Everyone's Real Homes

I’m on Day 17 of being stuck at home here in NYC.

It has been a real rollercoaster of anxiety, occasional moments of joyful laughter, and just all the emotions. But one thing I have really been enjoying in these 17 days of being at home, alone, together is all the videos and images people are sharing of themselves in their regular-un-prepped-for-a-photoshoot homes all around the world.

Getting access to so many normal people and images of their everyday lived-in homes has been a real treasure trove for me. I’m loving it on an anthropological level, a design level, and a human level. I love seeing all the little details, what art they chose to hang, what things are left out, what cords are hanging out where, and how they arrange their furniture to actually use their rooms—basically all the little details we try to recreate in a set when we decorate it.

For the first movie I ever decorated “Trouble,” I was struggling to put in what we call the “life layer” of a set. The life layer is the magical pixie dust we sprinkle onto sets to make it look like a naturalistic lived-in environment that a real human occupies and not the fictional set that a bunch of people were paid to create (which is in fact the reality hahah).

Life layer is the stray paperclips on an office desk, or the strange accumulation of earrings next to tissues and a cup with a loose subscription card from a magazine on your nightstand, or how layers of post-its are arrayed on a bulletin board. It is always a fun and challenging part of finishing dressing a set: to make this look as realistic, natural, and unconsidered (even though it is totally considered often 3+ people working on it together) as possible.

When I was struggling with life layer on “Trouble” I called an older more experienced decorator, the very kind and generous Karin Wiesel Holmes who was the set decorator for “Girls” and “Sex and the City” (I was an Art PA for Season 6 of Girls for little bit). Karin gave me some ideas and then told me this nugget of wisdom: “just think about all the things you would tidy up or put away when guests come over” as a guiding principle for life layer. I always think about this when I get stuck on life layer now. (Thanks Karin!)

So the great thing about all these videos and photos people are sharing of themselves stuck at home around the world during the spread of COVID-19, is you get an unvarnished view into peoples homes FULL OF LIFE LAYER. I mean maybe they did some tidying up before they hit record, but it still looks way more natural than most interiors we get access to in magazines, shows, and publications that showcase interiors.

Because most interior photoshoots of homes in interior design magazines are TOTAL FICTION. It took a team of many professionals to make it look like that for the shoot and often it is not even what the featured celebrity’s home actually looks like day to day. I heard a rumor from a friend in the industry about how the cover shoot of highly regarded New York actress’ home for a super prestigious and popular interior design magazine involved a decorator colleague sourcing and bringing in and swapping out new furniture and etc just for the shoot. Like I said, total fiction.

Also I subscribed to some of the premier interior design magazines and realized instead of inspiring me they actually bum me out. Because it is less about creative interiors expressing personality and interesting off-beat combinations or telling a story through design but about expressing wealth, prestige, generating “aspiration” and maintaining status quo “good taste.” barf emoji.

What I sometimes fantasize about it is creating a magazine of normal people interiors as a balm to that barf emoji. Like everyday people and how they create solutions for small space in their homes, or have off-beat design styles, or decorate their homes in a way that does not look like a generic instagram or catalog photo. Often I get stuck at the issue of “but how do you get that access???” and make sure people don’t self-consciously clean up before you arrive to take photos? It is such a human impulse to want to put your best foot forward and hide the things that make you feel less-than.

And that’s where all the self-quarantine, socially distanced, on lockdown because of COVID-19 videos and photos people have been sharing from around the world comes in. All of a sudden a wealth of images and glimpses into regular everyday peoples homes! People who decorated without a team of professionals guiding “their taste.” People who set up their home to make them feel comfortable, cozy, and as an expression of their passions and interests. AND I’M LOVING IT.

The last reason I’m loving it (hahah this turned out way longer than I expected) is because it also now this precious catalog of reference photos. Set decorators are always on the hunt and collecting good reference photos to help us re-create realistic interiors true to the character and setting of the story in the script. We study reference photos together with the production designer and try to catch key details from often grainy small photos that we will then try to find somewhere to then dress in to our set.

I feel like I always spend a good amount of time ingesting and really digesting reference photos whenever I start work on a set so that it can guide me when I’m out shopping and looking for things and particularly when it comes time to dress the set. And not just for period pieces, but contemporary sets too.

Whenever I see a good “reference set” in the wild, like a store’s cash register that has a lot of good little details, or an office with a lot of great layered memos and post-its on the wall, I snap a photo and treasure that little reference. Closely observing the mundane details of life like on an almost anthropological level to re-create is one of my favorite parts of set decorating work. And now with the all the homes people are filming themselves in, it is like a wonderful encyclopedic catalogue of reference photos of contemporary life.

Sigh, just writing this is making me miss the work of set decorating. …but it’s going to be while.

I’ll try to update this post later with photo examples of the interiors I’ve been loving getting a glimpse of while at home these last 16 days.