Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521244
4 8 P E R S P E C T I V E | M AY / J U N E 2 0 2 4 In adapting anything from a strong source material into a film one is faced with a basic question of how faithful to be to the original work. When Jonathan Nolan approached me about designing a series based on the video game Fallout, it was the first thing I asked. He generously said something to the effect of "see what you think." I vaguely knew that the game had an exaggerated and somewhat comic retro-futuristic look. This is a far cry from the clean monochromatic futurism that we used for Westworld, so my first inclination was leaning toward making a cleaner, more stripped-down version of the look in the game. But I had to get to really know the material before I made that call. I was in New York and already had a great team of people going as we had been in development on another Amazon project also for Jonathan Nolan. I turned to researcher Nara DeMuro for help to get me into the world of Fallout. I quickly came to understand that the game had a very dense and epic visual history with a worldwide fan base. Nara turned me onto the many fan-generated YouTube posts that were a wealth of information. Many of these posts were well produced and obviously took a good deal of time to put together. I could see how much the game story and design meant to these fans. I also realized that a good percentage of the audience would scrutinize every design choice. G a m e O n T H E R E T R O - F U T U R E W O R L D O F F A L L O U T B Y H O WA R D C U M M I N G S , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A A. EXT. VAULT 33 DOOR, ILLUSTRATION BY THANG LE, BASED ON A LOCATION IN NAMIBIA AT AN ABANDONED MINING FACILITY. PROGRAMS USED MODO, OCTANE AND PHOTOSHOP. B. EXT. VAULT 33 DOOR, PRODUCTION STILL, THE SOUTH AFRICAN AND NAMIBIAN TEAMS CREATED AND DRESSED THE SET WITH A PARTIAL VAULT ENTRANCE AND ELEMENTS OF AN LONG AGO DESTROYED SANTA MONICA PIER, INCLUDING MUMMIFIED BODIES A LA POMPEII.