Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/891583
was missing. We had worked so hard and produced so many things, how could that be? Back at the office later that day, Jan was off working on the next set, but lead man Brent Rice was there. I said, "Let's look at the research. Something doesn't look right to me." And so it was that I noticed I had not designed the numbered cubes at the registers that focus your attention on where to pay. Aha! The signage needed that verticality. So, Brent and I hatched a plan. I would make the numbered cubes over the weekend from foamcore, and he would go to Home Depot to get some poles and metal sockets to hold them up. I printed out the numbers on Monday morning using heavyweight matte paper and wrapped them around the boxes. They were taken to the set and installed right before shooting. It made a huge difference in the space. Even though Jan had done a brilliant job, it just needed that finishing touch. Lesson? —Never be afraid to speak up if your intentions are pure and something seems amiss. Shopping for the shopping center. In addition to Karger's, the shopping center was a major player for my time on the movie. An old, beat-up location in North Hollywood was turned into a sparkling display of late 1950s retail design. There were at least eighteen different stores with multiple windows, which had to be decorated with signage, products and show cards. These included a dry cleaner, candy store, photography shop and tiki-bar. There were some that were only seen at a glancing angle, so we used minimal set dressing to identify them. Even though I designed a huge number of elements for the shopping center, as A grocery store, of course, also has a lot of signage. These fell roughly into three types: hand-painted 'specials' posters, the main store signs and point-of- purchase displays. For the hand-painted signs, I used a custom set of fonts I have developed from old books on show card writing and signage. Most computer fonts are too perfect and don't have the right quality for a period show, even if the type style is basically correct. I now have a collection of at least fifty fonts for different periods. Like the human hand, no matter how skilled, they are imperfect. A slight wobble here and there, and a little extension at the end of the brush stroke. I believe these little idiosyncrasies make all the difference. I give them a brush stroke effect in Photoshop to make them look as though they are hand-painted, and age them if necessary. You can see examples of this in the pickles sign, the exterior grocery advertising and the counter cards in the perfectly pink beauty parlor. The grocery store section signs were cut from one-inch Gatorfoam and mounted slightly away from the wall to give the space more dimension. Some of the point- of-purchase displays were bought and adapted; others were designed from scratch. All were based on period research. I showed up on the grocery store set a couple of days before shooting to see what we had accomplished. As I was looking around, I kept thinking something A. This pattern selected by Jan Pascale and Jim Bissell, was recreated in Illustrator and Photoshop, and printed on linoleum at Astek Wallcoverings. B. A shot of the Speedy Dry Cleaners window display at the shopping center. C. A beat-up old restaurant was turned into Tiki Tom's bar, a quintessential style of the 1950s and sixties. D. In this still from the film, you can see all the killer foods being employed by Julianne Moore's character, Margaret. E. The finished art for the peanut butter jar provided by property master Matt Cavaliero— one of the 'killer foods.' All the food labels were done in Adobe Illustrator. F. The finished art for a period milk carton. A B C