Finding the Time and the Space part 3 of 3

Okey dokey, so let's talk about the set design. Hopefully this will wrap up the series of reflections in a quicker manner than the last few posts, but lets see where it takes us. After talking about all the character and costume stuff, it really segued into this when things were moving. It was hard to really think about what to do with specific things like the apartments and lab until they were locked down and we saw what we were working with. James' apartment was the first location we had. Oh boy, that place. The sheer strategy it took to maneuver in that crammed room was like a training exercise for the rest of production.

Don't go so far away.

Yeah, it was tight in there. All of the equipment not being used was stuffed in the bathroom when not in use. Crew was outside roaming around or hiding in the room somewhere. It's both nice having a small space to work with but also can become quite claustrophobic with so many in there like a clown car. We knew we needed an apartment to go nuts with, and Mrs. Z got one for us! Once we first set foot in there, we snapped pictures and went to Goodwill for stuff we could furnish the place with.

Helping get an idea of what's there to work with.

Things like the American flag on the wall were quirky things we liked to add that would show the weirdness of the dude. Other random pieces are scattered around that are less noticeable. Messiness was one idea that took hold on both of James personal spaces. He's not a neat guy. He's got experiments lying around on the stove, he's got blueprints sitting around and notes wherever it'll remind him of what he needs to achieve. There's less care towards living comfortably for him. From there, Daniel, Tristen, Ethan and I made several trips back and forth adding stuff around to make it fit the world we were creating. Thing was, something seemed to be missing on the walls to bring it all in tighter.

The office.

We were trying to figure out what we needed later that night, and Mr. Z sold us on the idea of doing some Nagel inspired art and hanging it in James' apartment. It made sense to us for James to have some things like this in his apartment given what his character is. He's kinda trashy under it all. Daniel and I ended up pulling an all-nighter getting those two pieces done. Fun stuff when finally finished it, too. That's another whole story. But this was the night before day one of filming and gee were we wiped before it even began.

Part of James' apartment.

From there into the first day, we added stuff last minute to the room and all of the pictures on the wall fell down and needed to be put back up and oh gosh. There was this one clock on the wall, too... This one clock that would not stay up for that whole week. I don't like that clock. Not one bit.

I still want more TV's.

That very clock I was rearranging before the first take of the intense yelling and subsequent slap scene between James and Caroline. Quickly I dashed into the closet before they started rolling. It was really scary in there listening to all the yelling. It was dark, too. And smelly. But after the scene was over, Bryan, still in character, was opening drawers angrily in rage and he opened the door to the closet I was stashed away in. Of course, I happened to be leaning against the door so I started falling out like a dead body towards him. It scared the coked-out James Pratt out of Bryan's body!

Coming up with that NATRAM seal.

When that week was over Daniel, Bryan, Tristen and I disassembled the whole place like we were never there. Next location was pretty cool. The Foothills center served as the spot for the NATRAM building and worked out great. We didn't really do much there but add in the logo up on the wall. Daniel did the final version of that in GIMP and printed it out on regular printer paper and taped it up all meticulously.

Press conference.

Where the press conference scene was filmed, that was the very same location that auditions were held. It was a bit of a deja vu moment. Not much there to really do, but Mrs. Z cut up the fabric for the navy blue sheet behind James and the green screen stands were used to stand them up and the podium was borrowed from our old high school. Whatever goes.

James Pratt's filibuster.

Options were weighed trying to film at a real modern art exhibit, or even just do it guerrilla style in there but neither really proved viable so we ended up settling on the Z's garage. The garage housed an art exhibit with a bunch of random stuff I've done just hanging on the wall. That was pretty funny for me to see. One of the pieces on the wall was done the night before filming specifically for this scene. I made it really out there and nutty looking but stuck in some hints to another film by Daniel.

"This piece makes me feel like jelly."

The garage proved very versatile as we immediately used it the next night for the dance club scene and changed it into a smokey bar in the same night . Ultimately with the number of extras that are there, there's not a whole lot of room to see much of what's there but I stuck some records hanging on the wall and I helped Daniel with hanging those blue sheets from the ceiling. Disco ball and blue flashing lights for the time machine were strapped in several places effectively giving it a closed off feel when the lights went down. All those extras in the garage, though. That was another crazy night. But it actually worked out really well, which I'm glad for.

80s dance party in the garage!!

Down the line came a real stressful week were there were no locations for two pretty big sets. The lab and Felix's apartment. A church was needed, too. We really wanted a big and labbier looking place to work with but nothing was falling into place. A room in our old high school could have been good but it wasn't in the cards. Wish we could have worked with something bigger like that but you've gotta get creative about what you can do when it comes down to this. Crunch or be crunched, we settled on using a room in Daniel's house that we were given the permission to go to town on.

What we imagined, not what what was feasible.

After making it completely sparse, Ethan, Tristen and I scrambled to get the bedroom looking like a lab. We literally stumbled out of the house and into my car (which only seats two- WHERE DID ETHAN FIT?) and hit Tristen's house, my house, and Goodwill for whatever parts we had around that would work for a lab. I went into my dad's shed and picked out some pesticide thing, boxes to pad out the place, extension cords, folders, balloon pumps other random crap, we used a big wooden table slab-thing from Tristen.  A real mad dash, plus there was even a huge rainstorm on the way.

It's all smart science stuff, clearly.

We repurposed several pieces used before and they left me alone to do stuff to the space. It was coming together, actually. Everyone had their doubts it would work, but it wasn't too bad. Daniel filled the big blackboard full of mumbo-jumbo and I found a bunch of formulas and put them all over the place. I filled some of the test tubes with different colors to reflect some of the moods coming out of the different scenes as well. Daniel tinkered with the experiments lying around and broke apart an old radio. All worked out okay. Then it had to be broken down again.

James' lab

Immediately, the next set was still needed for the next day. Mrs. Z was trying to get some other options for the next apartment along with a church but nothing was clicking and time was once again out. The church clicked, though. Mr. Raiton was really great, he let us use his apartment in that moment and it was another thing that we made work out for us. There wasn't a whole lot of original props used for Felix's apartment, we were reusing some smaller stuff but there was the necessary trips to Goodwill for further pieces of furnishing.

Felix is a neater guy than James and his home would act accordingly. A dumb thing I did was stick a sheet over the TV to try and cover that. Looked awful. That was thrown off and the TV just wasn't seen in any shots. One thing we got early on we knew would be for Felix's apartment was this little gold plated Last Supper piece because of his being Catholic. Daniel printed out a bunch of pictures of Sarah as Mara and placed them all over the place. Those random framed pictures are floating around who knows where now. Fun fact... both James and Felix have pears in their apartments. FIND THE PEARS.

The rough idea for Felix's apartment

That week had consisted of time machine stuff in the desert, lab stuff, church stuff, apartment stuff and it was a crazy week. Very exhausting, there's no getting around the fact that some of us were cracking at this point. However, by making it to the end of the week- there was a renewal of spirits and a feeling of beating the odds that it worked out and we made it through that big pickle. I also feel like everybody just genuinely likes each other and wanted to find the way to make it through successfully. So we did.

Felix's apartment in progress

Filming kept progressing when I was gone for a week- I know Daniel wasn't happy the scheduled wrap date got postponed for another week but I was happy to be able to be there along with everybody for the last couple of nights on this thing that was my life for those past few months.

BACK TO FORMULA?

This post turned out to be less process-orientated, which makes sense to me now given the topic being a different beast than the others. Hey! It wasn't quick at all, either. Heck, it was probably longer than the other one's. More about the craziness of getting things together. Hope you enjoyed reading it, though. Feeling like this might be the wrap up. I mean, sure... there's more. A lot more I could talk about, yeah. But this is a good place to put the cork on this bottle and nicely keep it in the cellar. For now. Is it ever truly over?? That's the beauty of it.

It goes on.

You can watch Timespace here. If you've read all of this crazy-talk, you might see some more stuff you didn't before or hopefully will soak in different things. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/timespace

"Why do we do what we do?" YA GOT ME.

GOODT!