Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1495092
The interior would be shot in every episode, so the Art Department had to design a space to give different directors many options. This had to be a house that flowed, where the actors could go upstairs, downstairs, through the rooms, and the audience could follow. With the large cast, we wanted as much flexibility and fluidity for camera as possible. To that end, no room ends in a wall. There's always a door or open arch or bit of hall that leads to another room or hall beyond. On the second floor, all bedrooms open to the surrounding balcony hall and into adjacent rooms. With a matching front porch on stage, the ins and outs could be staged either at the location or on stage to keep it all seamless. On one stage, the crew built all the downstair's rooms and full height staircase to the second floor with a surrounding balcony hall and bedroom doors. We stitched the second floor to the ground floor by replicating the second-floor balcony halls and all the bedrooms on another stage on a six-foot platform, with a portion of the staircase going down. Nathan Ogilvie was the Art Director and Jim Wallis was the Set Designer on this intricate, highly detailed set, and they did a brilliant job. Diana Stoughton, the decorator, and her team did a stunning job dressing it. The painters were unstoppable, sanding and waxing windowsills and door frames for days. The end result was subtle, layered and aged, like a house that had been used by people long before the Peaches moved in. Rockford Tool and Screw Western Pennsylvania is rife with dead and decrepit factories, so the production was hopeful we'd find one that could be the basis of Rockford Tool and Screw, where some of the main characters worked. After a long search, we found an old factory that was just closing with not too much modern equipment to hide. We began designing that interior, but when they found a buyer, the location deal fell apart. We needed to pivot quickly. We realized the solution was in front of us—the warehouses we were shooting in had a good building for this; unfortunately, it was our mill. We moved construction (grumbling just a bit) to another space and built out the factory in a now empty warehouse. The Art Department did a deep dive on research for this set—not just about factory architecture and period technology, but how they altered production for the war, moving from mundane items to planes, tanks and armaments. Occasionally, I'll discover a photo that unlocks an entire set for me—some combination of action, attitude and architecture that clicks. We found wonderful research of WWII women factory workers. There was one series of photos that showed women assembling new airplane fuselages. Once we saw that, we knew that had to be our factory, those were our characters riveting those shiny steel fuselages. D. PEACHES' HOUSE SECOND-FLOOR LANDING. SET PHOTO. E. PEACHES' HOUSE LIVING ROOM. SET PHOTO. F. PEACHES' HOUSE DINING ROOM WALLPAPER IN THE ORIGINAL 1920S SAMPLE BOOK, FROM DIANA STOUGHTON'S TROVE OF WALLPAPER RESEARCH. G. PEACHES' HOUSE LIVING ROOM. PRODUCTION STILL. H. WWII AIRPLANE FACTORY RESEARCH. F G H