Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1072449
a location in Los Angeles that was as close as possible to the original. (I know…crazy!) After searching all over the city, looking at scores of mansions, we finally settled on a beautiful estate in Hancock Park. As beautiful as it was, it really didn't look very much like the original set from season three; there was some work to do. A plan was formed to transform the first floor of the house into the best possible version of Robichaux Academy. The plan, spanning three days of preproduction, began with installing roughly three thousand square feet of white hardwood flooring, walls, doors, a fireplace, mouldings and fluted columns. Then Ryan Watson and his team brought in the elaborate draperies, light fixtures and the beautiful dressing that matched so well with the original. Add to this the beautiful cast, Gavin Kelly's talent behind the camera and a dash of atmosphere and it was almost like the show was back in New Orleans. Ironically, the coven witches and Robichaux Academy would come to play in future episodes, so Robichaux Academy ended up being built on stage, after all. Another scripted set that would need to be created was Hell Hallway, which was a transitional space between a scene in the Hawthorne school library and a grade school science classroom, where one of the characters, Misty Day, was trapped in an eternal loop of executing a frog dissection against her will; her version of hell. This set was another opportunity to create an ultra-stylized space without any constraints. For me, the obvious color palette of this space was tar black, so the magic would be in the sheen of automotive gloss. Walls, ceiling and doors were built as smooth as possible and prepped as one would prepare a car for paint. The other key element of this set was the lighting. For this long narrow, channels were cut in the ceiling, perpendicular to the length of the hall and a quasar tube was mounted over each channel, giving defined blades of light reflecting on every surface. Assistant Art Director Maren Brown added the finishing touch with A B C D