Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/765720
62 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 7 Above: Two pencil sketches of the Garcia house, one of the bedroom and one of the inner courtyard, by Set Designer John Blood. short. The workarounds were to create two additions without physically attaching them to the house, and the Scenic Artists matched the limestone perfectly. When the company showed up to shoot the first scenes at the McCullough Ranch, most of the crew was shocked to discover that parts of the house weren't real. I'd converted a real town into a movie set for the NBC series Revolution, and really didn't want to repeat that experience with McCullough Springs. There's so much involved— businesses that are going concerns, signage and streetlights that need to be concealed, streets to cover with dirt, traffic problems and city councils to deal with. I could go on and on. On the other hand, Western movie set towns are non- existent around Austin. Fortunately, Austinite Adam Woolley has been collecting old buildings that would otherwise have been torn down, moving them to his property and restoring them into a town of sorts. Some years ago, Adam asked my advice on how he should lay out his main street. The first thing I told him was to move it away from the highway and the traffic noise. I recall that he bought my lunch for my help. Little did I know then that there would be a far bigger payoff down the road. When searching (and scrambling, given the shortness of time) for a location for McCullough Springs, Adam's street was the best option. The problem was that Adam had turned his vintage town into a successful wedding venue. The buildings were all freshly painted, pristine and perfect, it was beautifully landscaped with lots of rose bushes, and it had concrete sidewalks. Director Tom Harper, from the UK, hated the place. I was somehow able to convince him that we could dig up the rose bushes, cover the sidewalks, age the buildings and transform it into a 1915 dusty South Texas town...and that's what we did. The last major set was the Garcia place. The narrative for much of The Son's first season revolves around the clash of the Mexican and Anglo cultures, embodied in the struggle between the South Texas McCullough and Garcia families, each a dynasty and force in its own right. The Garcia Ranch had to be equal to the McCullough Ranch. While the location scouts were searching high and low to find a suitable exterior location, the production needed to move ahead and shoot the Garcia interiors. It's tricky to design the inside of a place without knowing what the outside looks like. However, I knew the exterior needed to reflect the Hispanic heritage of the Garcia family, and figured we couldn't go wrong designing the interior as a classic hacienda-style courtyard with all the rooms surrounding it. You have to count on just getting lucky sometimes. The perfect Garcia exterior was eventually found. Unfortunately, it was closer to San Antonio than Austin (almost a two-hour drive) and therefore, expensive to shoot, but too perfect to pass up. The script described the place like this: "The sun sets over an enormous stone house, La Casa Mayor, ancestral residence of the Garcia family. Incomparably more ancient than the Cary White, Production Designer Yvonne Boudreaux, Art Director John Frick, John Blood, Megan Montemayor, Set Designers James Hall, Graphics Designer Suzanne Stover, Set Decorator