When you make jokes about cool church...

…God gets the last laugh!

Episode 5 of “The Other Two” season 2, takes place almost entirely inside a fictional “cool church” called “Christsong.” A ripe area for hilarious jokes and one of the sets we worked hardest to nail the very specific and unique vibe of the “cool church” phenomenon.

When I detail the true saga of dressing this set and finally filming it, you will see what I mean by “God gets the last laugh.” And by saga I mean S-A-G-A.

First joke to me, was when we scouted the rooftop pool party and baptism location in mid-Feburary with literal ice still on the ground:

you tell me we are going to film a pool party with actors in the water out here in a few weeks? Pictured on. the tech scout: Leadman Bo Wangkeo and Production Designer Maggie Ruder.

Ice or not, Maggie the production designer and the set decorating team got to work pulling references of the aesthetic of cool church mixed with a Coachella pool party (another touchstone mentioned in the script) to inspire and ground our design and decoration.

Maggie even found this INCREDIBLE research reference: a graphic designer who specializes in design for cool church and defining that aesthetic.

For instance for this very real magazine “Bible Study Magazine.”

Fast forward to mid-March on a nice sunny Friday when spring truly feels right around the corner, we are dressing the pool party set. We secure the valances we custom made and installed with zip ties crossing our fingers they will be secure over the weekend for when we film on Monday.

That Sunday cold winds were howling across New York City, and I only had one thought: I HOPE OUR VALANCES STAY PUT.

I kept thinking about how the maintenance workers at the pool said the winds can get so intense where the pool is that they have seen pool furniture and umbrellas lift right off the roof in the wind 😱.

I had a full body moment of anxiety even wondering if I should stop by the pool location (two boroughs away from where I live) to check on the valances and the set. But I was able to talk myself down and remind myself my grandma’s favorite saying “que sera sera.”

So I set my alarm for the next morning at 4am 😭 since we were scheduled to finish the pool set that morning before filming, said a small prayer for our valances and went to sleep.

Remember that saying “Beware the Ides of March?”

Monday March 15 was unseasonably cold. LIKE BELOW FREEZING COLD (25 F). ☠️ ☠️ ☠️Remember this is a pool scene where actors get inside the pool???

Here’s a little snapshot of the Art and Set Decoration team getting to work at 5am:

can you hear how cold that is?

Leadman Bo with set dressers Mina and Sean.

Regardless we all keep on gamely dressing the set getting it ready for filming or for someone to call off filming those scenes today (whichever comes first). Our fingers were literally freezing.

And then we get to the famous hurry-up-and-wait portion of tv making.

I’m extremely grateful everyone kept a good attitude going when it would have been perfectly understandable to be cranky at this point.

And finally we get the set finished! After those weeks of research and planning it has materialized before our eyes…

the whole pool party vibe makes it look so much warmer than it actually was. You can see more set photos here.

…and of course once everything was ready to go, the call was finally made to not shoot the pool party scenes that day. A VERY SENSIBLE DECISION.

You might think that’s what I meant by saga, but hahaha that’s only the beginning of the journey of dressing this set and what you finally see on screen in Episode 5.

We have decided to now film these pool party scenes a week later on March 23. Ok great. So we start taking everything down and securing it all to film again in a week.

On March 22, I had a tech scout, but I get a photo from the set dressers that everything is going well. It is even warm enough for one our set dressers Aaron to get in the pool to wrangle everything.

Things are looking great for filming the next day, but then all of a sudden Monday afternoon we get some abruptly shocking news: our production is shutting down for two weeks because of a COVID outbreak in our cast and crew. 😱.

So the next day we take down all the dressing again for two weeks later when we can film this scene finally…

When that time comes now, in early April…we get shut down AGAIN because of another COVID outbreak. (Yes, if you are keeping track at home that is THREE TIMES we have dressed this set only for weather or pandemic viral outbreak to prevent us from filming the scenes…an “Act of God” you might say?”)

Finally mid-April (at which point I’m no longer on this job because the next job I’m decorating has already started and I found another decorator to replace me to oversee the fourth time this set will be dressed) the pool scene (in wonderful warm weather) is finally shot.

More than 1 month later than originally planned, 4 times dressing and taking things down:

HALLELUJAH

To see more shots of this set, please see the portfolio section of my website here.

Ok, one little extra behind-the-scenes tidbit related to this set:

During one production meeting showrunner, creator, and writer Chris Kelly expressed his wish that not only would there be jokes in the lines and the set up of all the cool church scenes, but that visually each frame shot in these scenes would contain jokes from the wardrobe department, hair and makeup, props, and in the sets. In essence we were all coming together to really milk all the comedy potential from this premise.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, years of Sunday School, Bible Studies, Vacation Bible School I felt this was a challenge I was uniquely positioned to answer. So I started the wheels turning in the background of my mind of how we could add in some jokes in the decor details…

One weekend while going through Manhattan it dawned on me JESUS TURNING WINE INTO WATER! That should be the theme of our centerpieces in the VIP section of “Christsong” and the bar area near the pool.

Graphic Designer extraordinaire Loren Kane came up with these drink menus based on the idea.

You can also see the drink menus as centerpieces when we get into the VIP church members only party.

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.

"Here Today" is out in Theaters!

at one of my favorite theaters in NYC: Cinema 1, 2, 3 in midtown. It is in an unlikely location for perfection but I’m telling you it this truly one of the best movie theaters in NYC so when I passed by and saw they’re playing Here Today it was exciting for me!

“Here Today” is a movie directed by and starring Billy Crystal as well as Tiffany Haddish and I had the wonderful opportunity to decorate this movie with Production Designer Andrew Jackness.

You can see some of my favorite sets in the porfolio section of this website here.

Anyways we shot the movie in the fall of 2019, but with the COVID shutdowns, the producers wanted to wait to release the movie in theaters but in between we did have a cast and crew screening online in a zoom.

IT IS PRETTY CRAZY TO BE ON A ZOOM WITH TIFFANY HADDISH AT EACH OF OUR RESPECTIVE HOMES.

OR LIKE WITH BILLY CRYSTAL. THE BILLY CRYSTAL.

I know zoom group shots get really boring, but anyways here is one screen of our cast and crew “group photo.”

It isn’t the same thing as watching the credits roll in a theater and everyone cheering and screaming for each other but it was still fun to see the credits roll at home for this zoom screening.

Here’s the trailer if you want to check it out:

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

Back in the Office for "The Other Two"

Still a pandemic, but back in the office to finish decorating “The Other Two.” Much like when we were working on “The Flight Attendant,” “The Other Two” was in the middle of filming when NYC was shut down with the initial outbreak of COVID-19.

Maggie Ruder, the production designer reached out to join her to decorate the remainder of the season and I happily agreed as a fan of the show myself and eager to work with Maggie.

Because of COVID compliance, this room was slated for just an occupancy of 1, whereas in pre-VOID days easily a whole department would have been squeezed into this space.

Ok before you start wondering why I’m totally fetishizing this office I need you to know what production offices are usually like: whatever random suite of available offices happen to be empty at any given moment in New York City, a bunch of people crammed into a makeshift small space on folding tables and folding chairs sort of like a traveling caravan that sprouted overnight since most production offices are only occupied by the crew for a few months. Often windowless.

I’ve worked in so many weird and strange spots around NYC ranging from nice studio offices above the soundstage in Queens, to three rooms above a dentist’s office and liquor store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to lofts slated for destruction in Tribeca, to some producer’s family connection offices that are mostly empty in Rockefeller Center, to a WeWork office, to the bowels of an old decaying neglected floor in an office building in downtown Brooklyn…the list goes on but you get the idea.

For a bunch of people focused on beautifying and decorating interior spaces we are usually working out of the most uninspiring interior spaces you can think of. Luckily we are not usually in the office that much—part of what makes set decorating so fun: we are always out and about around the city.

So when I walked into my new office in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, my jaw dropped and pretty much knew this will probably the best office I will ever get. Also in large part because Maggie gave me this amazing office instead of taking it for herself which tells you almost everything you need to know about Maggie.

This is the view. !!!!!!!

As someone who basically gets paid to think about re-arranging furniture, obviously the first thing I did was move the desk so that when I was sitting I was looking out of the window not away from it (DUH).

This is how I my desk was oriented and how the wall behind me looked while we were in the thick of things in furniture selection and option

Since we were still very much in the thick of COVID and had regulations of the distance we were supposed to keep, I thought I could capitalize on all those big empty white walls and get a projectioner so we could look at photos and options large and sit a distance from each other to discuss some creative decision making.

the window sill became a handy place to consider fabric swatches for the plane set.

Hah some moody little winter shots while I was still smitten and in disbelief I got this wonderful huge office all to myself—which oddly is maybe one of the very few upsides of working through a pandemic.

Annie's Rooftop: A HOLLYWOOD HIGH STAKES CHASE!

Jess and me having a rare moment of time and leisure to be a little silly while dressing a set.

If you are wondering how they do this…(answer is above)

So one of the last sets I worked on for The Flight Attendant was Annie’s rooftop.

While pretty straightforward: it was more of a logistical challenge. The two biggest challenges being:

1. Enough outdoor flooring that would cover a huge outside rooftop and be safe for the actors to run on.

2. Some huge AC rooftop units like the ones on the top of big apartment buildings here in NYC but also big enough for the actors to hide behind.

Jessica Petruccelli, Emmy-Award Winning Set Decorator and occasional rooftop sweeper.

The flooring was a whole thing. The factory messed up, we had to find someone to drive the literal ton of rubber mats overnight from Ohio but thank heavens they arrived in time thank you to our wonderful vendor, old school New York business: Canal Rubber. There’s more drama related to installing this flooring but I’m not going to go into it here. Just know the flooring you absolutely didn’t notice on screen was A WHOLE THING.

It was such a debacle in our department that we decided the best inside joke wrap gift for our wonderful crew of set dressers (almost all of them ended up helping lay down this flooring) were some custom printed coasters using the same rubber flooring material.

The funnier story, for our purposes here, is the drama that surrounded the logistics of these two huge AC units that I bought used from a dealer in Florida.

Since we didn’t need ones that worked, and in fact preferred ones that were emptied out I was looking for used AC dealers. I called some in the tri-state area but none were as responsive as this guy Bob in Florida. I’m telling you if every vendor I worked with was as responsive and on top of it as Bob, set decorating would be a breeze.

I mean Bob even sent me a photo of the units we bought from him strapped onto the flat bed truck as it left his warehouse in Florida en route to us in New York City. He gave me the number of the driver who called me as he was leaving and I was basically in touch with the driver during their drive up.

So many things can go wrong on a long drive like that and man, the whole scene was depending on these very specific units to make it to us in time and in tact.

When the drivers hit NYC I breathed a big sigh of relief. …But then the driver called me an hour later saying he was having trouble finding our warehouse address. Our office and warehouse were in a fairly confusing section of Greenpoint, Brooklyn where addresses aren’t so prominent and the driver said he had never been to NYC before.

So I offered to drive over to meet him and personally escort him to our warehouse. I met the guys where they were waiting and drove slowly back to our warehouse so they could follow.

We were three blocks away and then…

Wait why was the truck stuck? And then I saw…

😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱

exactly how I felt

Yes, these AC units traveled all the way from Florida to Brooklyn and then in the last three blocks, THE LAST THREE BLOCKS, there was an accident.

It was so tragicomic the only real reaction was to laugh. The police basically had to help close down a street to facilitate the truck (with our AC units!) out, but as you can see from the set photos and on screen, they finally made it safely and on time to their intended final destination.

I sent a copy of this photo to Bob in Florida AND the super sweet and wonderful (and probably slightly traumatized) truck drivers who safely escorted these babies to their cinematic destination.

HOW DID WE KNOW we would have a parallel shot of Cassie and Miranda on the rooftop taking this photo before the crew even arrived to shoot this scene? I guess not only are we set decorators, Jess and I, are also able to see into the future!

Annie's Apartment

Annie’s Apartment in The Flight Attendant is hands down one of the most fun and challenging sets I’ve had the chance to work on to date (close competition is the main loft apartment in Russian Doll). It was a wonderful opportunity to play with an aesthetic I haven’t had much chance to indulge in for work yet and learn many new vendors.

I’m so grateful Jessica entrusted me to be her key collaborator on this set and we worked together very closely on each detail to bring Sara, the Production Designer’s, vision to life. Not to mention that basically everyone else on the set dec team pitched in on some aspect of this pretty epic set that had a lot of custom made elements.

This is what the process of consolidating our options and putting together all the elements looked like in the office.

L to R: Christine Foley, Art Director; Jessica Petruccelli, Emmy-Award Winning Set Decorator :); my laptop and water bottle; Sara K White, Production Designer.

Part of the decoration process Jess and I enjoy using is making boards so we can see how everything is going to work together.

There were so many custom elements, which is always challenging on our production timelines, but I think one that really stands out is the curved transparent shower in the middle of the room (as scripted!). You can read more about the custom elements Sara and Jess talk about in their Architectural Digest interview (yes, so fancy right?).

Thankfully, the other Assistant Set Decorator, Jeanelle gave me a tip of a guy she had worked with before to make a custom piece and he turned out to be the perfect contact for helping us making a custom curved shower door. Wow I was working on finalizing this custom shower wall exactly 1 year ago today.

I know earlier I talked about how sometimes you work on a set, and the parts you care about the most never show up on screen which is always a big bummer. Thankfully for Annie’s, we really see every last corner of the apartment. All our little details really have their moment in the sun on screen!

I love the custom painted HVAC pipes as a very inspired detail Sara came up with.

Another one of my favorite details on this set, are the round light switch plates and electrical outlets. Katie Lobell our Set Dec shopper found those! Those coat racks on the left, we were one short and nobody in America had them in stock. I had to order one FROM DENMARK which thankfully arrived in time.

A Crys Yin painting prominently featured!

If you are loving the photos of Annie’s set, there are more photos in the portfolio section here.

look even Buckley is impressed with the design and decoration in Annie’s apartment!

How Do You Make a Warehouse Look British? 🇬🇧

In episode 6 of The Flight Attendant on HBOMax, we get a few brief shots of Cecilia, Miranda’s associate, in an undisclosed warehouse. What you may or may not have realized is that even though this warehouse was actually located in Brooklyn, NYC it was scripted to be located in London.

So when Jess gave me the responsibility to do this set the first interesting question I pondered was, “how do you make a warehouse look British or that it is located in London?”

I mean if you are in a car and the scene is supposed to take place in London you just need the drivers side to be on the right and voila we have the visual cues we need.

But what about a warehouse? 🤔

The first thing I tried to do was google search as many permutations of the words “London warehouse” “warehouse in Britain” as I could. And believe it or not, the internet is not rife with photos of the insides of British warehouses, and even when they are it’s hard to see anything particularly British about them.

So then I started looking up warehouse shelving and solution companies based in the UK and combing through their brochures, catalogs, and websites to try to get some good reference photos. This method elucidated some good warehouse photos—but they were mostly very sterile looking, huge industrial scale warehouses that looked borderline like stock photos.

The ideal photo I was hoping for was a chaotic-in-the-middle-of-fulfilling-a-lot-of-orders warehouse on a Wednesday morning at 10am with lots of life layers and details I could study. I never found that photo of my dreams.

So I started thinking of ways we could express Britishness (or at least distinguish the space from an American counterpart) and this is what I came up with:

1. A4 paper

2. British office supplies—particularly those file holders I always see on British and European shows but which we don’t really use in America cause we use binders instead.

3. Some British snacks.

4. British style light switch and electrical outlet covers (which are very different since they are on a whole different voltage and outlet prong system).

5. British premiere league football (soccer) team paraphernalia.

Ultimately these are very small and specific details that most people wouldn’t notice on screen one way or another (we’ll get back to them later though). When you are doing a set that is 93% boxed air (literally), you gotta keep it interesting for yourself though.

A lot of the main work of this set was of course filling a completely empty room by finding the shelving, furniture, and a quantity of boxes, crates, and containers of varying sizes, color, and texture to make a convincing looking warehouse that also had visual interest. None of which (boxes, shelving, basic warehouse furniture) was that distinguishable between British vs. American.

Warehouse Before

Warehouse After—93% boxed air.

I also gave myself the added challenge of not using ULINE (for political reasons) for this set—when definitely this is a set MEANT for ordering from ULINE. It would have definitely been the easiest and most straightforward way to get the great majority of shopping done fast and cheap. And normally I advocate for not making things more complicated than they need to be, but…in this case no.

I mean just that above was enough to keep me busy (its the quantity and volume I was talking about!). When you have an empty room, you really gotta make the calculations to make sure you are going to have enough stuff to fill the space with enough variation to look natural and interesting.

The worst fear of all decorators is to be dressing a set and realizing you don’t have enough stuff and no time (or money left) to get it. I wish I had the picture of the paper I used to calculate and plan each shelf ahead of time to make sure we had enough things to fill all the space but I definitely threw that away.

So after I got that taken care of Jess supported me on my mission to find all the British details listed above.

1. A4 Paper.

   I special ordered a carton of A4 paper from a paper supplier to use for all paperwork and printed signs in the warehouse.

Living in Asia for 10 years (for my first career), one of the weird small frustrating things I encountered is how standardized paper sizes outside of the US are different from what we use in the US (haha America likes to do that). So my American folders, document covers, and binders wouldn’t work with the local document sizes. If you want to learn everything about American letter size paper vs. A4, click here.

I thought this was a fun detail that yeah absolutely nobody will notice at home and likely not even the actors, yet it brought a level of authentic realism to the set that at least Jess and I could enjoy knowing.

2. British Office Supplies

I got in there looking for the British equivalent of Staples and scrolled through all their inventory to see what actually looked different than what I would find at Staples, and I discovered quite a lot actually!

This was August during COVID so shipping times and fulfillment were dicey especially for an international order. I even reached out to a few British office supply companies to see if they would work with me on shipping times. They all said no, but one guy suggested Amazon.co.uk which was 💡.

A glimpse of my Amazon.co.uk order (there was more not pictured here too!)

👀 some of the British office supplies from the order? To me those yellow pens are emblematic because they look very un-American to me. You might notice the British electrical cover and some British snacks in here too (we will get to that in a second).

You might be thinking 🧐 “wait a minute, I don’t ever remember seeing this desk in the warehouse…” Which I unfortunately have to say “yes 😔, sadly we never even see this part of the room at all on screen in the final cut!” (The angles that were scouted were not the same ones that ended up on screen in the final cut of the episode).

This actually happens all the time in our work, and 🤷🏻‍♀️ you gotta be doing it for the love of the game and the enjoyment of the process. Because besides that we have very little control of what ultimately ends up on screen after the final edit.

anyways here’s another angle of the desk with all the A4 paper, imported British office supplies and British snacks…

On one hand, it was a slight blessing in disguise because the biggest pieces of distinctive British (and all European actually) office supplies that are visibly different than American ones were the document file holders they use instead of the binders we Americans use.

The ones I ordered got held up, our filming date got pushed earlier, so in the end they didn’t arrive in time 😭.. So we ended up having to use some binders (and it was killing me on the inside because I knew they weren’t right and we had ordered the right ones they just weren’t here on time!). Well turns out either way you never saw the shelf where the document file holders should have gone.

3. Some British snacks

This one was pretty easy, I knew there was a British food importer in Connecticut, and just ordered some snacks off their website, and called them to make sure the shipping would arrive in time. Any food item you catch on screen is from them!

4. British style light switch and electrical outlet covers

You might have noticed from the above image of my Amazon.co.uk order that it included two outlet plate covers. Anyone who has traveled to the UK will realize, hmm we speak the same language, share a lot of cultural heritage, and yet I can’t charge my cellphone here without getting a voltage adapter…

Covering up all the American outlets with British outlet covers seemed like an easy win and way to convey visually this warehouse is in LONDON.

5. British premiere league football (soccer) team paraphernalia.

This idea to communicate British-ness was not only seemingly low-hanging fruit in displaying a different sports culture than America, but it was also intended as a tribute to one of Jess and my favorite prop house warehouse workers: Josh at State Supply Props.

When State Supply was at their Harlem location, Josh’s workspace at the loading dock was a living altar to the Mets. He had so much sports fan paraphernalia hanging up everywhere so we thought it would be fun to make the British warehouse loading dock character’s working space an homage to Josh just with a British football team.

Turns out WarnerMedia’s legal team only gave me the ok to put up ONE branded British football team fan item…so I tried to chose wisely and we put it here:

That’s a British football team scarf hanging over the bulletin board…do you know what team?

Now of course, which team should our warehouse worker character support was a whole thing. As an American and someone who pays so little attention to sports, I had no sense of what fandom of each team signified. Even though I don’t really pay attention to sports, I do understand the many unsaid and understood signifiers of a Yankees fan v.s a Mets fan in NYC.

So I turned to the internet to try and figure out what team would make sense for our warehouse worker, and stumbled upon this wonderful gem from Reddit:

I found this breakdown hilarious despite its…shall we say crudeness. I double checked this with a British friend who said it was startlingly accurate.

“White van drivers called Tony” sounded like exactly the profile of the character I was thinking of, so West Ham it was!

AND YOU ACTUALLY GET TO SEE THE WEST HAM SCARF ON SCREEN!

Those boxes behind Cecilia were custom printed and had kg and cm units of measurement.

BONUS!

Oh one last bonus one: if you notice all these boxes have the weights in kg and dimensions in cm because the rest of the world (including the UK) uses the metric system. We had these boxes custom printed and I asked our graphic designer, Ambika to please make sure the dimensions were in metric.

I’m 100% aware that 0 people watching the show noticed any of these details I went through painstaking trouble to realize and now just recount to you, but I’m so grateful Jess gave me the space and encouragement to do it anyway.

I mean, a lot of times these small decorating details are just for the actors or ourselves or the abstract belief that even if they aren’t noticed explicitly the sum total of their presence creates an overall tangible feeling of authentic natural realism.

Like I said earlier, you gotta be doing it for the love of the game and the enjoyment of the process so that even if the work doesn’t ultimately appear on screen or get noticed by viewers, at least you can be proud of the work.