Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538452
teaser game I used to play in which you searched a grid for the one letter that doesn't belong as time counted down to zero. The floating movement created a heightened sense of panic and unease. The action of refining the numbers grew in importance and was incorporated into many more story points over the two seasons. Though, of course, a computer screen is only part of the project. One of the greatest examples of being able to support the themes of Severance within the prop design was with the MDR keyboards. The keyboard offered an opportunity to add subliminal metaphors by omitting the Escape and Control keys, reinforcing the innies having no option of "escape." It spring- boarded us into creating and planting all sorts of fun Easter eggs into our prop creations. We would be on the lookout for every way to bifurcate an object or split it visually in half like Gemma's Christmas candle, Mark's fish tank, or the handle on the personalized trigger mugs the innies use for the coffee, which split—or severed—the hand in half. These metaphors for the severed consciousnesses are all designed intentionally to support the story and these characters. The next big prop to tackle was the breakroom table, a subtle, but effective Lumon psychological torture device. To open the conversation about the table's tech, I had brought in a few pieces of retro medical equipment. Of particular interest to Ben was a 1970's Cambridge VS-II portable EKG machine. We decided it should be the anchor of the table's working components. We wanted the device to function and record a printout of an EKG tracing as it originally did on thermal transfer rolls. The unit required an input signal, so I strapped an EKG simulator under the table and attached it to the Cambridge's leeds. There was much duct tape involved. The overhead projector was a vintage German model, and we could only find one that functioned and one that was defunct to build from. We rewired the functional one, adding a more powerful bulb. The cracked lens was swapped out, and the power cables had to be run under the bottom of the table to the power source. I designed the control panel to the right of the projector to have a mini-cassette player, a retractable microphone, power switches, and volume monitors. For Milchick's now iconic headphones, Ben chose from a lineup of headphones that included the winner, Sennheiser HD 414, reminding him of the ones he had in his childhood. The focal point of the rig was the four- foot-tall tempered glass mounted onto the table skinned with rear projector screen film. The glass caught the text projected off a transparency from the overhead projection. So, the projection was entirely practical onto the glass. A proud prop moment of completely practical functionality. Season 2 brought a whole new set of challenges. One of the greatest was that I was heavily involved in realizing the what and how of reintegration— the process of joining the outie and the innie consciousnesses. Not only how it visually looked but also the photo of the first experimental TMS trials as a starting point, I made our own homespun version. After much R&D, the best visual to describe the bifurcated brainwaves was through practical oscilloscopes. The CRTs of the oscilloscopes fit into our retro aesthetic, yet are still used for some applications today. I sourced and collected 12 vintage oscilloscopes and got them up and running, so we were able to input a "score" of dual wave form designs feeding into each scope from an off- camera setup. Adding another graphic visual was the Chladni plate in which the salt crystals vibrated randomly until a certain wave length was reached. Specific frequencies generating specific justification of how it worked. With a deep dive into the world of brain waves, consciousness, and transcranial magnetic stimulation, we consulted with a few experts, including Dr. Vijay Agrawal, Severance's neurosurgeon tech advisor, along with a Harvard professor at the cutting edge of brain wave research. With a reference One of the many computers built for Season 2 Reintegration homespun transcranial magnetic extinguisher