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.

Click here see more set photos from all of Search Party Season 5.

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.

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.

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

Those Taxidermy Polar Bears

There was a quick little moment when Cassie is exploring the Sokolov Estate in Episode 3 “Funeralia” of The Flight Attendant and she comes across a huge taxidermy polar bear in one room. (above)

And then when Cassie and Max have successfully broken into Alex Sokolov’s apartment in Episode 5 “Other People’s Houses” we see a taxidermy polar bear cub in his apartment too—echo-ing the bigger one at his parents home. (below)

As the assistant decorator assigned responsibility for both of these sets (the Sokolov Estate and Alex’s Penthouse Apartment) it was, among other things, my job to find these these taxidermy polar bears.

One thing I learned early on was it was VERY difficult to find a real taxidermy polar bear in the United States for rental or even purchase because IT IS ILLEGAL to trade in taxidermy polar bears.

I found a guy in Canada who had some good looking taxidermy polar bears but then he told me, “I can’t rent it to you across the border in the US because it is illegal to trade in polar bear taxidermy.” Oh. (turns out the Canada-US-Polar Bear triangle is a whole thing)

Hunting Polar Bears has been illegal in the USA since 1973, with exceptions for the indigenous people of Alaska and I talked to one taxidermy specialist in California who told me that it is extremely difficult to find a real Polar Bear taxidermy after the 1940’s and the one they had available to rent was from 1936.

…the problem with that one is it looked like it was from the 1930’s…it was yellowing and a little bit mangy. It didn’t look like a taboo prized possession of some ultra rich people who dealt with dirty money.

In the end we went with one of our familiar taxidermy rental houses in the New York City area who had life size polar bear and polar cub models that weren’t actual taxidermy but very good substitutes that looked great on camera.

For a while, the polar cubs were in our office, though, because even though we had found the scripted polar bear taxidermy pieces, the cubs didn’t come with a stand so we had to build a custom stand for the cub.

View from my desk of Nick our Art PA helping tape out the surface area required to encompass the polar bear cub, with Katie our Set Dec Shopper in the background.

Nick a straight up legit dog whisperer bringing the same love and attention to our polar bear cub model.

Christine Foley (The Flight Attendant’s Awesome Art Director) talking with Katie Citti (one of The Flight Attendant’s Set Designers and Assistant Art Directors) about a design for the stand which Katie drew up for our construction team to build.

And VOILA! A (legal!) polar bear cub that looks like a legit taxidermy polar bear cub on a beautiful custom stand! (see below)

Hard to imagine how much work goes into these little details that appear on screen for a quick second right? I personally think that’s part of the total charm and fun of set decorating world—the crazy weird things you end up learning in your quest to find the right things either in the script or to flesh out a character’s imagined backstory.

You start out focusing on high-end penthouse masculine chic design furniture and then you end up learning all about the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. :)

If you do want to see more photos of the high-end penthouse masculine chic design Jess and I put together for Alex’s Penthouse set (polar bear cub) though, or the classic old money interiors we did for the Sokolov Estate (big polar bear) you can see more photos of the set here.