Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1413503
D E A R E VA N H A N S E N | P E R S P E C T I V E 3 7 On a quiet Monday in March, I returned home to upstate New York from Panama utterly exhausted and beyond fulfi lled after wrapping up a -month run on The Suicide Squad. While I was in desperate need of a break, I was equally determined to follow up my fi rst hefty tentpole fi lm with a smaller fi lm something high-uality and more grounded in reality. n my opinion theres no better way to remain versatile and resourceful as a designer than to work on a project with tighter purse strings! And so, when the call came for Dear Evan Hansen, I felt it was exactly the kind of project I was looking for. Preproduction was set to start just one week after wrapping Suicide, so I settled in for six days of rest before would be tlanta-bound one again for Dear Evan. Somewhere between the beginning and the end of that week, the NBA announced it was suspending its season, Tom Hanks revealed unsettling news via Twitter—and by Friday, the world as we knew it had turned entirely upside down. Over the next of couple months, my life became a Groundhog Day-lie yle of gardening baing and taking our pup Peanut for more walks than his little legs have ever had. I missed life on set, and just when all of that gardening and baking was starting to get old, I got a call from the produtions eeutive produer at niversal Studios. He said the studio was considering getting just one movie fully up and running that summer, and that movie was Dear Evan Hansen. He asked if my team and I would be up for returning to work during this unprecedented time and be willing to be some of the very fi rst in the industry to get back on set. True, this was at the initial height of the pandemi and eorgia wasnt neessarily nown for its strit masing and soial-distaning policies—but I also believed the industry needed to at least try to get back to work. After talking with the fearless Art Department (including Art Department coordinator Molly Flick, Art Director Brittany Hites, researcher Charlie Neufeld and Art PA Mary Shriner), I let the studio know that we were all up for the challenge. Just a few wees later nterprise dropped o an in my A. HANSEN HOME FIRST FLOOR. CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE BAXLEY USING MAYA, OCTANE AND PHOTOSHOP. B. BEN PLATT AND JULIANNE MOORE ON THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HANSEN HOME. PRODUCTION STILL. C. HANSEN HOME FIRST FLOOR. SKETCHUP MODEL BY BRITTANY HITES. C