Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/990311
One of the concepts of the show is that viewers must never know where they are. One mustn't be able to find too much in common with a space. This is part of the deception. So the lead character, David's apartment was designed to look like it's in Paris or Budapest, and it had extraordinarily wide doors. Cars give a time stamp. No cars allowed. Locations were selected on university campuses that were all pedestrian zones. Everything could be controlled. A city of the future/past was created that was slightly unrecognizable as our modern world. Just like in the comics. Another concept was to embrace the sadness. Vancouver is a beautiful city. It really is. But whoever decided that Brutalism was a nice counterpoint to the coastal beauty of this town should lose all of their friends. All of them! A lot of crews spend a ton of energy trying to avoid these buildings, like avoiding palm trees in a Los Angeles-as-Boston scenario. Legion embraced them. So much so that we were able to stay away from the other seventy shows that were all vying for the same three locations that look like "Brentwood." As a design exercise, coming up with ideas for a show that had a whole other life as a comic book was challenging. On one hand, you certainly want to take advantage of the genre. It's a comic. It's a graphic novel. Be graphic. On the other, I would never want to "borrow" from the excellent work of the creators and illustrators of Legion. So when Noah Hawley started to talk about world creation, I decided that I would not look at the comics. At all. I didn't want to know. He didn't want me to know. So the idea became timelessness and deceit. No cars (or very few, and all period). No cellphones. No computers that anyone would recognize (custom were made). No period wardrobe or futuristic wardrobe. Just Legion. Whatever that is for whichever episode was being shot. Want the audience to feel safe? Make it scary. To create the feeling that a character is in danger, make the setting charming. A A. CONCEPT ART FOR THE TRIBUNAL CHAMBER BY LAURENT BEN-MIMOUN. BUILT ON STAGE AS A PRACTICAL SET, THE CONTAINMENT BUBBLE WAS ADDED IN POST. B.THE LABORATORY WAS BUILT ON STAGE OVER AN EXISTING PIT TO ACCOMMODATE A POOL FOR THE ISOLATION CHAMBER. B