Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/820551
P E R S P E C T I V E | M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 7 59 been turned into a fully realized dance studio set with a main rehearsal room, an auxiliary wing, an interior hallway and a complete exterior alley installed outside the new wall of windows. Arrays of gimbaled mirrors, banks of fluorescent tubes and duct work overhead, built-in cubbyhole units, ballet barres, dusty plaques and dance crew banners all created a fully realized world. Now, every episode places key scenes in this accidental dance studio. So is Star actually a musical musical, where the story leaps off from reality and goes somewhere more fantastical? Of course, we track the girl group through a series of evermore glamorous performance venues, from a roadhouse dive bar in the pilot to a grand finale on the Honda Stage in episode twelve. Compare both bulb-outlined prosceniums and you'll see how they bookend the series. Most episodes have found ways to launch into the surreal, though not always in the way we had planned. An early red-velvet fantasy with the girl group in pink sequined gowns was shot for the pilot, but then cut when it's tone fought too much with the murder scene it was planned to intercut with. Happily, the creators found a new home for that sequence in episode six. For one girl's dream of heaven, a vision of her childhood apartment was created that appeared to float above the void. By the time the show aired, that floating bedroom was just outside of frame. Often a real place would transform for a musical number, as in a psych ward sequence that involved creating a patient's common room, hallways, a hydrotherapy room and padded cell for the girls to stomp through, where the aqua walls would match the orderlies' scrubs that matched the girls' thigh-high vinyl boots. A Hair Show performance became a tribute to 1970s television variety show decor. Recently, we had a great time building a Depression-era prison cellblock on a blood-red floor for one girl's fantasy of incarceration. From my first day in Atlanta, I've had an angel on my shoulder assembling the entire Art Department exclusively from Atlanta talent. Art Director Doug Fick has been the rock-solid right-brain yin to my flights- of-fancy yang. Every single set idea I've had, Doug has found a way to make happen. Set decorator Kristie Suffield has brought detail and nuance to every interior she's dressed, from the beaten-down backrooms and kitchens of the Salon Street houses, to the strip clubs and dressing rooms that track the girls' climb, to the high-end mansions of the Buckhead elite whom our girls dream of joining. And now a delicate word about race in the Star Art Department. Though the series features several white, mixed-race and latino leads, the vast majority of our starring cast is African-American. I myself am a proud Russian-Jewish white guy. If I were going Opposite page, top: Mr. Saklad's marker sketch for Derek's house. The set reused many architectural details from the salon interior next door, but wood trims were all stained oak with worn crackle finishes to suggest grandma's family took great care of this house over the decades. Inset: Derek's grandmother set the tone for this traditional living room and kitchen. The windows at left look directly into the first floor of the salon for great views onstage in both directions. Center: A preliminary marker concept sketch by Mr. Saklad for The Snooty Fox, the neighborhood hangout originally thought necessary to build as a permanent set. Inset: Carlton Copeland not only produced this beautiful rendering in SketchUp, Podium ® and Photoshop ® , but also a full set of draftings for this permanent set that never was to be. This page, left: The original plan for the "accidental" dance studio was just a four-wall rectangle for a few rehearsal scenes, shown here in Mr. Saklad's pen and marker sketches. Inset: The final construction included a proper sprung floor of oak hardwood, an entire auxiliary wing, an interior hallway, a full alley built outside the windows, and walls of rolling stretched Mylar mirror panels for infinite gimbaling and next to no weight.