEATURED A BUILT-IN HOT TUB AND A SUNKEN LIVING ROOM WITH A WRAP-AROUND COUCH BUILT BY THE WARNER BROS. UPHOLSTERY DEPARTMENT. SET PHOTO. D. CASSIE'S DREAM SEQUENCE. THE EASTERN COLUMBIA BUILDING AND ORPHEUM SIGN WERE BOTH BUILT AS IN-CAMERA MINIATURES. ILLUSTRATION USING BLENDER BY KRISTIAN LLANA. B A