Starting a New Job: Kaleidoscope (formerly known as Jigsaw)

Starting the way all jobs start nowadays: with some serious Covid Testing. Jan 2022, the first Omicron wave is sweeping the nation, everyone is coming down with Covid, so things were extra strict at work.

With our Penthouse Offices (hah) with a view in Bushwick! We were one of the few productions in the brand new Netflix studios in Bushwick, Brooklyn which were really nice.

The best office roommate: Jessica Petruccelli herself!!!! We had a grand time working together again in the same office room as we have on at least 7 other projects.

The Other Two S 2, Episode 9-- A Perfect Episode

toasting to a perfect episode The Other Two style

All of Season Two of “The Other Two” on HBOMax is laugh out loud hilarious, but I think Episode 9, “Chase & Pat Are Killing It” is a perfect episode of the specific type of humor The Other Two excels at: joke filled ridiculous situations that tenderly humiliate the characters while perfectly satirizing American pop culture and celebrity media to ultimately pay off with pathos and and affection for the characters.

It is also an episode with A LOT of sets!

Here are some little behind the scenes moments on some of them in the order they appear on screen.

the episode starts with Brooke and Cary flying First Class from New York City to LA

our challenge was to try and elevate a very old 1970’s plane set into something that could come somewhere in whiffing distance of a contemporary First Class Cabin.

Katie Lobel, the Assistant Set Decorator, and I both worked on The Flight Attendant, so we both knew a little bit about plane sets…but I’ll just say that the budget for The Flight Attendant and The Other Two are not the same at all. Think the difference of ground altitude and cruising altitude (a difference of 33,000 feet yet the numerical difference in budget is way more than $33,000).

Anyways so we had to get resourceful we thought changing some textiles would be a good bang for buck (we reupholstered the flight attendant’s chair, made custom curtains, and used fabric to recover the wall panels, and made custom seat headrests), screens and screen holders, and all the little details (magazine holders, safety cards, headphone cases etc) that make a space a believable plane.

evaluating fabric swatches for the plane cabin in the office.

I’m sure when you look at this photo you notice all the feet and perhaps not the custom curtains that are a nice tonal contrast to the fabric covering that wall or the custom embroidered and cut seat headrest pieces.

This is the crew dressing the set posing for a photo to send to the showrunners so they would see how the scripted feet gag might work.

Next set is the Sauna at the LA Hotel Brooke and Cary are staying at where Brooke runs into Alessia Cara. I can take no credit for the actual LA Hotel they filmed in because they filmed that in LA.

We built this sauna set on a stage in New York, and addition to our fancy sconces getting some on screen time I was pleased some sauna specific details we splurged on (because they are relatively small details they were something of an indulgence for a low budget comedy show) made it on screen!

our fancy sauna rock heater

The luxe sauna bucket and ladle and you can also see the bank of spa lockers we bought secondhand which was the first purchase I made for season 2.

When a set is more spare (like a sauna) each little detail matters sort of how like when you are cooking a simple recipe the quality of each ingredient matters more.

The next run of sets is when Cary visits a bunch of lawyers in LA for help in his photo going viral predicament. We were going to see three different lawyers offices, and while they were all filmed at actual NYC lawyers offices in midtown we were supposed to figure out a way to telegraph LA in the set dressing.

We came up with three different personas for each lawyer’s office based on stereotypes of LA and found artwork and set dressing details to flesh out these ideas:

1. a hiking outdoorsy lawyer

2. a health and wellness lawyer

3. a surfer who is really in to Japanese culture

I’m sorry to say you don’t see on screen much of what we brought in art or set dressing wise to create these personas for lawyer 1 or 2 (they even had real LA Legal magazines on their desks!), but you do see some of that surfer who is really into Japanese culture in this lawyer’s office:

somehow the cactus that was in the hiking outdoorsy lawyer’s office got moved into this set during filming. alas, have learned to try my best to let go once I leave set. anyways I’m sure most everyone like myself was most preoccupied with squealing at the Bowen Yang cameo.

Ok the next set that was super fun to work on was the underwear party nightclub.

To fully appreciate it I need you to go back to March 3, 2021 when most of us in NYC had been confined to our homes for almost a year. The idea of going to a packed nightclub was an exotic forbidden thought or a far distant memory.

In the vacuum of dance parties and crowded venues of fun, we stepped into an empty Elsewhere which had been vacant for a year to set up the LA nightclub set.

what it looked like when I arrived to the location to start dressing the set.

Yes, the stairs in the video are the ones you see on screen here:

Elsewhere provided some in-house technical staff to help us with lighting and etc and we had the fortune to work with the wonderful Dom Chang who indulged us, when I walked into a totally empty nightclub and thought well we should at least be pumping some tunes on their nice sound system while we work in here today.

please ignore my “middle aged mom visits the kids at the club” vibes.

Not only did Dom ask me what music I wanted (Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” being the most appropriate in this situation obviously) HE DID THE LIGHTS FOR US to truly imitate being in a club and it was such a moment of sheer joy for all of us party-gathering-starved-in-a-pandemic-New Yorkers.

We were waiting for the set dressing truck to land, so our locations contact Will, Leadman Bo, and I had some fun. (can you believe that? FUN!)

Ok one last video of our merriment: Will our locations person hamming it up and Dom taking it one step further by enhancing with lights.

Sometimes production work can be a long marathon of stress so whenever there are openings of fun and joy you got to snatch it up and marinate in it.

Our moment of dance club euphoria was such a bright spot in an otherwise pretty glum winter that it almost doesn’t bother me at all that the part of the club we spent the most work on and overcame a logistics feat to dress didn’t even make it on 😐.

Thank you Absolut for all the product placement!

That wraps it up for my Behind-the-Scenes blog posts for Season Two of “The Other Two.” Hope you enjoyed watching the season as much as I did!

You can read all the posts I wrote about working on “The Other Two” here.

Lance's Character Through His Apartment Artwork

now that Lance is a successful fashion and sneaker designer we wanted to flesh out his creative life as a designer at this workstation. For the sneaker drawings we rented the original sketches of one of our beloved set dressers Aaron.

Like many fans of “The Other Two” on HBOMax my favorite character is the lovable Lance Arroyo played by Josh Segarra, so when working on decorating his apartment set I wanted to give it a lot of intention and care.

We first see Lance’s apartment in Season 1, but since his character has really flourished and experienced a professional glow up (from Foot Locker salesperson to Fashion Designer showing a full collection) we wanted his apartment to reflect that evolution too while maintaining the fun playful spirit of Lance’s character.

Lance and Chase at Lance’s fashion show

Chase backstage with a rack of the colorful clothes from Lance’s collection behind him.

Lance’s fashion line is full of bright yellows and oranges, so we wanted that to be reflected in the apartment accents and artwork too. You see Lance’s apartment before you see any pieces from his fashion line or the fashion show, so it is color preview of sorts.

artwork on the shelf is an original from Elisa Lopez

Since Josh the actor is of Puerto Rican descent, I decided Lance Arroyo was too and we set about looking for young Puerto Rican, Latinx, and artists of color to find artwork for Lance’s apartment that we could rent for the set.

print outs of the artwork we sought out for Lance’s apartment from artists Elisa Lopez, Dana Robinson, Ronald Perez, Chanel Chiffon Thomas, and Alicia Degener hanging on the wall in my office so we could see how it might all work together.

To reflect the streetwear sensibility of Lance’s fashion collection I thought he would probably be inspired by artists with similar vibes in their artwork.

In this shot you can see Ronald Perez’s and Chanel Chiffon Thomas’s artwork.

We were really pumped to find artwork from young art Puerto Rican, Latinx, and Black artists that we were able to feature in the set and best of all which appeared on screen!

A great shot of Chanel Chiffon Thomas’ piece here.

Not always a guarantee, because we decorate a set but have no control over how the scenes are shot and ultimately how the episode is edited.

Ronald Perez’s much loved “Cafe Bustelo” piece gets a lot of screentime in this episode.

Working with independent artists to rent and showcase their artwork in sets is always a ton more work than renting from a prop house or printing from a stock photo service but the results are always ten times more gratifying and uniquely tailored to a character.

And in the case of Lance, totally worth it.

You really get to see Dana Robinson’s wonderful painting a lot when we are in those hilarious bathroom scenes.

one last piece of original artwork we rented directly from an artist (in this case Becca Lowry) for Lance’s backstage room at his Fashion Show in the finale of Season Two (Episode 10.)

Becca Lowry (https://beccalowry.com/home.html) sculpture hanging on the wall.

If you are an artist reading this who is interested in working together to let me rent your artwork for a future set please email me and I would love to find a way to work together!

When you make jokes about cool church...

…God gets the last laugh!

Episode 5 of “The Other Two” season 2, takes place almost entirely inside a fictional “cool church” called “Christsong.” A ripe area for hilarious jokes and one of the sets we worked hardest to nail the very specific and unique vibe of the “cool church” phenomenon.

When I detail the true saga of dressing this set and finally filming it, you will see what I mean by “God gets the last laugh.” And by saga I mean S-A-G-A.

First joke to me, was when we scouted the rooftop pool party and baptism location in mid-Feburary with literal ice still on the ground:

you tell me we are going to film a pool party with actors in the water out here in a few weeks? Pictured on. the tech scout: Leadman Bo Wangkeo and Production Designer Maggie Ruder.

Ice or not, Maggie the production designer and the set decorating team got to work pulling references of the aesthetic of cool church mixed with a Coachella pool party (another touchstone mentioned in the script) to inspire and ground our design and decoration.

Maggie even found this INCREDIBLE research reference: a graphic designer who specializes in design for cool church and defining that aesthetic.

For instance for this very real magazine “Bible Study Magazine.”

Fast forward to mid-March on a nice sunny Friday when spring truly feels right around the corner, we are dressing the pool party set. We secure the valances we custom made and installed with zip ties crossing our fingers they will be secure over the weekend for when we film on Monday.

That Sunday cold winds were howling across New York City, and I only had one thought: I HOPE OUR VALANCES STAY PUT.

I kept thinking about how the maintenance workers at the pool said the winds can get so intense where the pool is that they have seen pool furniture and umbrellas lift right off the roof in the wind 😱.

I had a full body moment of anxiety even wondering if I should stop by the pool location (two boroughs away from where I live) to check on the valances and the set. But I was able to talk myself down and remind myself my grandma’s favorite saying “que sera sera.”

So I set my alarm for the next morning at 4am 😭 since we were scheduled to finish the pool set that morning before filming, said a small prayer for our valances and went to sleep.

Remember that saying “Beware the Ides of March?”

Monday March 15 was unseasonably cold. LIKE BELOW FREEZING COLD (25 F). ☠️ ☠️ ☠️Remember this is a pool scene where actors get inside the pool???

Here’s a little snapshot of the Art and Set Decoration team getting to work at 5am:

can you hear how cold that is?

Leadman Bo with set dressers Mina and Sean.

Regardless we all keep on gamely dressing the set getting it ready for filming or for someone to call off filming those scenes today (whichever comes first). Our fingers were literally freezing.

And then we get to the famous hurry-up-and-wait portion of tv making.

I’m extremely grateful everyone kept a good attitude going when it would have been perfectly understandable to be cranky at this point.

And finally we get the set finished! After those weeks of research and planning it has materialized before our eyes…

the whole pool party vibe makes it look so much warmer than it actually was. You can see more set photos here.

…and of course once everything was ready to go, the call was finally made to not shoot the pool party scenes that day. A VERY SENSIBLE DECISION.

You might think that’s what I meant by saga, but hahaha that’s only the beginning of the journey of dressing this set and what you finally see on screen in Episode 5.

We have decided to now film these pool party scenes a week later on March 23. Ok great. So we start taking everything down and securing it all to film again in a week.

On March 22, I had a tech scout, but I get a photo from the set dressers that everything is going well. It is even warm enough for one our set dressers Aaron to get in the pool to wrangle everything.

Things are looking great for filming the next day, but then all of a sudden Monday afternoon we get some abruptly shocking news: our production is shutting down for two weeks because of a COVID outbreak in our cast and crew. 😱.

So the next day we take down all the dressing again for two weeks later when we can film this scene finally…

When that time comes now, in early April…we get shut down AGAIN because of another COVID outbreak. (Yes, if you are keeping track at home that is THREE TIMES we have dressed this set only for weather or pandemic viral outbreak to prevent us from filming the scenes…an “Act of God” you might say?”)

Finally mid-April (at which point I’m no longer on this job because the next job I’m decorating has already started and I found another decorator to replace me to oversee the fourth time this set will be dressed) the pool scene (in wonderful warm weather) is finally shot.

More than 1 month later than originally planned, 4 times dressing and taking things down:

HALLELUJAH

To see more shots of this set, please see the portfolio section of my website here.

Ok, one little extra behind-the-scenes tidbit related to this set:

During one production meeting showrunner, creator, and writer Chris Kelly expressed his wish that not only would there be jokes in the lines and the set up of all the cool church scenes, but that visually each frame shot in these scenes would contain jokes from the wardrobe department, hair and makeup, props, and in the sets. In essence we were all coming together to really milk all the comedy potential from this premise.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, years of Sunday School, Bible Studies, Vacation Bible School I felt this was a challenge I was uniquely positioned to answer. So I started the wheels turning in the background of my mind of how we could add in some jokes in the decor details…

One weekend while going through Manhattan it dawned on me JESUS TURNING WINE INTO WATER! That should be the theme of our centerpieces in the VIP section of “Christsong” and the bar area near the pool.

Graphic Designer extraordinaire Loren Kane came up with these drink menus based on the idea.

You can also see the drink menus as centerpieces when we get into the VIP church members only party.

"In the Heights" blood, sweat, tears and lots of joy

The set decorating team for “In the Heights” in the beauty salon set.

The beauty salon set during the number “No Me Diga.”

In the summer of 2019, I had the great opportunity to work on the movie version of the Broadway musical “In the Heights” with set decorator Andrew Baseman.

It was truly one of the most fun projects I have ever worked on and spending the summer immersed in the community of Washington Heights was such a treat and a joy.

set decoration team in the Bodega set

While working on “In the Heights” is absolutely one of the highlights of my set decorating career so far, it didn’t come without it’s blood, sweat, and tears. Literally:

BLOOD: when I fell down a flight of stairs in a dark basement at a used book store in my excitement to buy some used vintage Spanish-language cookbooks for Abuela’s home set. So not exactly blood, but bone spurs and arthritis in that ankle ever since…More on that saga later.

Sweat: in the peak of NYC summer is always hot, but I remember paritularly in early July when we were working on the set for Vanessa’s apartment we were in a third floor apartment with no air conditioning and it was BRUTAL. We survived by buying batches and batched of fruit popsicles from the bodega downstairs. I took this photo in my minivan when it felt like every pore in my body was sweating.

TEARS: ok, I don’t have a picture of moment where I felt hot tears of extreme frustration well up in a crammed chaotic fabric store where we were having a huge language barrier (it is totally my fault for living in America and not speaking Spanish—I really wish I had learned Spanish and not French in high school. Languages spoke at this store: Spanish and Korean, neither of which I speak) and I was under lots of time pressure to buy something quick and bring it back to set on a Friday at 4pm. Did i mention it was really hot that summer? At that moment I was like omg I feel so frustrated I feel like I’m going to cry, and then that line from Tina Fey’s memoir “Bossy Pants” floated through my mind where she said “if you feel like you’re going to cry, just cry, it freaks everyone out” It isn’t my proudest moment, but sadly yes, some tears were shed in the process of working on this movie.

There were also moments of transcendent joy and wonder too.

Like the time Andy and I were working on the Rosario Car Service set, and I looked out the window to the wondrous sight of a bunch of dancers practicing the opening number in the intersection in gorgeous perfect golden sunlight.

All the dancing was so captivating we stood outside to watch, and we couldn’t help but smile in awe. Pictured here with Assistant Art Director Brian Goodwin and Set Decorator Andy Basemen.

what we saw

What the camera saw

Or the time I met Andy at 4:30am in the dark one Monday morning to work on dressing the courtyard set for the dance number “Carnaval del Barrio” filming that day and got to stay and watch a few of the rehearsals.

I think “Carnaval del Barrio” is the most exuberant dance number in the whole movie and getting to see and feel some of that energy upfront firsthand is a memory I will always cherish.

It was also my first time seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda himself in person! (yes we are totally best friends now after quickly passing him and then seeing him watch rehearsals 100 feet away from where I was standing).

what we saw watching from one corner off set (I think you can actually see LMM in this photo).

what the camera saw

If you ever need a quick injection of pure joy, I highly recommend watching this dance number—I can almost guarantee it will have you smiling and wanting to dance

The whole Art + Set Decoration Department pictured in front of the stage built version of the boedega.

Thank you Andy for asking me to join the set decoration team! You can see many more great photos of the set on Andy’s website here.

You can watch the whole opening number and first 8 minutes of In the Heights yourself below:

Here Today Lake House Behind-the-Scenes Process

screenshot of an album in my phone to show what pieces we have been looking at or already bought for this set.

A little glimpse into the process of carefully accumulating the right pieces to put together the finished look of the Lake House in the feature film “Here Today” written, directed, and starring Billy Crystal with Tiffany Haddish.

There aren’t many scenes in the interior of Lake House but it is the emotional core of Billy Crystal’s character’s journey in the movie and the setting of the finale of the movie so I felt it was a very important set. Additionally it was a place that connected Billy Crystal’s character deeply to his first wife, so I wanted to feel like you could feel her there through the furnishings and decoration.

a snapshot of the items we bought for the lakehouse from one antiques store.

After the designer communicates their vision for the set, and we discuss color palettes and touchstones fro mood the first part of the job is to go out and find the furniture, items, and pieces (within budget) that will come together to create those ideas.

I went to a bunch of different vintage, antique, thrift, and secondhand furniture stores surrounding the New York City area scouring for the pieces that I thought would contribute to the vision for the Lake House interior Andrew and I discussed always keeping in mind who Billy Crystal’s character was and what would make sense for the story.

I like to keep track of what we have bought from all the dfferet scoures and how it might work together on a board. I am fully aware there is something called Pinterest which in theory would make this super easy to do digitally, but somehow it is not the same and more pleasingly productive for me on paper. it makes swapping around and playing with combinations easier actually.

The second part of the process is getting to the location where you will be filming and actually putting together all the items you have gathered and hoping all your planning and accumulating will actually work out in the way you were hoping.

Worst Case Scenario is you don’t have enough pieces or the ones you have don’t work and you need to buy more things but you are out of time and out of money. The second Worst Case Scenario is you have far too many things, have overbought thus used up a lot of the precious budget, and forced your poor set dresser colleagues to load up and carry in and out more heavy furniture then needed.

So yes, the Best Case Scenario is something like a Goldilocks situation you want to have enough items to play with and so you don’t have to go out buying more things but not too much it is a drain on resources.

Fortunately for this set we were close to best case scenario leaning on the more than needed side. This was a set I was worried about getting right and happy it came together the way it did. See below for the before and after.

Before (what the location looked like when we got there)

After

This angle on screen

To see more photos of the set and other sets in the movie, please visit my photo portfolio for Here Today here.

"Here Today" is out in Theaters!

at one of my favorite theaters in NYC: Cinema 1, 2, 3 in midtown. It is in an unlikely location for perfection but I’m telling you it this truly one of the best movie theaters in NYC so when I passed by and saw they’re playing Here Today it was exciting for me!

“Here Today” is a movie directed by and starring Billy Crystal as well as Tiffany Haddish and I had the wonderful opportunity to decorate this movie with Production Designer Andrew Jackness.

You can see some of my favorite sets in the porfolio section of this website here.

Anyways we shot the movie in the fall of 2019, but with the COVID shutdowns, the producers wanted to wait to release the movie in theaters but in between we did have a cast and crew screening online in a zoom.

IT IS PRETTY CRAZY TO BE ON A ZOOM WITH TIFFANY HADDISH AT EACH OF OUR RESPECTIVE HOMES.

OR LIKE WITH BILLY CRYSTAL. THE BILLY CRYSTAL.

I know zoom group shots get really boring, but anyways here is one screen of our cast and crew “group photo.”

It isn’t the same thing as watching the credits roll in a theater and everyone cheering and screaming for each other but it was still fun to see the credits roll at home for this zoom screening.

Here’s the trailer if you want to check it out:

Search Party Season 5

Very excited to decorate Season 5 of Search Party, a show I’m a big fan of and one I was about to decorate Season 2.

It’s a long story but now, four years later it has all realigned again and I get to decorate Season 5!

One fun fact is I get to stay in the same office I was using for The Other Two Season 2, as Maggie Ruder is the Production Designer for both and kindly asked me to stay on with her.

There are going to be some really fun sets so stay tuned for the behind-the-scenes stories and photos!

what the beginning of a season looks like on a calendar