Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
Let me take you through the eight design dances for which I was principal rat keeper, gate builder and visual storyteller… Storage Wars, aka "Lot 36" Quite simply, the challenge here was to build an entire floor of a vast storage unit building in a few quick weeks that could encompass and support all the camera moves and lighting cues director Guillermo Navarro and DP Jeremy Benning needed to tell the story. It was a maze of a set that took the entire footprint of one of the production's large stages, with a second stage in which the crew built a horribly stained, fantastical and padded round room of the creature "Dottie." I think our biggest design success was leaving the top of the extensive storage corridors open to the studio with a mesh barrier covered in debris and dust bunnies. That, and the custom-built fluorescent (LED) lighting fixtures both gave director of photography the ability to control and paint the moods of the story in a wonderfully creepy manner. D C B