Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
"unusual" plants designed by the set decoration department. The crew returned to that set several times during our shoot and had to virtually rebuild it every time as the humidity destroyed all the scenery! In all, the production created close to one hundred sets for the show, roughly eighty percent of which were built in our production complex. The show runners regularly joked that we had built every kind of set there was, and they weren't far off the truth. Along with the key sets, we built a variety of domestic interiors, a police station, mortuary, a haunted house, hidden basements, a county fair, crypt, dress shop, psychiatrist's office, antique shop, open air museum, publishers office, caves, secret libraries, fencing arenas, canoe races and the beautifully crafted Addams Family limousine— oh and a high school dance complete with blood spewing sprinklers, to name but a few! The latter of these presented the design team with more than a few challenges. Given that we needed a ballroom-sized space to stage the Rave'n and our budget was already stretched, we were slated to film this on location, a perfectly reasonable plan until you factor in the blood rain that wreaks havoc at the end of the dance. It proved to be extremely hard to find the right space and even harder to find one that would let Mark Scruton, Production Designer Adrian Curelea, Super vising Art Director Serban Porupca, Diana Ghinea, Silvia Nancu, Carmen Ratoi, Roxana Alexandru, Art Directors Andrei-Florian Popa, Alexandra Tudor, Ana Neag, Iulia Pasarica, Assistant Art Directors Madalina Ciosu, Tudor Iordachescu, Anca Iscru, Andreea Siminea, Set Designers Kan Muftic, Vlad Gheneli, Dermot Power, Jonathan Opgenhaffen, Kevin Hunter, Pietro Nume, Concept Artists Eusebiu Sirbu, Cristina Stefan, Tache Alexandru, Liviu Antonescu, Graphic Artists Rob Hepburn, David Morison, Set Decorators us do what we needed. At the eleventh hour, with decisions needing to be made, it dawned on me that given the nature of the dance and the finale, it would be possible to create an affordable and striking space on stage using only drapes and scenic elements. Given that the shoot for this had moved down the schedule, we cleared a bunch of redundant sets and created just enough room above an existing tank to build what we needed. After several false starts, months of stress and thousands of liters of fake blood used to horrifying effect, we very nearly missed the dulcet tones of The Cramps or a certain dance sequence taking shape! "..and the rest" to quote Charles Addams, "is taxidermy!" ADG D E