One thing I was not expecting for the 5th season of Search Party was creating an elevator to the center of the earth.
As a long time fan of the show I thought I had an idea of what kind of sets we would be working on: contemporary, millennial Brooklyn, slightly heightened and stylized in an off-beat-gesture-towards-surrealism.
me realizing wait…we are also doing sci-fi?
There was no part of me that was expecting to be working in the genre of sci-fi; in this case a fantastical elevator to the center of the earth.
Part of the fun of working on a show as zany as Search Party, however, is precisely these sorts of unannounced genre detours into sci-fi. I mean it is not everyday you get to work on a surprise elevator to the center of the earth for Jeff Goldblum!
This whole zany high-concept elevator and the surreal payoff is the kind of unexpected left turn that endears so many of us to love Search Party.
Most sci-fi jobs are big budget affairs because getting all the elements right to build something technical from imagination is not something you can usually do on the cheap. …and yet here we were a scrappy little comedy trying to do just that.
the reality of a scrappy little comedy trying to build an imagined elevator in the sniffing zone of technical futuristic fantastical.
So we had to get RESOURCEFUL.
We started with research brainstorming what sort of materials or elements we could get on the cheap on Craigslist or used otherwise that looked spaceship-like so we wouldn’t be building everything from scratch.
Thanks to the wonderfully creative Andrew Behm who came up with so many genius ideas like boating chairs for the seats and used rollercoaster handlebars.
This is my avatar for Andrew Behm’s inspired resourceful creative ideas.
THE CHAIRS
Working during a pandemic, however, also meant we were saddled with the same supply chain problems as the rest of the world.
hate to be that person but literally, supply chain amirite?
The boating chairs we ordered with a 4 week lead time (which is an insanely long lead time for productions schedules) and were still arriving late.
Despite Andrew and me calling the vendor literally everyday for updates, they could not tell us when the specific boating chairs the rest of the elevator was being build around would land, any tracking information, nor any estimation of when we would receive the chairs.
…even though when I bought them they gave us a definite date that was already 1 week past.
Everytime Andrew and I debriefed after calling the chair supplier.
Emergency Plan B
So then we had to go to an Emergency Plan B and I started calling the manufacturer of the boating seats directly, got in touch with one of their warehouse reps, and found 5x matching chairs in stock in a similar style and dimension as the original one we ordered.
The catch was we had to pick-up the chairs in Providence, RI which is a whole day of someone driving back and forth from New York City.
do we have the resources to go to Providence, RI? Not exactly. Do we need to? Yes.
These were desperate times so we decided to do it.
And of course, OF COURSE, the moment those 5x chairs landed at our stage back where we were building the elevator I got a call from the original vendor.
“Your chairs are here and ready for pick up now!”
“Your chairs are here and ready for pick up now!”
THE RESTRAINT BARS
You will notice in all these stills from the elevator scene that one set dressing element that is particularly prominent: the restraint bars securing each character in their seat.
One of the most fun parts of set decorating, is learning about a whole world of specialized vendors that otherwise I would never have the opportunity to intersect with.
In this case it was the world of rollercoaster and amusement park hardware and manufacturers.
We really wanted to find 5x matching meaty restraint bars so that the cast would have something to grip as they were being hurtled to the center of the earth and look like they were strapped into something serious.
Custom making 5x restraint bars and getting them covered with custom moulded foam was a bit out of the scope of our little comedy show’s budget and timeline (again our production was not set up as a sci-fi movie!) so I was on a mission to find someone who would sell me 5x matching rollercoaster restraint bars.
nothing like a good Mission Impossible mission to sink my teeth into.
This search started where all searches start: obsessive googling. …but when you know so little about an industry often times you don’t even know the correct phrases to google? I was googling “handlebars” and after a few phone calls I realized the right term is “restraint bar” or “shoulder harness.”
Once I got an idea of who the players were in the rollercoaster parts world I started calling around.
Sometimes when you explain to people outside of the TV production industry what you are looking for and why, they either:
quickly tell you they don’t have X or don’t do Y and hang up.
get tickled with the crazy goose hunt you are on and get intrigued.
are charmed for a moment that someone from show business is doing something as whimsical as making a fake elevator to the center of the earth while the actual earth burns during a dystopian pandemic.
When I’m in pursuit of something just out of reach and hard to find, I’m always hoping to find someone who is 2) or 3) or a combination of both of those, because then maybe they might help you out and hook you up with some of the deep knowledge they have on their specialized industry.
It is a little bit like cultivating a source if you were doing journalism…I think?
live footage of this process
I talked to people from all over the country working in amusement park ride manufacture and repair.
Anyways, after many phone calls criss-crossing the industry and the country I talked to a woman named Dori from a company called Rides-4-U right in New Jersey! No need to do crazy cross-continental shipping! I was getting excited.
She told me she didn’t have what we were looking for, but she was firmly in camp 2 & 3 and said she wanted to try and help me and would think of someone I should talk to.
me getting hopeful after meeting the angel Dori on the phone
I called Dori a few days later to check-in and she passed me the phone number of a 3rd generation molded foam and metal company in Pennsylvania where they often manufacture these exact things for rollercoasters and often have scrap seconds or extras.
When I called the number, the person who picked up the phone was so warm and casual and nice and in the background I could hear metal shop like sounds.
The man, Seth, told me oh sure they had lots of different restraint bars like that, in fact a bunch that didn’t pass inspection to use on a real rollercoaster
I told him THAT WAS PERFECT for our purposes of total make believe!
…could he send me a photo? Before I got my hopes up too high, I wanted to see what it is he had on hand since our world how it looks is of paramount importance.
When I got this photo sent to me during a tech scout in a decrepit Staten Island hospital I practically yelped from joy:
EXACTLY the type of thing we were looking for!
And then I got this beautiful email message:
The above is a hilarious line from one of our email exchanges that reads almost like a foreign language but that’s whats fun about diving deep into another industry’s lingo and arcana
Not only do they have them on hand, but he had 5x matching, and then came the moment of truth. I asked him how much they would cost worried that it might be out of our price range.
…but he was like “oh I can just give you these for free. they are basically trash to us.”
“oh I can just give you these for free. they are basically trash to us.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This was the moment I had been waiting for FOR WEEKS! Finding that needle in the haystack. That one magical person who not only has exactly what you need, 5x matching ones, but finds it fun and amusing to work with production on our quest to make fake things.
AND FOR FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Truly this is the high or scavenger hunting in set decorating that only happens every now and then.
There are of course many little triumphs when searching for things, but this type of open ended search of something so specific and niche taking you to weird corners of manufacturing is not that frequent.
The way I felt after securing those restraint bars for free.
THE HIGH! I was so pumped and floating around the production office.
Of course I insisted on paying something. A situation where I’m DELIGHTED to give someone money even if they are insisting it isn’t necessary. We finally settled on the token amount of what it would cost for the foam.
And afterwards I kept both Set and Dori updated as the elevator was being built, sending them periodic updates of the construction and photos, since they really helped make it happen and were in my mind stakeholders in this silly little set and I can’t wait to send them the stills from the episode.
That’s 10 people focused on 5 restraint bars baby!