Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1449234
Art Director Elizabeth Cummings had recently purchased a house and still had access to the MLS real estate listings website. Hearing we had just lost the perfect location, she began surfi ng the site. Within moments, she was sending me pictures of what became The House That Keeps on Giving. Truly, the perfect location, it was a 120-year- old Tudor revival time capsule. Variously stuck in di erent eras, from 0 to 0 to 0, all of its wear and tear was wonderfully embraced. Perfectly peeling turn-of-the-century wallpaper, with just the right accents of water damage here and there. Threadbare seamed carpet shredded to nothingness as it ran up the master staircase. Hand stenciled paint aking so badly as to appear to drip down from the low expanse of beams in the dining room. The house was equally amazingly furnished. As though the last guest of a cocktail party in June of 2 had ust stumbled out the door. And to top it all o , I learned from the amaingly interesting and generous homeowner that scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's last fi lm, Family Plot, had been shot there, and with much of the existing décor. As homage to Mr. Hitchcock, the series used the same red velvet couch seen in Julia Rainbird's home in the therapist's o ce set. Fastforward six months. It's midMay 202. he pilot's in the can, and the show has been picked up. The beginning of principal photography is set for July 7. The White Papers had been negotiated and COID ReturntoWork protocols were in place. The entire town is beyond busy jamming out content as fast as possible. Other than the pilot, this was the fi rst proect I had worked on since the pandemic shutdown. I knew some materials were in short supply or were taking longer to receive, but I had no notion of how deeply devastated the supply chain had become. I could not imagine how that, coupled the volume of work in town, would challenge our show. Moving from the pilot to the series, the Phelps' house would be recreated on stage. Je Astrof and I worked to hammer down on what we didn't get from shooting at the house location, and what other spaces would be needed to tell the story. The existing kitchen on location was one of the only rooms that really did not work. We ended up shooting around it with long lenses and through D E F G