Lost on a Mountain in Maine: Fendler's Maine Home

Ruth and Don Sr. talk in the dining room of their home

another view of the same angle of the dining room when the light was looking particularly beautiful the morning of shooting

Of course the real pleasure and fun of Lost on a Mountain in Maine was decorating the Fender’s home set in 1939 rural Maine.

I got into set decorating to play with period interiors, so working on these interiors was a dream come true.

I’ll break down the details and fun we had by room.

DINING ROOM

The room at location before we decorated it:

we made custom curtains and this is the paper I used for measurements

A corner of the Set Dec office where we were trying out different fabrics, artwork, furniture, wallpaper and etc and how it might work together and in the location.

a close up on the period fabric we were able to find and us assessing how it looked next to the wallpaper at location and comparing it to images of 1930’s interiors.

This is the design image Darcy, the production designer, gave me at the beginning of the job of her dreams for the sheers in the home.

I’m happy to report that we were able to recreate them from scratch for the home and you can see them quite clearly in this shot of Donn Jr. in the living room that makes it in the movie!

We had put together most of the elements of the home, but I was still missing a lamp for the dining room and I had something very specific in my mind: something a little more rustic and textural to complement the other lamps we had already dressed in.

And then I saw this PERFECT lamp at a local antique store in Woodstock, NY where we were living and was so excited to get it for our set.

close-up of the lamp in the store and in the background behind Darcy while we were putting the finishing touches on the set. 

me so happy after finding it. 

you can see the lamp in the background behind Andrew, the director, on set with the kids prepping them for one scene. 

PARENTS BEDROOM

Another really beautiful image Darcy gave me at the beginning of the job is this painting.

This painting was her design for the parent’s bedroom and it was our challenge to capture the essence of the dreamy wistfulness of the image but also recreate that very special canopy.

I think in the end we did get there and this still captures it best:

Ruth Fendler (Caitlin Fitzgerald) in her bedroom 

I would like to note that we got that beautiful handmade fringe from a woman who owns a textile workshop in upstate New York where they still handloom and handmake fabric and trim on historic looms!

We didn’t really have the budget to commission handmade pure cotton trim from her for this job (this was a very low budget Tier 1 movie!) but got SO LUCKY that she had just enough leftover from another job she was willing to sell to us at a very discounted rate.

Then we bought the right diaphonous fabric from another store and sent it to one of my favorite drapers with a lot of photos and measurements and asked her to custom make this canopy for us.

another angle on the bedroom where you catch a corner of that custom canopy cascading down.

A little before and after of the Fendler Bedroom:

BEFORE

IN THE MIDDLE

yes we re-wallpapered this bedroom with period wallpaper!

AFTER!

canopy on!

we also made a custom cushion for this bay window

getting this window measurements precise were very important

picking the right period lace sheers to go with the wallpaper we picked out.

I feel like all the elements come together nicely here though you can barely see the pattern on the lace sheers.

LIVING ROOM

To me, the early american rag rug we found to rent is EVERYTHING with the perfect mix of rustic, americana, and colors and pattern and really pulled the set together.

One minor challenge was to find the right desk that fit perfectly in the space between the windows for the telephone for one of the key scenes in the home.

I found this desk at an antiques store but was unsure it was period accurate…

So I had to refer to the books I brought up with me and especially the 1920’s and 1930’s Sears Catalogues I ordered for the job.

Seeing some tables with that similar design in one of the 1930’s Sears Catalogues made me feel ok to get the table.

And here is the desk in the set.

so so so happy you get to see some of the rug on screen!

BROTHER’S BEDROOM

what is hard to see, is the the lace sheers are woodland scenes for some fun foreshadowing…

I think the way this set turned out was actually one of my favorites of the whole movie.

We made custom curtains, rented that rag rug which I think really worked in there and my favorite detail is working with a specialty quilt collector to find two period appropriate quilts.

The room before:

collecting various period toys and children’s books was so fun and I love the way the set dressers put it together in this corner.

one of the kid actors in the set.

And then the bed traveled to the forest for this magical scene where Donn imagines his bed while stumbling around the forest alone for days.

PORCH EXTERIOR

This was the first day of shooting and our first set and I was very happy with how all the outdoor porch elements came together.

This is from a 1930’s Sears catalogue and I loved how specific that shape of a kids bike was.

so was thrilled when we found one to rent that matched the shape AND that made it into the shot here!

Mean Girls Musical: Janis Garage

Clearer shot of this corner of Janis Garage in the shot above.

Working on Janis’ Garage set was my favorite set on Mean Girls.

Garages sets are challenging because you always need so much stuff but fun sets because they are so layered where you get to imagine many different aspects of a character.

In the case of the Janis Garage set, we wanted to show how it was her family’s storage space, a place where she has created a cozy hang out zone for friends, as well as her art studio.

What the area when we just started loading in furniture. Essentially it was an empty garage and we started with a blank slate.

In the original Mean Girls movie in 2004, we see some glimpses of Janis’ paintings as well as evidence of the garage being a storage space for an earlier childhood she has grown out of.

In the Mean Girls Musical Movie (2024) what has changed is now, Janis is a fiber artist “the lines are the thoughts and the string are the feelings.”

Additionally we wanted to create a purple and green color palette for the garage (which if you pay attention is her color palette for her costumes, hair and makeup too!).

So in the garage we created two art workstations for her: one painting, and one sewing.

JANIS’ Painting and Drawing Workstation

The painting workstation pictured in the background of the shot below where Damien explains what REALLY went down between Janis and Regina.

clearer shot of the angle behind Damien:

JANIS FIBER AND SEWING STATION

but first, a little popcorn moment then and now side by side.

Close-up on the area behind Damien and Janis’ heads for that popcorn moment.

One of my favorite elements which are hard to tell in the photos are the adorned black plastic bags with sewing and patches (I’ll get to who made all that art soon) hanging on the door.

HAWAIIAN EASTER EGGS IN JANIS’ GARAGE SET

For the 2024 Mean Girls movie, they updated full name of the character Janis to Janis ʻImi'ike (which like “Auli’i” is a name in native Hawiian language).

Since Auli’i Cravalho (Janis), is an outspoken native Hawaiian actress, we wanted Janis Garage space to reflect that too in subtle and meaningful way.

So I also ordered some artwork and little stickers from Hawaii to sprinkle the set with nods to both the character and actress’ history and lineage.

In the above photo you can see an orange kou flower and a taro plant sticker. Kou is a plant native to the Hawaiian islands and the taro plant is an important plant in Hawaiian mythology and diet.

There was also a bunch of artwork from artists in Hawaii of the taro plant and the ʻōhia lehua flower which is one of Hawaii’s most iconic tree and a native species of plant to the Hawaiian islands.

…as well as a Sonic Youth poster which we imagined was one of Janis’ parents posters.

MAKING ALL THAT ARTWORK

While Tina Fey’s daughter and one of the producer’s daughter did supply us with some great original artwork they made themselves, we also had very specific ideas of how we wanted Janis’ artwork to look throughout her garage based on Kelly’s (production designer) research and ideas for Janis.

This turned out to be way more labor intensive than I had ever imagined essentially running a custom artwork atelier for Janis Garage with multiple different artists and groups.

And because of copyright and legal clearances, it wasn’t enough for me to just give the artists some sample images of what we were hoping for, but also supply all the base images and materials from known cleared sources.

But I think the end results were so worth it!

I reached out to local fiber and textile artist groups to see if anyone was open to some artwork commissions that we could work closely with to craft what we were looking for and incorporate feedback as it was being made on our production timelines…a tall order I know.

So I was thrilled when I was able to connect with local fiber artist Kate Eggelston.

Not only did Kate make the incredible piece of ham quilt hanging on the back wall of the set she was able to create some truly fabulous stitched canvases based on a very specific idea, sensibility, and mood Kelly had in mind based on cleared historical images I could find that I felt had potential for acheiving our aims.

on the upper left hanging on the wall is a quilt of a piece of ham!

there are more! these are just the ones I could easily find photos of.

And then I reached out to a local art school to see if they had actual teenagers around the age of the character of the Janis character to make some collages and the plastic bags enhanced with fiber art.

So incredibly grateful we were able to work with two local branches of One River Art School who held special workshops to help us inspire their teen students to make the type of artwork we were looking for. I brought along sample images, supplied all the materials, and what the students made were INCREDIBLE!

I really felt having teens make the artwork would bring something intangibly important and more authentic for the artwork that is meant to be Janis’ throughout the set.

All the pieces that were chosen also received rental fees (which I hope is encouragement to some of these artists) just like any other artwork we rent for our sets and you can even see some of their artwork on screen.

one teacher went above and beyond and even created a little presentation on the movie Mean Girls for the students!

Just a sampling of some of the best pieces made with stock artwork images I brought along as well as patches and and string supplies for the plastic bags.

JANIS’ Garage goes on the road

Lastly, after we finished filming Janis’ Garage set at the actual garage, a modified version of it went on the road to facilitate the opening shot where the garage door opens on the plains of Kenya (New Jersey) during the musical number “A Cautionary Tale”.

So here is what it looks like to redress a portion of Janis’ Garage in the middle of New Jersey, I mean Kenya which is one of the moments where I thought, set decorating is sometimes hilariously absurd.

I look like a maniac because there were TONS of ticks in this area and I did not want Lyme disease!

10 new sets for 1 episode of AWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS

Episode 6 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens season 3 directed by Laura Murphy and written by Teresa Hsiao was quite the foray into possible alternate realities sort of like Nora is George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

While Episode 6 provided lots of fun sequences seeing each character in different “what if’s” it also meant A LOT of new sets for one episode. Like a lot, a lot for any TV show and especially a tiny low budget comedy like Nora from Queens.

Thanks to a SUPER set dec team: assistant set decorator Ashley Bradshaw, set dec buyer for the episode Casey Adams, and our trusty PA Kiran, we somehow put together 10 new sets in 1 week.

1. Lawyer Nora

2. Hot Tub Magnate Wally

3. Edmund’s Hi-Rise Kitchen that Grandma now lives in

4. Instagram Lin Family Home Kitchen

5. Instagram Lin Family Home Dining Room and Living Room

6. Instagram Lin Family Home Nora’s Bedroom

7. Nursing Home Grandma

8. Sad Bachelor Wally

9. Brenda’s Home

10. Fancy Living Room

LAWYER NORA

In the fantasy sequence where Nora does go to Kumon (lol) she becomes a high-powered lawyer with a Chinese middle aged lady’s boss girl haircut.

artwork by wonderful artist Crys Yin

we had a totally empty white room in which to fill with our best take on a high-powered millennial girl boss office.

what you can’t tell about the vertical blinds we put up for this wall of windows is that they have a really cool texture on them. We felt that vertical blinds quickly communicated the idea “office.”

lonely lawyer Nora drinking champagne alone with the back of faux high-powered photos and photos of cars like Mandy which she was desperately hoping for in the normal timeline of episode 306.

HOW THOSE PHOTOSHOPPED PHOTOS SAUSAGE IS MADE

If you are ever wondering how those faux photos are done, it is a whole process.

In our case, we came up with a list of high-powered problematic people for Nora to have photos with and then found their photos on a stock image site we had access to through production.

Then we float this idea with the director and writer (Laura and Teresa) and they tell us what they think in terms of the kind of people girlboss Nora would be proud to showcase photos of. They told us our first pull was too many political figures (I think we pulled Henry Kissinger as one of them) and to do more tech and rock stars.

We also had to look for photos that would be easy to photoshop Nora into to make it easier for our graphics people to do quickly. For instance that photo with Mark Zuckerberg is fairly easy to put another body into with a lot of space between the two people and black background.

Finally we settled on Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Drake, and a red carpet photo of the real Nora and Michelle Yeoh.

Then we printed out the stock photos we were going to use so that when they did a special photoshoot of Nora in the hair, makeup, and costume of Lawyer Nora (two days before we filmed the Lawyer Nora scenes) she would know how to pose to match the photos it would be photoshopped into.

Once those photos of Nora in hair, makeup, and costume are taken, our graphics team let by Dan-ah Kim have to frantically photoshop and print these photos so that we can put them into frames and have them on set to film these scenes.

Way more work than you were expecting right?

In this shot you can see the Elon Musk one.

MONOPOLY WALLY

Nora discovers that Wally has become a high-powered douchebag earning a fortune as a hot tub water bed magnate in this alternate reality.

For this set we also had an empty room with just a brick wall to work with.

In one iteration of the script Nora asks why Wally looks like the Monopoly man (I think they had to change the dialogue for copyright clearance reasons) but when we were prepping for the set we pulled reference images of the actual monopoly man (hahahha) and I think we matched the codes.

you can see where the business cards and holders are placed on the desk even though in the shot they are covered by one of the many young women fawning over this Hot Tub Water Bed Big Boss Wally.

my favorite detail: the business cards graphic artist Dan-ah Kim made for Wally!

EDMUND’S HI-RISE KITCHEN

In this sequence Grandma is living with Edmund in his fancy hi-rise kitchen where he lives as a successful actor.

Since the only other time we saw Edmund’s space this season is his trailer in ep 303 “Love and Order” we thought we would match the colors of his kitchen to the colors we used for that set, and even had some of the same art from that set in this set.

Since Edmund’s kitchen is sort of Grandma’s space too now that she lives with him, I thought she might also have a Chinese grocery store calendar here thanks to Dan-ah for making us another one.

we discussed with director Laura Murphy what would be on Edmund’s fridge and we decided he’s so full of himself it would be his headshot and a magnet that is another photo of himself and that’s it. 😂 (yes I’m old, this is my go-to laughing emoji)

This was a totally empty blank kitchen usually used for commercials so we had to totally fill it also.

Sad fact: one afternoon I went out and bought everything you see here and that night my production car was broken into and someone stole almost everything we bought. So I had to buy everything again a few days later. 😭

INSTAGRAM INFLUENCER LIN FAMILY HOME DINING ROOM AND LIVING ROOM

After Nora goes through that sequence of events above, she is presented with a whole other set of realities to contrast with that starting with her being married with a son and working as an instagram influencer.

Transforming the Lin Family Home was a real challenge. We had, and I’m not joking, 2-days to find, buy and rent all the furniture and decoration (Ashley the wonder woman Assistant Set Decorator MADE IT HAPPEN!) and 1.5 days to put it together in the set to change the rooms legibly enough that you would recognize the space but understand Nora had changed and had a different life

We were trying to make her new life bland, suburban, and “nice” in that boring IG way that people like sanitizing and remodeling their homes nowadays.

You can’t really see in this photo but the living room has different seating, drapes, and a whole kids toys section. Also Nora’s costume in this scene cracks me up so much—costume designer Michelle Li did such a great job.

How this same shot looked just last episode.

INSTAGRAM INFLUENCER LIN FAMILY HOME KITCHEN

How we changed the kitchen (if we had the resources to change the wallpaper we would have but sadly this isn’t that show).

How the kitchen normally looks.

before the light was installed, but still you get the idea of how sterile and different the kitchen has become.

the scenics even put a contact paper to change the kitchen counters to look like a marble countertop.

Those two cookbooks are my personal ones I brought from home the morning of filming and someone stole them. rude!

INSTAGRAM INFLUENCER NORA BEDROOM

her sanitized bedroom now a master bedroom for her miserable marriage.

how her bedroom normally looks

how this part of the room usually looks.

how it usually looks

During this quick storming out of Arthur you get a glimpse of this corner of the room

what this part of this room usually looks like

WORKING REALLY FAST

Like I said earlier, we only had 1.5 days to take down and properly store all the original decoration and dress-in the new look (only to have to re-dress it for future filming!) Which is possible but still a feat.

Since we had a great set dressing crew we were lucky everyone knew how to work quickly together.

when you are set dressing so fast you have no time to get a ladder

we stored all of the old Nora bedroom stuff in Grandma’s room and this is what that looked like 😱

Laura the Production Designer and me during our manic extreme set selection session where we had to decide everything for transforming the Lin Family Home in 1 hour so Ashley would have time to act on those decisions and put the rentals through and make the purchases.

WALLY’S BACHELOR PAD

the alternate reality where poor Wally never meets Brenda and lives on his own in a sad bachelor pad .

GRANDMA’S NURSING HOME

This was an empty room, and Casey did a great job bringing this idea to life.

Not only is this old TV with an episode of “Love and Order” playing a funny detail, this shot give you a glimpse at the many great small details Casey put into the set in this part of the room.

HOTEL/FANCY LIVING ROOM

You will see more of this room in the finale as this is where the episode ends “to be continued…” but we had to have this set ready by this episode.

I’ll talk more about this set in the next post but just know this was a build on a stage which is usually the type of set that is the most work for the art department.

when Nora meets Awkwafina….what?! stay tuned!

BRENDA’S HOME

exterior of Brenda’s Home which we tried to match the porch to with plants and a boho vibe with her eclectic colorful wardrobe.

When we first started Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, Production Designer Laura Miller and I discussed how Brenda’s home was the set she was most excited about for the season.

Brenda has been a character since Season 1 and she always has a clear artsy boho quirky style in her wardrobe and this would be our chance to flesh out her character with her home interior and exterior.

One of the first sets we started working on was Brenda’s gathering reference images and style inspiration based on our understanding of the character and matching the vibe of her wardrobe for the last three seasons.

snapshot from a pinterest board we started for her set from early early prep for the show.

reference images I had taped to my office wall including ideas for the design of the coffee table we had custom made as a stunt breakaway so that Wally could safely fall onto it and break it.

said breakaway coffee table, plus the hint (like the slightest hint) of the vases filled with roses.

Sadly we really didn’t see much on screen for this set, so here are some before and after shots of the sets we created for Brenda’s Home:

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER (imagine the vases underneath the sign filled with roses)

a hilarious shot of B.D. Wong as Wally

You can read more behind-the-scenes putting together the sets and everything related to Awkwafina is Nora from Queens Season 3 here.

And for fun with the real star of episode 306:

AN ELF house for Awkwafina is Nora from Queens

Elf House in Iceland

Probably my favorite set to decorate in Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens was “the Elf House,” the home of Alfur the elf played by Lea DeLaria in Episode 4 of Season 3, directed by Jordan Kim.

Even though most of the episode was actually filmed on location in Iceland, we filmed this Elf House in Queens, New York City!

that rug is an actual vintage Nordic rug from Sweden!

This is what this part of the room looked like before which is a NYC Parks Department building.

Gathering Inspiration

Where do you start to decorate a fantastical and fictional interior like an Elf House with tangible concrete things available in New York City 2022?

Our set decoration team together with Production Designer Laura Miller started by pulling visual research images to get some inspiration based on ideas like:

• historical Icelandic and Nordic interiors

• illustrations from Icelandic and Nordic fairytales

• how elf residences have been portrayed in other media (haha like the 2003 Will Ferrell movie Elf)

• images of other fictional interiors that seemed to have the right vibe (I was thinking a lot of Mr. Fox’s residence from The Fantastic Mr. Fox).

Hunting for what’s available

Next I visited New York City’s community of prop houses (where we rent furniture and props for shoots) to see what they had that might fit the aesthetic of our reference images.

For instance when visiting the prop house Eclectic Encore, I saw this rustic piano that seemed so perfectly whimsical I decided the Elf House needed it even though nowhere in the script or initial furniture plan does it specify “and we need an elf piano.”

The wonderful lamp is from the lighting prop house City Knickerbocker and everything else are items we bought in a store, online, or thrifted!

you can catch a tiny glimpse of the piano in the corner of the right of the frame!

After hunting and gathering we put together boards of how the items we selected as candidates for serving “elf house” might work together (or not) and finalized what we would rent or purchase.

We had three different zones we needed to outfit for the story: a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen area

working board for the Elf House kitchen and the bedroom

working board for the Elf House living room

how my desk at work looked that week hahahahah.

Kiran very nicely surprised me with a slice of cake from LADY M!

Set dressing time!

Then we had 1x day to bring all our stuff and transform that empty room into the Elf House you saw on screen. So at 7am we showed up with a truck full of furniture, a small army of set dressers, and got to work.

I wish I had photos of all our boxes and tables of set dressing laid out, outside when we started but sadly I don’t.

I do have this photo of in the midst of dressing and trying out different layouts of funiture.

They certainly don’t have American “Exit” signs in an Icelandic Elf House!

Here is leadman (head of the set dressers) Nate Obey checking out how removable the sign is, and our Shop Electrician Dan Eschuai removing the sign (behind set dresser Allen Ploenes posing with a flower).

FINISHED SET!

And all that work finally results with a finished set!

Living Room

Bedroom

Kitchen

What wasn’t working, were our window treatments. While I’m sure almost no viewer is paying attention, I’m sorry to say it still nags me!

There were a number of constraints that made it challenging for us to get the window treatments perfect:

• we couldn’t drill holes into the historical property’s wood

• we needed the window treatments to be very secure because Nora has to move a curtain to jump out the window

• we needed the window treatments on one side of the house to completely block the view so you couldn’t see the NYC traffic lightpost right outside the window.

I think if we were a bigger budget show we might have been able to come up with a construction facilitated solution but alas we aren’t so the only options we had of how to rig the window treatments made them sit a bit weird on the windows depending on your angle.

But I guess for their key starring moment here when Nora jumps out the window they looked fine and functioned perfectly.

Iceland exterior also in queens

while most of the episode’s exteriors are filmed on location in Iceland, there is one exterior shot that was actually filmed in a park in Queens!

here is a photo of the sign we brought in early morning to set up

Nora sitting on a rock with wildflowers near her feet?

this is set dressers Paddy and Sean and my water bottle with the faux rocks we rented, brought in, “planting” the wildflowers around Nora.

Our set decoration shopper Margie Verghese woke up VERY early this morning to go to the Manhattan wholesale flower market and find flowers and greens that could pass for Icelandic wildflowers, met us at the park which we got to when it was still dark out so set dressers Paddy and Sean, and I could try to enhance this little patch of a Queens park to look like Iceland.

It was a beautiful early fall morning so we were pretending to be cold here to match the Icelandic sign.

You can read more behind-the-scenes putting together the sets and everything related to Awkwafina is Nora from Queens Season 3 here.

KALEIDOSCOPE EPISODE VIOLET: 🔥 BURN IT ALL DOWN🔥!

Kaleidoscope, episode Violet

BABY’S FIRST BURN SET

Through working on the country club burn set in Episode Violet of Kaleidoscope on Netflix, I learned about so many of the technical considerations and details to create a controlled fire to effectively burn down a set on camera.

Working closely with set decorator Jessica Petruccelli and our crew’s special effects team I learned a lot about inflammable and flame retardant materials, how much plastic is sneakily in everything we buy nowadays, and how to buy a whole set that is essentially metal, glass, and 100% natural fibers or materials.

After realizing how much work and careful planning it consists of to create a dramatic fire sequence on screen, I look at all burn with a newfound appreciation of what it takes to make it.

here is the set plans with the fire plans drawn into it with highlighters and fire bars drawn out

As this plan suggests, we were building the country club cigar lounge, spirits library, hallways and office on a stage so that the filming of the fire could be in a controlled environment.

Building a set of this size with all flame retardant materials is an undertaking and here are some behind the scenes shots of how it looked being put together.

THE SPECIAL SET DECORATION ELEMENTS

• curtains that catch fire and burn

• bottles of alclohol and liquor that break and fuel the fire

• books that can burn

• paintings that can catch fire

• leather club chairs that can withstand fire.

• only metal Christmas decorations

this is on top of all the normal set decoration elements of furniture, flooring, hardware, lighting, and well all the decoration that we could only get in stone, metal, glass or all natural material.

CURTAINS

First we swatched a bunch of options of all natural fiber fabric in our desired color palettes and then we sent a few yards of each of the finalists to the Special Effects Key, Johan.

Johan then conducted burn tests on each fabric to see how the burnt and if there were any off-gas fumes that were not ideal.

These were the finalists of the two that burned the best:

yes, we are buying $109/yard fabric shipped from France just to burn 🥲

Roger lights up the panel of curtains to “buy time”

Then working together with our draper I sent the fabric, and these specifications for the curtains to be custom made with some triples and doubles so that there can be multiple takes of burning the curtains.

After the curtains were made we rigged them at a studio and coordinated with a special outside company to come and treat the curtains (and any set dressing made of natural fibers) with flame retardant chemicals.

a moment where you see the whole wall of curtains while Hannah is exploring the room.

Do you think she is thinking “ah yes, all natural fiber shipped directly from France by a fabric mill that Hermes owns and fastidiously treated with flame retardants”?

look at the fullness of those beautiful drapes!!!! now let’s burn them. 😈🔥

BOTTLES OF BOOZE (like a lot of them)

Lily at work at the country club wine cave tasting room and spirits library.

It is scripted that these scenes take place in a liquor library and wine cave and one of the important key actions is that bottles of wine of booze break and literally add fuel to the flame.

When Hannah goes to work with Lily

Well obviously we can’t use REAL alcohol otherwise it would be VERY flammable and really add fuel to the flame, so we had to go about creating hundreds of fake bottles of wine and liquor.

Like a pallet’s worth of bottles.

making vats of fake wine

Our winery workshop in the set dressing shop

Laying out how the bottles and boxes will cascade on the action in the set. These are custom crates made out of a special non-flammable material that is not wood but painted to look like it.

I don’t think you ever see this corner of the wine cave and spirits library on screen but you do see…

this corner which is a modified version of the idea above and more designed from dramatic breakaway of bottles.

BREAKAWAY BOTTLES

There is a special category of item for tv and movies called “breakaways” which are items that look like glass bottles or glass cups or tables which are really made of resins of plastic which look realistic when they break but are more safe to use than real glass to the actors or crew members who handle them.

For this burn sequence we needed a lot of different breakaways in different bottle shapes and decanter shapes in multiples for multiple takes so you could get this effect:

Breakaways are very delicate and pretty expensive so we set up a whole zone near the stage for our on set dressers that I think provided ample warning for people to be careful around all our precious breakaways.

I joked that the amount of signage and caution tape was just a physical representation of two women’s (mine and Jess’s) anxiety.

Each breakaway was calculated to approximate one of the real bottles of liquor or wine we had dressed in (but as mentioned before with just colored water) with multiples for multiple takes or in case of breakage in shipping or handling (they are very delicate).

now months after making this, this paper no longer makes sense to me, but it did when I made it 😂.

I also had to make a key for our on-set dressers so they knew where to find what bottle quickly for resetting the sets between takes.

CUSTOM FLAME RETARDANT CLUB CHAIRS

Since there were going to be leather club chairs in the burn zone, we needed to find many matching multiples of leather club chair made of all natural materials.

The only way to get the multiples we wanted and truly be sure of the materials was to get them custom made and stuffed only with flame retardant materials of rockwool and lined with panther felt.

When you work long enough on a set you start inadvertently wearing clothes that match it…

they really do look disproportionately deep even though it is indeed the printed dimension from the chairs we were imitating. sigh.

ONE OF THE CLUB CHAIRS VERY EFFECTIVELY AVOIDING FLAMES while the room burns down around it.

CERAMIC BOOKS TO BURN

I worked with an antique book seller to get enough old leather bound books to fit the look of our gentleman’s club cigar room.

But then for the burn scene, we also needed to get ceramic book spines made that could withstand the flames and look like the original antique books. So I worked with a fabricating workshop that helped us make these ceramic dupes.

original real ones below, and fake ceramic spines above.

This is a photo before the burn started actually and all the blackened surfaces are the work of the scenic department. We had 45 minutes to turn over the set from pristine to a burned out set and like a well trained army the whole art department descended upon the set doing what needed to be done to transform the space.

PRE-BURNED ARTWORK TO SWITCH OUT

For some reason I didn’t take more photos of this process. But basically we worked with our favorite framer to make 4x versions of some paintings (1x for the normal shot, 1x already pre-burned, 2x ready to burn on camera) and 2x versions of others: a pre-burn and a post-burn version.

As you can see on the photo above, we already had a painting and frame that the special effects team burned out ready to just switch to a post-burn version.

When picking the artwork, I came across this painting from the Metropolitan Museum Collection which I thought not only fit the right aesthetic and vibe of the room we were creating but the subject matter was some nice little story foreshadowing and thematically on point for the episode.

Sometimes being too on the nose is sort of lame, but in this case I think it worked as a subtle hint in the background and glad Production Designer Michael Bricker agreed!

“Hunting Dogs with Dead Hare,” 1857, Gustave Courbet, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Some more before and after

hey! loving the way the lattice design on the iron table is creating a beautiful pattern in the fire. If you knew how many back and forths were involved about the right table and the right pattern…

On screen as part of the country club, these photos are not from the burn set we built but a location we filmed at and Michael captured Jess and I in a rare moment of downtime waiting for the shooting crew to arrive.

It was actually not easy to find 10x matching standing candelabras and I had to work with a vendor to custom make them for us to rent!

we survived our first burn set!

While the burn sequence sits at the heart of Leo Pap’s motivations throughout the whole series, the burn sequence itself only lasts less than 4 minutes on screen.

Yes, a month of work by many many people and vendors working hard together with us totaling over thousands of hours together to prepare all the elements for a FOUR MINUTE on screen safe and cinematic burn.

🔥

Finding Those Restraint Bars for Tunnel's Elevator

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:

1. quickly tell you they don’t have X or don’t do Y and hang up.

2. get tickled with the crazy goose hunt you are on and get intrigued.

3. 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!

Portia's Season 5 Apartment on Search Party

Dory surprises the gang in Portia’s Season 5 apartment

As fans of Search Party know, Portia’s apartment gets a design transformation each season.

Portia’s Apartment design transformation Seasons 1-4

This season we had a lot of fun with Portia’s apartment.

Once we knew that Portia was no longer an actress and mourning her acting career was a plot point (it was a bigger plot point in earlier drafts of the script), Production Designer Maggie Ruder and I started talking about what that would mean for Portia’s apartment this season

A big personality mourning her glory days of being an actress of course calls to mind one iconic character and set: Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

hahha look at how over the top this interior is!

While Portia can be a little extra in a Norma Desmond-esque way, Search Party is still a low-budget comedy so we didn’t have the $ to go full excess and had to think up some resourceful ways to communicate the same vibes.

So we did a lot of visual research.

VISUAL RESEARCH

pulling references from Victorian mourning, modern neo-Gothic inspired interiors, Grey Gardens, and of course Sunset Boulevard.

I brought in some interior and design books from my collection that I felt were the vibe we were going for.

as you can see what had a lot of post-it notes of inspiration.

from Maggie’s design deck, that mantel photo is from the Syrie Maugham book.

You can see the Sunset Boulevard stair balustrade details we added in this shot!

we tried our best with the mantel and the oil painting of Portia and Eliot that has appeared in multiple seasons.

PORTIA’S FADED DAYS OF ACTRESS GLORY

The original from Sunset Boulevard

Finding the right collection of frames from a favorite vintage and salvage store

Collecting images and stills from past seasons from Portia’s various acting jobs was super fun.

you can see some of these photos which were spread over the windowsill of the two windows behind the couch

the silhouette of the frames make it in this shot

this is a terrible photo of when we were still working on the set, but allows you to see the photos on the windowsill.

This frame idea is a perfect example of a set dressing decoration element that had a lot of:

• intention (mimicking Norma Desmond’s own journey)

• thoughtfulness (combing the show’s archive for all of Portia’s past acting gigs) shouts to Sydney Barbara who did a ton of research!

• effort, and time (finding the right frames, matching image with frame, measuring all the dimensions, shout out to Andrew Behm!, our beloved graphic designer Loren Kane sizing and printing the photos to work, actually framing them in)

put into an idea that is at most a flicker in the background of the screen that absolutely no viewer can decipher…and yet totally worth it and so fun for us to do!

FURNITURE HUNT PROCESS

What my office wall looked like while we were hunting, gathering, and searching (SEARCH PARTY?) for the furniture pieces for Portia’s Apartment. The circled red part is all the rejects of furniture photos we won’t end up using.

narrowing down

some key furniture pieces we purchased found at five different locations of used furniture around the NYC metro area. Four of these will be modified by us in someway (painted, reupholstered, fringe swap) to make it work for the set.

Maybe you will recognize the furniture above when they were at the store in the finished sets below and some of the previous set photos in this post:

ADDING THAT DECORATION TWIST

Did someone say Re-Upholstering and FRINGE SWAP? (that’s like decorator candy)

a selection of fringe and trim

fabrics we decided on for reuphostering

Katie our Assistant Set Decorator who valiantly swatched fabrics, fringe, and trim around NYC while we have one of our many meetings to narrow down options. And a box of the best LaCroix flavor: apricot

THIS IS THE SAME ANGLE ON PORTIA’S APARTMENT

For more set photos, view this gallery of Search Party Season 5 set photos.

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!