The precinct set for ‘Gotham’ was three stories high. The ‘detectives’ were encouraged to personalize their desks with mementos like awards, snapshots, and other knickknacks. The set dressers even hid some old fax machines under the stairs.
The show ‘Succession’ actually rented out offices on the 70th floor of the World Trade Tower. When you see the city outside, that’s not a backdrop, that’s the real New York.
‘Sweetbitter’ built an entire restaurant, including the sidewalks and streets outside. Everything from kitchens to locker rooms to bathrooms.
The Sweetbitter set would be fascinating to see as an overhead layout, because I expect they arranged it for easier camera placement. Like how multi-camera sitcom houses and apartments are built deep but look cramped from the front.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is where they built those giant WW2 era battle ships. The factories are ten stories high and can cover acres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steiner_Studios
When I said it looked like a real restaurant, I mean that there was room enough for cars to drive by outside; there was a side walk leading to an entrance; there was an actual restaurant. It didn’t look like a film set; it looked like they had rebuilt an entire building inside a larger building.
And presumably they built it even larger than a real restaurant would be built, because cramped-looking spaces need enough extra room to fit a camera, and often a camera guy. It’s like describing night shoots. Darkness takes a lot of light to see.
I saw it with my own two eyes. It didn’t look like a film set; it looked exactly like an upscale NYC restaurant.
Ever since I started making Computer Games I started actually paying attention to the actual details of all kinds of sceneries (because it turns out there are a ton of nitty gritty details in the game space of even very stylized games) and now I really notice the production side of Movies and TV-Series.
It’s really impressive the level of detail many if not most go to when constructing the various sceneries in the “world” were the scenes take place, which is especially hard to pull of (IMHO) in Sci-Fi settings where they actually have to conceive all the gadgets, architecture and other elements that would populate such an imaginary world, rather than just base themselves on existing records (as one would, for example, when making a film that takes place in the 80s, not that the work that goes into many of those is any less massive).
If you can watch them, pay attention to the interior and exterior details in town scenes in the Star Wars - The Acolyte series or the various interiors of the Time Variance Authority in Loki.
when making a film that takes place in the 80s, not that the work that goes into many of those is any less massive
First 2 seasons of The Crown are so goddamn good for this. The costumes, props and sets are so impeccable I feel like my country has gained independence from England barely a decade ago.
Imagine the collosal amount of shit needed to pull off The Expanse.
The Expanse is one I find especially interesting because a lot of the work that goes into is in modelling 3D space ships and other space objects, which I also have to do for the game I’m working on, plus in a near future imaginary universe like that where you can’t just bullshit most of the Physics side under the cover of “it’s too advanced for our understanding” like in, for example, Star Trek, even the ship design has to follow some actual Engineering and Physics rules to be believable (rocket exhausts point back so ships have to flip to break, guns have to actually unfold and turn to the enemy, the ships have to actually have airlocks, interior storage systems AND even crew sitting have to take in account that the ship will be accelerating, decelerating and maneuvering with high G-forces, taking in account the actual absence of gravity when not under acceleration and so on) and I have a background in both Engineering and Physics so this kind of stuff really stands out for me.
Sure, a lot of things in there can still be bullshitted (such as ignoring the rules of mechanical engineering when it comes to resisting certain mechanical stresses and not really having the kind of design elements that are often present in vehicles to facilitate their construction rather than related to their use) plus as usual the computer UIs are bollocks, but none the less it’s a massive and impressive job.
At least some of that, presumably the foundations, was worked out in advance thanks to it being a tabletop RPG-turned-book series, so they didn’t have to do quite everything all at once.
like i’m pretty sure the “flip and burn” thing was established in the books, that’s not something the show’s crew had to figure out.
“You didn’t notice it… but your brain did.”
I was lucky enough to go to the Star Trek Experience in Vegas as a young teen, and I feel this to my core. For that handful of seconds when the doors open and you’re standing in the turbolift looking at a starship bridge in the middle of a battle, it was pure magic.
Lucky is accurate. I’m very jealous. I had a similar experience for a newer show but no moments of that wall being up. Always seeing the workings behind the scenes so you couldn’t really sink into it
So for a second he was Far Beyond the Stars?
