Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/686925
Above: Another concept illustration by Matthias Beeguer, this time for Jackson Healy's apartment, which is meant to be a converted office over the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip. Below, left: A set still of the finished set, on stage in Atlanta. Bottom, right: Jason Sweers created period graphics in the form of giant wallpapers for the bowling alley location. Opposite page, top to bottom: A railroad bridge in Atlanta leant itself to a visual effects transition into the Harbor Freeway in downtown Los Angeles. The old Hollywood Sign, badly decaying, became another set on stage in Atlanta. The burned house was a location that couldn't be found in Atlanta which had far too many green trees and lush lawns to be a believable Hollywood. Allsets Construction built the house in Los Angeles with their patented approach to faux burned wood. story, but also in huge playing cards set out at the party scenes, as part of Shane's idea for a Through the Looking Glass theme. Of course, the shoot required a small, fully dressed set, on a stills stage back in Los Angeles, for which Miranda Cristofani was the Art Director. I never imagined in my career I would be able to boast of designing a set for a porn stills shoot, and I might still have to keep it from my parents. One of the nerve-wracking problems of shooting the Los Angeles exteriors after the main shooting in Atlanta was having to design and build interior sets with no confirmed locations for the exterior. Shane had Russell Crowe's character, Jackson Healy, living above the old Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip. As one of the first sets to shoot on stage, I had to design and build it before the actual location had been scouted or confirmed. The set was never seen directly from outside so there was some latitude, and we built a dimensional backing beyond the windows rather than use a translight, to get some life into the neighboring building. Healy's living space was an interesting mix, an old office that he had made into a long-term temporary apartment. Danielle Berman dressed the set first as an office, and then pushed the furnishings aside to create an apartment amidst them. Ryan Gosling's character, Holland March, lived in a rented house, and Shane and I decided it would be a classic mid-century style, partly for the way spaces flow together so well in those houses, to allow the scenes to play fluidly. The location in Baldwin Hills was still not confirmed by the time I designed and built the set, so we had to pray to the film gods that the exteriors on stage would match. I had photos taken of the view beyond the backyard and made a 120' Translight to match the location. Of course, the image had to be treated in Photoshop ® to give it the correct brownish-orange haze that permanently hung over the city at that time. March's house was a feast of different period wallpapers. I needed to use papers from different periods to give a sense of history to the house, so the patterns in the living room were mainly 1960s designs, while the bold floral design used for his daughter's bedroom was pure mid-'70s. Strangely, this paper acted on some people on set like smell does on the memory, and one look of it took them straight back to vivid memories of their childhood.