Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538080
in the morning, flip a switch and shoot handheld continuously through the entire space all day long. Since the camera can be pointed anywhere and everywhere, the production felt compelled, without hesitation, to be authentic and accurate with every detail, large and small. A design of that scale required an extraordinary set decorator, Matt Callahan, and an incomparable property master, Rick Ladomade, and their teams. I've had the honor of working with these gentlemen for years. Within an emergency department's institutional normalcy, there are sedimentary layers of complexity and detail. They created a phenomenal level of verisimilitude—from mountains of correct equipment down to the P-Touch-labeled content of each medical cart drawer—unimpeachably echoing a real medical facility. As a first-season show, we had no established reputation, and equipping a trauma facility matching in size to any hospital in any urban center in this country meant hundreds of cold calls to real people to acquire millions of dollars of equipment and supplies. I consider Matt and Rick superheroes. I gathered many beloved colleagues to create this world. With a construction crew led by Dwayne Franks and Ed Nua, lead scenic Jason Paolone, plasterer Todd Bennet and adding Art Director Jacqueline Glynn, Set Designers Carolyn Quinn and Randy Wilkins, Graphic Designers Christopher Isenegger and Jason Cohen to the mix, all the while Thomas Zamora (an irreplaceable Art Department coordinator) keeping us in line, we made this thing on budget and on schedule. The sheer scale of the over 22,000-square- foot, fully immersive, embedded with lighting, thoroughly detailed emergency department for The Pitt is best understood by visiting the set. Short of that, to help facilitate understanding this unique design, there are links in the digital version of this issue to the photographic Matterport A. STAGE 22 LIGHTING CONSOLE LAYOUT. FIXTURES EMBEDDED IN DESIGN TOTAL 689 ON STAGES 22 AND 21. B. WALL OF HEROES ARE A NICKNAMED "CONJUNCTION JUNCTION" DUPLICATED ON STAGE 21 AND 22 CONNECTS TWO STAGES SEAMLESSLY. SET PHOTO BY KEN HABER. C. PEDES ROOM. EMOTIONAL EPICENTER OF DISTURBING EVENTS IN SEASON ONE. SET PHOTO BY KEN HABER. D. STAGE 22. PITTSBURGH TRAUMA MEDICAL CENTER. SOUTH CORRIDOR. SET PHOTO BY KEN HABER. E. STAGE 22. PITTSBURGH TRAUMA MEDICAL CENTER. DR. ROBBY'S 2020 COVID FLASHBACK SEQUENCE REDRESS. PRODUCTION STILL BY WARRICK PAGE/ HBO MAX. A B C