Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480624
4 2 P E R S P E C T I V E | S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2 Victor Castelli's promotion to Latin American Marketing Director was the whole premise for the family move to Miami. The scripts required his headquarters to include an executive office, two smaller offices, a bullpen, a conference room, an elevator and a break area. I used Eastern Airlines, the company where Claudia's father really worked, as inspiration for Starboard Headquarters, which meant placing them in a skyscraper above Miami's commercial waterfront. An expansive wall of windows required a very long backing that would usually dictate putting the set above the stage floor, but the cost of the unexpected apartment courtyard build and a very limited access to wood by that point meant something had to go. The set had to stand on the concrete floor. Luckily, Eastern Airlines had an affinity for brutalist architecture and was known for their buildings around the world. The style allowed me to solve the stage floor problem by placing the windows into deep concrete wells that masked the floor and backing edges. Plaster foreman Scott Von Feldt experimented with various sized aggregates to get the proper scale, then developed a method of hand-cutting grooves into concrete slabs to create the fluted and hammered style I wanted. We had a blast trying several methods that in the end looked great. The Starboard set came with another set of issues, too. The floor-to-ceiling glass. There were no ovens on the island large enough to temper the lengths needed, so all thirty-eight panels had to be sent to Miami to be tempered. Once they returned, the construction team had to design a system for gimbaling them, since the metal channels commonly used weren't available. They ended up modifying a type of metal door casing found in a warehouse on the other side of the island and tapping pins to the tops and bottoms that popped directly into the floor. It required some A. STARBOARD HQ. VECTORWORKS PLAN BY CHEYENNE BELL. B. STARBOARD HQ. BULLPEN. SET PHOTO. C. STARBOARD HQ. RECEPTION. SET PHOTO. D. STARBOARD HQ. FRANKS'S OFFICE. SET PHOTO. E. STARBOARD HQ. CEMENT TEXTURE SAMPLE BY PLASTERER SCOTT VON FELDT. F. HALLOWEEN STREET. SET PHOTO BY LAURA MAGRUDER. G. DRESSED GROCERY STORE LOCATION. SET PHOTO. H. FOOD COURT. DRESSED LOCATION. SET PHOTO. A B C D