Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480624
In episode two, the severance brain surgery procedure is shown. The production had a neurosurgeon tech, Vijay Agarwal, who took us through the procedure—not that the severance chip would work, but we learned about how ketamine can take away the last hour of your memories. Pretty much all the surgical equipment in the scene is real. I thought: Let's make a rule that Lumon doesn't buy anything from outside vendors. They manufacture everything themselves underground, so no one would ever know what they're doing. Once they've invented the Lumon computer, it lasts forever. If they have their own computers, they'd be like iMacs in the '80s, interesting to look at, but practical. The tech was designed to actually work for the actors. The DP Jessica, set decorator Andrew Baseman and I and had a lot of conversations about how the show was going to be lit with practical lights as much as possible. Sometimes the shape of the lighting fixtures would give Jessica the lighting she wanted. The MDR Macrodata Refinement, aka the MDR, is the severed department where Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) work. They sit at right angles to each other at a square green desk, divided by movable partitions, in the middle of an enormous rectangular room with a green floor. Rectangular shapes are repeated throughout Lumon; it felt nice to have longer spaces. The MDR is basically a grassy playground. Dan wrote, "Four desks in a very large room." I wanted to make this a desk that they could interact with. We knew we were going to spend a lot of time here. This space had to be visually arresting. Jessica had ideas for framing in these office spaces that were quite wide—wide lens, eerie, mysterious. We decided the ceiling needed to be low, to feel claustrophobic. The employees are monitored on security cameras all the time. We C. CONFERENCE ROOM. ILLUSTRATION. D. & E. CONFERENCE ROOM SPEAKER AND MDR COMPUTER. CONCEPT DESIGN BY ERIC FEHLBERG USING FUSION 360 AND KEYSHOT. F. MACRODATA REFINEMENT AREA. ILLUSTRATION BY FREDI BUCH AND ERIC FEHLBERG. DESK BY DAVID SWAYZE. F C D E