Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/686925
Drew Boughton, Production Designer Linda A. King, Art Director Craig Humphries, Nancy C. Lee, Assistant Art Directors Keli Manson, Crystal Strode, Kristina Lyne, Alan Kobayashi, Andrew Campbell, Martin Charles, Graphic Designers John Gallagher, Howard Lau, Illustrators Anand Ray, Christopher Mumaw, Set Designers Anshuman Prasad, Digital Set Designer Kris Bergthorson, Model Maker Brenda Meyers-Ballard, Set Decorator One of the logistical challenges shooting this story is the ongoing use of the swastika. On all uses of it in public, great care is taken to cover it until the last minute, including any wardrobe, vehicles and fl ags. The production has lost many good fi lming locations because people are ultimately not comfortable with the image, even in a fi ctional context. The problem extends to legal clearance issues, which are the most exhaustive of any show I have worked on. International teams of lawyers needed to lay the groundwork that allowed the show to happen. Amazon made a remarkable commitment to the show in supporting this vast legal structure. "It became clear that the most important design decisions were to subtract what did not happen, to visually delete the post-war American dream. So rock-and-roll was removed, and cars had no tail fins. Everything just became suspended at the beginning of the 1950s." What makes the stories work is that they play out in a believable, immersive world that's just slightly off. The human conditions in The Man in the High Castle scripts have been visited in other series in the past. The thing that hasn't been done before is building a fully constructed edifi ce of what America—and the world—would look like if the Nazis had won World War II. For a designer, it's a remarkably challenging feat of world-building. ADG Top: Concept art for a Nazi V9 rocket aeroplane. Anshuman Prasad made the 3D aircraft model and Drew Boughton sketched the environment around it. Above: A frame capture of the fi nished effects shot from the pilot. Below: Mr. Boughton writes: "This is one of my favorite moments from the pilot. It is a perversion of a 1950s' game show. Here, the contestant is an American-accented Nazi. It's just messed up." Bottom, left and right: A concept sketch by Mr. Boughton for the interior of Childan's Shop for Season 1, along with a set still of the completed set on stage.