Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/765720
Above, top to bottom: The dining room and stair hall are all part of the McCullough house stage set. Below, left to right: A Photoshop ® illustration of the Comanche village set, on location outside of Austin. The finished set, dressed with background talent on the set. The Son tells the tale of a multi-generational Texas family that begins in 1849 when a young Eli McCullough is kidnaped by Comanches. This storyline intercuts with the McCullough family in 1915, which by that time is a South Texas ranching-and-oil dynasty. Jacob Lofland (from Mud) plays young Eli and Pierce Brosnan plays old Eli. The design of the series presented many challenges: the department was always fighting tight time and budget deadlines, and physically, just shooting Texas in the summer was hot and miserable. Notwithstanding these challenges (and probably in part because of them), the crew did a magnificent job. One of the primary challenges for the 1849 portion of the show was to re-create the Comanche camp. It's a simple matter to get enough tepees to make an Indian camp, but in 1849, the tepees would have been made of buffalo hides. As you may recall, the white man essentially killed off the buffalo some time ago, but a couple of guys in New Mexico made a real hide cover, which they hand-stitched and delivered to the production in the proverbial nick of time. It was used for all the interior shots and also as the hero tepee in the exterior camp. A great location for the camp was found beside a little creek and under a limestone bluff. Once the village was up, however, it was a constant battle to keep it from being destroyed. Black Angus cows are curious animals and will tear up movie sets if given half a chance. The locations department hired the ranch foreman to run an electric fence around the village. It helped, but they still got in. I never quite knew what I would find in the morning. Ten episodes were shot with lots of sets, but the big three for Season One were the McCullough Ranch, the town of McCullough Springs and the Garcia Ranch. All three had to be right for the characters and historically accurate. The McCullough Ranch for the 1915 portion of the story called for a place that had a King Ranch scale for the main house, but nothing comparable existed around Austin. After scouring the Hill Country, a large limestone ranch house was found that had been built in 1882. It was perfect in all respects except one—it was too small. Philipp Meyer, in addition to having written the book and being the executive producer, was our official authority on Texas, and he was adamant that the house be bigger. Two problems: the house had a historical designation and could not be physically altered, and carving and painting Styrofoam to match the existing limestone was time-consuming and time was very