Lyte HQ: Rainbows and Enlightenment Search Party Season 5
Not only was Lyte HQ ambitious in terms of scale and components needed for the narrative, the Lyte HQ set was also very important design and aesthetically wise for the tone of Season 5 of Search Party.
The Lyte HQ set had to embody the themes of enlightenment, millennial wellness influencer culture, cults, grandiose claims in tech startup culture, and the aesthetic of wellness in the 21st century explored this season.
Our small little 30-min comedy show had a few builds going on at the same time:
Portia’s Apartment Season 5 Redecoration
Portia’s Bedroom + Bathroom add ons
Tunnel’s Elevator to the Center of the Earth
While those three builds listed above were fairly ambitious for the scale of Search Party (a low-budget comedy!), nothing was as ambitious as Lyte HQ.
Here’s a little walkthrough of how the ideas, themes, mood of a set go from concept to actual physical space actors are running around in and which you see on screen:
CONCEPT AND DESIGN PROCESS OF LYTE HQ
We started with this mood board for the season that the show-runners Charles and SV shared with department heads.
HAHAHAHAA I actually printed out the Charles and SV Showrunner Pinterest mood board to hang on my office wall so I could look at it which is totally not the point of Pinterest and the scale of printing out a screenshot of a Pinterest board is hilarious. Post it note that Assistant Decorator Katie sweetly left for me in my office for scale.
And then Maggie takes all that mood board from the showrunners, what she knows needs to happen in these sets from the scripts, and designs the actual sets along with some of her own reference images to further flesh out the ideas.
Then I, as the Set Decorator, take Maggie’s designs and figure out how to find the furniture, decoration, hardware, and elements to bring the ideas to life from items in the real world.
For instance I found a matching set of these vintage Italian chairs at a salvage store in New Jersey and thought the curvilinear lines had the right vibe for our themes and the set and would be cool chairs for the disciples.
especially if we painted each of them the color corresponding to each disciple….
the scenic painting department did an amazing job. Love the way this turned out.
LYTE HQ UNDER CONSTRUCTION
And the Art Director Katie Fleming figures out how we are actually going to build out these ideas architecturally and construction wise:
The large collection of Lyte HQ construction plans collected in my office
See what I mean about construction site? Our great set dressing team hanging lights
Yuko the super talented scenic painter who headed up all of the beautiful paint work in these set.
Zach, a set dresser and I trying out placement ideas
Bo our Leadman is also a graphic designer and a careful and meticulous artisan and here he is putting a very specific Bo touch onto the set: hand gluing each sequins to create the ombre effect sequins fade out. The video Maggie took of Bo is on her instagram:
Working on a set like this is like working at a construction site and all the attendant loud noises and hubbub.
The place I went every time I needed to just recenter and go somewhere quiet and hide a little bit was the meditation room (handy to have one on set!). That was my happy place on the stage.
MEDITATION ROOM
I would sit in this hidden corner and this would be my view. Also I’m SO pleased with how this carpet turned out.
We couldn’t find wall-to-wall carpeting with the right outer space astral look I was imagining for this room, but Assistant Set Decorator Katie Lobel did find these rugs and I thought we could just seam them together to cover the space and the set dressers did a great job making that happen.
You only really see this room on screen when it is a hostage room. Originally there was a lot more scripted in here.
DISCIPLES BUNK BEDS
These six murphy beds for the disciples were practical and Katie Lobel did an excellent job finding great sheet sets and bedding to correspond to each disciple’s rainbow light color.
ALL THOSE CUSHIONS!
Since Dory became an “enlightened” guru cult leader, she’s meditating all the time we felt we needed meditation cushions and cushions in general all around Lyte
Maggie the Production Designer lounging amidst the cushions on set
What it looks like to buy all these cushions actually:
Katie our Assistant Decorator who found all these cushions in our perfect color palette sent me this hilarious photo of her loading up the cushions in our car after purchase for our set.
Product Placement Hall of Fame
This fabulous and the worlds most ergonomically comfortable desk chair from Fully.
Bo the Leadman and I would also take turns using this desk to actually work from.
Since this was intended to be an *~InFluEnCeR House we thought it would make sense for a bunch of groovy wellness products to be on the shelves for the disciple characters to ostensibly be making tiktoks and IG posts about (in addition to Enlightenment)…
Many thanks to the many different beautiful small companies who partnered with us to product place into our set so many precious items we could never afford on our own.
Also I’ve learned that Maggie is soooooooo good at reaching out to product placement and we had the extreme privilege to have Associate Producer Charlotte Gilbert help us out for a few weeks who is an absolute product placement GODDESS.
PICTURED IN THIS STILL: Three Gems tea sets, Glacce Crystal water bottles, Herbivore skin care products, and Vitruvi oil diffusers.
In this photo: Glacce Crystal water bottles, Herbivore skin care products, and Vitruvi oil diffusers, Seedlip spirits, and Lateral Objects cups, and Cusineart tea kettle and mini fridge.
LYTE LAB
Well if all of that in Lyte HQ was not enough we also had to do a whole scientific lab doing “cutting edge” research, animal cages, and a very special medicine cabinet.
another shout out to Fully for another product placement chair for Dr. Benny’s office desk
THAT MEDICINE CABINET
This was the before, when I had to send dimensions to our graphics and scenics teams. And like most of my “on-the-job” selfies, it incidentally also captures myself in a reflection while taking a measurement photo.
In order to have that beautiful 5.2 degrees C graphic that the wonderful Loren Kane made
I had to take the measurements and send them over…
I find this measurement selfie extra funny because it is like an accidental self-portrait on the job, I’ve decided it is actually the most appropriate work profile photo.
Loren also made little labels FOR EACH OF THOSE VIALS!
That’s it. It was a lot of work but when it all finally came together, we felt the way the characters do here seeing Lyte HQ for the first time.
Search Party Season 5 was a wild ride but it was also a ton of fun. Loved the way the series ended and will miss its particular flavor of absurd funny biting satire.