Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
Touring Concert Sets Brian: One of the more unique things about the show were all of the concerts, especially the massive stadium show set at Soldier Field. It was a particular challenge to tackle these environments, make them look period-accurate, and make them work for the camera. Jess: I have a friend who works in the concert world—I learned from him that tours usually are either theater tours, arena tours or stadium tours. We had to film in all three environments to be able to show the band's development. I wanted to create a design element that would be a through-line between the venues. After looking at research and understanding how our director and DP intended to shoot, I realized that a backdrop with a strong visual behind the band was going to be key. The next thing we had to address was that, because we are a TV show and not a real rock concert, so much happens backstage. It was important to me to elevate the backstage scenes, so we weren't just looking into blank walls. Brian brought up the possibility of using a scrim—the transparency of it would allow us to tie the on-stage and off-stage worlds together. I really think that it anchored the entire set because it allowed us to still see the band and equipment on stage in silhouette while focused on the backstage drama. Brian: We had the scrim hand-painted like they would have back then. Ed Strang and his team at Trio made the scrim for us, and he grew up painting drops for real bands during that era. It was really great to find people that had skills and knowledge from this world we were attempting to recreate. We are grateful for Alana Billingsley, Kristen Merlino and Tamlyn Wright who offered us advice on bringing the stage set to life and Hans Wert who became our staging supervisor for the stadium and arena tour sets. Jess: With Soldier Field, one of the many logistical challenges was figuring out how we were going to do this giant stage in the middle of a stadium, with ten days to get in, shoot and get out, with four of those days used exclusively for filming. On top of that, we had to find a vendor that could build a stage to our specifications, with a massive roof span and towers constructed from scaffolding, as it was done in the '70s. We ended up hiring Mountain D E F G