Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/929567
A. Chosen site for the construction of La Belle, a small canyon nestled in the hills. B. & C. Study sketches of two views of the streets of La Belle done in SketchUp, Podium and Photoshop by Katelynn Wheelock. D. Front Elevation of the Hotel La Belle by Ron Yates using Layout. E. View of the Hotel La Belle. Both exterior and interiors of the hotel were designed to accommodate a gunfight on horseback. F. The parlor of the Hotel La Belle, built on location. G. Interior dining room, foyer, and parlor of the Hotel La Belle built on location. H. SketchUp, Podium and Photoshop sketch study of the interior second floor of the Hotel La Belle horseback gun battle by Katelynn Wheelock. Set in 1884 New Mexico, Godless is a story centered around the mining town of La Belle, inhabited by a few old men, fatherless children and vulnerable widows whose husbands' lives were taken away by a mining accident. Surrounding La Belle are stories of greed, jealousy, revenge, justice, love, redemption and a lot of guns. From reading the script, it was pretty clear that the centerpiece of the series was the mining town of La Belle, so finding the perfect location to build the town was of paramount importance. Several options were considered before coming across what I knew right away would be the perfect location, a sloping blind canyon flanked by rocky hills on three sides and opened to the most magnificent view of a vast New Mexican landscape on its mouth. A mining town located among these rocky hills made perfect visual sense. The story narrative demanded a very particular town layout. The placement of the many structures had to provide specific relationships in order for the action to unfold as scripted. In addition, the site's unique topography and orientation became another factor to consider in formulating the perfect solution. In a way, designing the town's layout was like solving a Rubik's Cube. The natural topography of the site made evident that the Main Street should follow the gentle sloping length of the canyon, but that it should not be a straight line. Instead, it would gently curve so that the town would slowly be revealed as the viewer rode up the street, making it impossible to see the town in its entirety from one end to the other. This layout also aligned with the east-west path of the sun, providing the ideal backlit conditions for optimal photography in both the morning and in the afternoon. The widest point in the canyon provided enough space to create a secondary cross street, which started with a bridge over a dry riverbed and culminated at the door of the Hotel La Belle, creating an irregularly shaped town plaza at its intersection with Main Street. It was in this plaza where the hotel, the saloon, the dry goods store, the sheriff 's office and jail were placed, infusing life into La Belle. Eventually, the specific location of each of the town's buildings got sorted out within the general master plan, and all the elements fell into place. The story required the hotel to be large enough to host a gun battle on horseback through its interior, up the stairs to the second floor and onto the rooftop. The design challenge was to provide interior spaces large enough to accommodate horses and riders while keeping the overall scale believable and in proportion to the rest of the town's buildings. It is obviously much easier to design for human proportions, but in this case, the challenge was to design for horses but make the proportions look human. In order to prevent the hotel from looking monumental, like a giant dwarfing its surroundings, the other buildings were intentionally made taller, with interior spaces featuring lofty ceilings and tall vertical windows, storefronts and verandas. The end product was a town with a believable and harmonious scale. In selecting a palette, the idea was to use the natural colors of the land, rich earth tones with rusted iron reds and woody browns for the exteriors, and assorted shades of green, like the natural local vegetation, for the Victorian interiors. This color strategy yielded a town that harmoniously blended with its surroundings and did not draw attention to itself; after all, it would have been built from the local materials. It was extremely important that the town felt like it had been standing for a long time, taking a beating from the harsh New Mexican weather, so painting and aging techniques were crucial and A B C