The CW Source

AH: To save money and time, but also for the logistics of shooting. Allows us to light the set a lot easier, but also for filming purposes, there are a lot of times in a real space on a location, it’s just too crowded to fit camera, lights, etc. onto the stage/set. By building it onstage, we can make the walls what we call “wild,” – basically you’ll pull a wall away, and you can set the camera there as if you’re the fourth wall. It speeds up the process of filming immensely. Plus, then we have total control over everything.

After building, painting, we have a set decorator and the set dressing department. His name’s Matt Sullivan. He’ll go out and find that stuff, whether it’s in town online, etc. He’s great at tracking that stuff down. There are always odd things we need to find that aren’t readily available.

We have a greens department for all the plants. We also have a graphics design department. Fictional magazine covers, we’ll make those as well.

Robbie Beck is our prop master. Anything the actors are handling or using becomes a prop. If Mark Schwahn [OTH’s creator] has written about some strange/old record that Peyton is going to listen to, Robbie will go through the process of locating the old album, and then we have to make sure we have legal clearance to use it.

We also have an on-set art director-slash-set dresser, who’s there all the time on the set and make sure everything looks the way it’s supposed to look. In the art department, we’re usually a step ahead of the filming process. We’re designing the sets for the next episode while they’re filming the episode we’re in now.

Our locations department is a separate entity. For budgetary reasons, a lot of times, we can’t just build every set. There are times when we have to find a location. We break down the script like that. We’ll go to the locations department and say, “You need to find a train station,” or whatever the set is. They’ll go down, hunt down photos, and through that, we’ll find the locations we film on as well. They’re a really vital part of the look of the show. We just cannot build everything.

CW Source: Tell us about how the sets changed now that the show is jumping ahead four years.

AH: Now that we’re jumping ahead, we pretty much got rid of everything we had. We’re starting new. As far as the look of the show, everybody’s in new places. We’re sticking with the same sort of feel of the show, but everything’s updated. The kids are a little more mature, and we’re trying to show that with the feel of their spaces. We’re trying to show where the characters are in their lives four years later. There are a lot of things we did on the set to show where they are. It gives backstory without having to SAY everything they’re doing. We try to add that backstory to all the characters so you don’t have to spell it out to the audience.

We had 30 new sets for the first episode. It’s all looking great. Everybody’s excited about this new direction that everybody’s heading in.

CW Source: Can you tell us a little more about what went into creating Peyton’s room, since it’s such a cool space?

AH: The idea for that room is that that room was Peyton’s palette, because she’s an artist and into the music. Instead of it being about the art and sketchbook, her room was her art. You saw there were paintings on the walls. Whenever the mood struck her, she would paint. She was living inside her sketchbook. Her character was a little bit darker, so we went with darker walls – black and red. It’s very much a departure from almost every other space on the show. A lot of that came from Mark and his idea of who the character is. Her room constantly was evolving – a lot more than the other kids – because of painting things on the walls, etc.

One of the things that we did, after psycho Derek had overtaken her room and put photos everywhere, it became “she’s going to go back into this space, and she feels violated.”

The next episode, she went in and painted the whole thing white. She was starting with a clean slate that way.

CW Source: What was your career path like? What should an aspiring set/production designer do to get a position like yours?

AH: People come into this from a lot of different directions. I sort of fell into it a little bit. I went to school initially for graphic design. I also had worked a lot in construction with this architect I know. I always sort of was aware of how things were built, the styles.

Then I went back to NYU for film -- not with the thought that I was ever going to get into production design… but that’s when I sort of realized that a lot of my background – construction, architecture, graphic design – all melded to fit this.

After I got done there, one of the first jobs I got on was art department PA (production assistant). I quickly realized I had a lot of the skills needed as far as design – being able to draft, to draw. I worked my way up over the years: set designer, art director, and finally a production designer.

There didn’t use to be any way you could go to college in production design. A lot of people come into this through theater design. It’s such a varied thing that we do. Not really an architect, not really an interior designer, not really just an illustrator. You need to have all of those skills.

If you’re interested in it, just don’t give up is one of the big things. It is a difficult business to get into. It’s challenging in that the way we work and go from film to film, when you finish one film, you’re not sure when your next film is. You have a lot of downtime between films sometimes. You have to stick with it. If that’s your passion, you’ll find a way to make it work.

We get architects, interior designers, graphic designers, and people who went to school for film design.

It’s fresh and new; you’re not sitting in the same office day after day. There’s always a new challenge. It keeps you going.

CW Source: Sounds great!

AH: It is, but we’ve also worked 16-hour days for six days a week for the past 8 weeks!

CW Source: What do you do during the downtime when the show isn’t shooting? Do you work on other projects, or just savor your time off?

AH: I savor the months. Living here in Wilmington near the beach is nice – I just relax near the water. We are working 80-90 hour weeks. It does sound good, and it is good, but you have to enjoy it or else you wouldn’t be able to work those kinds of hours.

Check back here next week for part two of our interview!