- 7 weeks ago
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00:00Oh, yeah, the shield.
00:28Where anything goes, it's kind of fun.
00:32It's organic, and it's textural, and it's gritty and natural and East LA-ish.
00:40It's a very different look at LA than that's been recorded in my life.
00:45What I do is, it sounds awful, it's consequential, it's not that, but it's supportive.
00:51It's not a show about design, it's a show about production.
00:55We do sort of stay away from other pop shows, definitely, even, I think, in the initial
01:00decision to make the permanent set, the space in which they live, was very conscious that
01:07it not looked like a police station, and that it be West Coast, that it feels like LA.
01:12The church was a very interesting choice for a police station.
01:15It's a working Baptist church, and it's, I think it's on 16th or 17th Street, somewhere
01:20central and 17th, kind of no man's land.
01:23And they had a main church, and then added on to it, if you look at it, it's the most
01:27bizarre looking kind of Spanish, Dutch, added on to freakish looking building.
01:32And what it was that Sean particularly fell in love with, and I think actually Scott liked
01:37the location first, but the thing that was the floor, if you were to look down from where
01:40we are here, it's a black and red floor, and it was like a chess board.
01:45It was an interesting experience, I mean, to go and actually meet the people in the church,
01:49and see what the history of the church was, and it kind of gave me a lot of ideas in adding
01:55the other pieces on, you know, what the history would have been, how did it develop, and why
02:00can you see through all these big, you know, glass windows into the church.
02:05We actually rented some pews from them that they had had, you know, that we used around.
02:08You see it in the, we'd lock up the suspects on the pews, which, having gone to Catholic school
02:15is pretty funny.
02:18They very much ignore that it was a church in the pilot.
02:20What they liked was the bullpen area.
02:23After the pilot, I came in to interview to do the series, I hadn't done the pilot,
02:27and said, you know, if we're going to stay with the church, why don't you make it a church?
02:32Why don't we go with it being a church? Because it's so interesting that these guys, you know,
02:36that whole play, and I think that they originally, you know, of course had thought of that themselves,
02:40but they thought maybe it's too, you know, it's like a hammer on the head.
02:43But now that you have a series to play it out over, you know, they could do it a little more slowly.
02:48Oh, Jesus Christ, God damn it, I mean what?
02:51We greatly reduced the size of the church from what in reality is the church.
02:55This is almost more the size of what would have to be a chapel, you know,
02:59in relation to this other space that's attached to it.
03:02What's similar to the location is that we actually, and very different than most sets,
03:07is that it is a two-story, solid set.
03:10Most shows do not build first and second story contiguously.
03:14You know, you would have the first story of the house sitting next to the second story of the house,
03:18and they'll have a staircase that they disappear on or whatever.
03:21And it was very important to the whole naturalistic, fast moving quality of the show,
03:27that you could be chasing them in these real spaces.
03:29You could chase them up the steps, you know, that you can run from one space down.
03:33And so we had to build it that way. And it was a lot of fun.
03:37Over here to my left is where the captain is, and then diagonally across the floor downstairs is where Vic is.
03:43So they can come out together and be, you know, have these confrontations on this floor,
03:47which is very important to Shaun because they're, you know, the players against each other
03:51with the chess board in the background.
03:54The captain's office is a warm, not so much because he is warm,
03:58but more so because for the tension that's in that space,
04:01which is a different color than exists anywhere else in the set.
04:03The most important thing about the captain's office really is its view, you know,
04:08its position in the whole set.
04:11He has his own staircase. It's not that it's his own staircase.
04:14Everybody uses that staircase, but there's the main one in the church,
04:16and then there's this little one that comes back up to where he is.
04:19He can see all of the goings on. He can, you know, throughout the church.
04:23Also, if he was to come out onto this balcony, which he often does,
04:26he sort of stands there like the patrolman or something,
04:29and looks down over and surveys all that is beneath him.
04:33After you come down from the captain's office right beneath,
04:36that is the kitchen, which was another, actually is my favorite part of the set.
04:39It's just, it's a really good-looking little space,
04:41and the windows are interesting that you can see in and out of.
04:44I just, I like when you stand in there and look through those windows,
04:47you get a really good view of the set.
04:49And there's a lot of activity in that space.
04:51The clubhouse is this bizarre little sort of pentagram shape
04:56that you actually physically see the pilasters and stuff from the walls
05:01that had been knocked out, and you'll see the old plaster
05:05and this paneling all together in the same space,
05:08which really came from a practical decision,
05:11but then started to also work well, and the strongest conflict lies in that space.
05:15One of the things that people really like, because you see so many directors coming in and out,
05:20is that they can go from inside to outside.
05:22You know, bring the cops from the street, through the gate,
05:26you know, into the park, come in with them,
05:29and walk all the way into the clubhouse,
05:31or walk all the way into the captain, it's really nice.
05:34I am a painter, I mean, that's where I come from.
05:36The paint is what is, I contribute the most, I think, to this show,
05:41because that's what we can do.
05:43We also did all the walls very shiny, you know,
05:45which is something that's different than most shows do,
05:49just that reflection, which is another disorienting quality,
05:53and has something to do with L.A. and the heat of the sun.
05:56The first time I saw dailies, I thought,
05:58oh, my God, the walls look like plastic.
05:59They were a little bit too shiny, so you have to go back and kind of wax them
06:03and play with the texture of them.
06:06You'll see the texture changes between, you know, old plaster and wood,
06:10and then there's metal storefront that was installed,
06:12and we did that deliberately to look like this is what they've put in now.
06:16They put in this bulletproof glass, and they put in a little area
06:19where the desk sergeant is secure so that you can bring the perpetrators in,
06:23and we were pretty also adamant about making none of those look like
06:27the typical booking area would look.
06:29This is a clear division between what the city is doing to the church
06:34and what the church was before.
06:37And the most important thing in the church is the cage, really.
06:40So we just made the church large enough to sustain the cage.
06:44And the church was to look very much like this, you know,
06:48this church had been a working church for many years, you know, modified.
06:52They never had much money, so you could see that it was falling apart.
06:55Also, if you went back to the main area, right after you come in
06:57and you can turn to your right and go into where the cage is,
07:01there's a staircase that would have originally been up to where the choir
07:05or something was in the back.
07:06What would have been in the real church, the organ room, is the interrogation room,
07:10the first interrogation room, which is why it's got such a bizarre little shape.
07:14There's no two-way glass, none of that kind of traditional being able to see in
07:19to where interrogation is, that everything's on a monitor, which is very cool.
07:23And they can switch back and forth between interrogation room one and interrogation room two.
07:27And that's also supposed to look like they have very little money, which they do,
07:30different size monitors and, you know, one that works better than the other does
07:34because they have crappy equipment.
07:36And that two different interrogation rooms also have two different personalities
07:39because in the pilot there was only one and they felt that they would,
07:43you know, need to later on to do that interplay between them.
07:46So we did sort of a men's room and a women's room in essence or a harder and a softer.
07:52One is green and has a linoleum floor and has a much harder kind of feeling.
08:00And the other one has the same wooden detailing that's in the rest of the church
08:04and has like a salmon-y pink color and a carpeted floor.
08:08We have a lot of deliberate irregularities in the floor just because it's supposed to look old
08:14and feel old and so much so that we actually, we had tiles removed
08:18and then we had to go back and fill where the tiles were removed with something clear
08:22that you still got the feeling that the tile was gone,
08:24but that the actors stopped tripping over the fact that the tile was gone.
08:27This show should look like you just happened upon them somewhere
08:32so they could be against a flat wall that you would never do at another time.
08:36We put them there instead because it has to always feel like you didn't have the time to go
08:41to a spot that tells the story.
08:43Now what have you heard?
08:45It has to have an accidental sort of feeling and it works because the acting is so good too.
08:52You screwed me! I didn't screw you!
08:54It's so much more natural and more unseen.
08:57And ugly is good.
08:59You know, like sometimes you see a building and you think,
09:02do I love it? Do I hate it? Oh, that's perfect.
09:04Because it's, it feels like the shape of this.
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