Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1514626
The Church I came across an amazing website dedicated to the rural, historic churches of Georgia (https://www. hrcga.org/find-a-church/) and painstakingly went through the more than three hundred fifty churches organized by county. Eventually, I narrowed the list down to less than ten, three of which were in the vicinity of Savannah and the rest within two- and-a-half hours of Atlanta. We ended up with the Dorchester Presbyterian Church built in 1854, which was beautifully set in a grove of pine trees. The General Store/Miss Celie's Fancy Pants The general store build was an important one. It had to accommodate Celie and Nettie's apartment above the store, be dressed for 1909 and again for the 1940s, then changed over to Celie's Fancy Pants shop, which showcases the vibrant song and dance number "Miss Celie's Pants." This was a massive set dressing and graphics job. Larry's team was able to source an incredible number of period- appropriate products and items, replications and vintage signage from a local collector. The key from the beginning was to allow for enough height and levels in the general store to accommodate the choreography for the film's final dance number in Celie's shop. The performance space was pretty tight, so Larry fabricated all the rolling racks and placed most things on wheels so that they became elements that dancers could interact with. Mister's House Mister's house was probably the most difficult location to find, as well as one of the most crucial since a large portion of the story takes place in and around this house. John Latenser and I drove all over the countryside within a 90-minute radius of our offices at Blackhall Studios in Atlanta. There were some amazing houses, but most were too close to the main roads or neighboring homes; we even had to consider one that was condemned for mold and structural faults. Blitz and I felt that the house could have a certain scale but certainly not in an Antebellum style. There was a need for fields so the crew could plow and plant before filming that famous hillside covered with wildflowers and indigo from the 1985 film. John's team eventually came across an abandoned house on county-owned land that had been bequeathed to create a public park near Whitesburg. The house was called the Horace King House, named after an African American architect, engineer and bridge builder. The property was on a hill overlooking the floodplain of the nearby river, which was the perfect place for our greens team to plant the field of flowers, which they did three months before filming. The location was appropriately remote, with a meandering dirt road through the forest as its only way in. The house didn't have much of a second floor dictated by the script, so Set Designer Luis Hoyos worked in front and rear dormers, a rear kitchen and a porch addition that overlooked the rear garden where a lot of the exterior scenes take place. Art Director Carla Martinez oversaw all the greens work, location additions and aging, as well as the addition of outbuildings built to hide the necessary production needs of toilets and generators. Crew A. CHURCH. LOCATION DRESS. NEAR MIDWAY, GA. PRODUCTION STILL. B. GENERAL STORE. STAGE BUILD AT BLACKHALL STUDIOS, STAGE 8. SET PHOTO. C. MISTER'S HOUSE. HAND- DRAWN ELEVATION BY LUIS HOYOS. D. MISTER'S HOUSE EXTERIOR AND GARDEN. LOCATION WITH ADDITIONAL BUILDS. SET PHOTO. A B