Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 6 51 Left: A construction drawing of the toy department free-standing shelving by Assistant Art Director Audra Avery. Below, left to right: A display of vintage dolls against vintage wallpaper in the toy department, all sourced by set decorator Heather Loeffler. A set still showing the finished free-standing shelving and custom-designed and fabricated toy boxes. Bottom: All of the custom graphics in the toy department, including the specially fabricated boxes, were designed by Graphic Designer R. Scott Purcell. walking in Times Square near the end of the movie, we figured out the route from the subway station to the Times building, found matches for the architecture that would have existed at the time, and even made sure the traffic was going in the correct direction. Even the location used for the subway entrance at the opening of the film matched one on the upper east side that had existed in 1952. Although a few sets were built from the ground up (the Josephine Motel room, the projection booth, a bathroom), most of the work involved radical transformations of existing locations. Although this is a huge part of the work I and other designers normally do, it is often given less attention than newly constructed sets. In most respects, however, it is more challenging to transform an existing location into an envisioned set. Therese lived in the East 50s where there were many small walk-up apartment buildings during that era. A great apartment building in Cincinnati that had a 19th century candy factory on the ground floor. Although the apartment was tight for shooting, the owner allowed us to cut arches and open up walls so that the camera and actors could navigate freely through the space. As usual with period movies, I also needed to completely redesign the kitchen. I made sure to include a bathtub with a lid serving as a countertop in the kitchen, a common feature of these walk-ups and one I remember from working in locations in Hell's Kitchen, even as late as the early 1990s. Because Therese lacks a strong sense of self at the beginning of the film, I painted the walls varying shades of tinted whites; later, as she and the movie journey through time, she repaints the apartment aqua, foretelling the future of the decade.