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In total, there were eight days of prep at the L.A. Circus location and eight nights of shooting to film almost the entire feature. It's remarkable it all happened on schedule, despite a massive windstorm that struck Riverside the day before filming, causing us to literally take all the sets down, threatening to postpone the start of principal photography. The second film, Alleluia! The Devil's Carnival, allowed me an opportunity to come back to familiar material with new ideas, revisiting the carnival in hell and then design the otherworld, heaven, a place of gods and angels, of imagination where none of us has visited and its existence cannot even be certain. It was the perfect place to get completely lost in design. An issue that became increasingly difficult to juggle was that in the script both heaven and hell had a past and a present. What does heaven look like now? What did it look like in the past? Does time even exist in the realm of heaven or hell? Darren and I discussed that heaven could be a sort of dystopian mix of three decades, 1920s–1940s, exploring the idea of present and future past. Darren responded to those eras and I love the architecture and design associated with art deco, steampunk and beginnings of the modern age. During prep, I found a source for vintage paper ephemera from the early 1900s and that became a running theme throughout the otherworld, as if heaven has choked itself with its own bureaucracy and red tape. Applicants eager to get into heaven are given a massive application several inches thick, filing cabinets Above, left and right: Two SketchUp models of the railroad train in the opening scene of the film, racing down the tracks as Lucifer sings the song "Shovel and Bone" while lost souls shovel bones and coal into the firebox of an antique steam engine. Below, left and right: A rendered version of the SketchUp model, and a production photograph of the finished set. The construction began with a chain saw treatment to chew up the wood extensively. The platform was assembled from the distressed lumber, rickety dilapidated sides were added, and the curved cabin's structure was mapped out. Opposite page: A wide variety of graphic elements, only a few of which are shown here, were used to create the film's own signage and to showcase the freakish characters in the script. Banners were a pivotal feature in the look of old-time carnivals; they really helped solidify the aesthetic and brought the characters into the set design. are overflowing with forms and paperwork and folders are stacked precariously high on desks' surfaces. It's a beautiful mess of aged rectangles with potential energy. We decided to forgo the usual limitations of gravity and time and allow the inhabitants of heaven to be in control of their own physics. Some sets, like the Processing Department, have paperwork spilling out in a constant stream from filing cabinets that are leaning over, stuck in a diagonal frozen fall. The opening scene of the film is set on a train, racing down the tracks as Lucifer sings the song "Shovel and Bone" while lost souls shovel bones and coal into the firebox of a steam engine. My first thought was to film on a real train, but shooting in the confined space of a train cab would limit the camera angles too greatly. The decision was made to build the cab of the engine and the first car that holds the lost souls, and to augment the set in post production with visual effects. I began photographing real trains and researching vintage toy trains, drawing a locomotive that mixed both the real and toy designs. My dream was to give Lucifer a creepy, burnt toy train to pilot through hell. The construction began with a chain saw treatment to the wood, chewing it up extensively. The platform was assembled, rickety dilapidated sides were added, and the curved cabin's structure was mapped out and constructed. Ribs and rivets were added. To make the steam engine itself even more sinister and alive, I eliminated the door from the firebox portal and added a creepy grinning mouth and fanged teeth. Paint was