00:00Hi, my name is James Yarnell and we're here with the 20th anniversary of Dancing with the Stars with Deadline.
00:11The role of the production designer is twofold.
00:15Firstly, the main thing is to design the set and the whole ballroom is a set, it's not a real place.
00:21So it's created from the ground up, from the dance floor to the balconies to everything within it.
00:25So my role as production designer was in season one to create what became the Dancing with the Stars ballroom.
00:32It was loosely based, it was actually based on the Strictly Come Dancing set from England back in season one.
00:38And then through the years, it grew, we added to it, we extended it, adding balconies.
00:46And then ultimately to now, it has become an established set with, that can hold something like six, seven hundred people, three balconies.
00:54And it's all based on the original design and the growth that's happened over the 20 years from that original design.
01:02The dance floor is always was 32 feet wide and 44 feet deep.
01:07It was to this day, it's varied a little bit here and there, but for the most part, it's 32 by 44.
01:12And the first thing that people say when they come into the studio is how small the dance floor is.
01:16And for the first maybe five or six years, the first thing that went into the studio was the dance floor.
01:21So for a while on the first day, that was all that was in there.
01:24And every year the producers would come in and they'd say to me, the dance floor looks too small.
01:28Are you sure that's right? And once everything was built around it, it obviously was, it made sense, but it does seem a lot bigger on camera than it does in real life.
01:37But it's 32 by 44.
01:39I mean, to be honest, I've never really had any complaints from the dancers about the size of it.
01:43They use it from one corner to the other.
01:46So every element, every inch of it gets used, but it has always been, because it's always been the same size.
01:51I think they, every pro has got used to that size and they've never, it's never changed.
01:56So they've never, I've never been asked to make it any bigger.
01:58And truthfully, the set that's in there right now goes wall to wall and we are literally fire isle to fire isle.
02:04So the set itself couldn't be any bigger.
02:06And so the dance floor couldn't be any bigger because we'd have to start taking out seating and we don't want to do that.
02:11In season one, when the show started, it was only six weeks and we didn't know how long it was going to last.
02:15And as the show progressed, the Strictly Come Dancing series in England that we're based on, they had a trophy.
02:19And so Conrad, the executive producer came and said, we should get a trophy.
02:24It was around about week three, week four, and the show was becoming a hit and we felt we should do something on camera.
02:28And there wasn't really any good dancing trophies out there that we could base it on.
02:33And because the mirror ball was part of the English versions trophy and because it was a part of our logo, we based it on that.
02:39And so I came up with this idea and literally this was a piece of a lamp.
02:43This is the original trophy from season one.
02:45And this was a part of a lamp that I bought from Lamps Plus that I kind of took to pieces and used parts of it.
02:51So this was from a lamp. Then we added that and the old logo.
02:55The day of the finale, the head of ABC came in and he said, I feel that the trophy is too small and it needs to be taller.
03:02So within an hour of the finale going live, I added a roll of tape literally right here to make it taller and covered it in gold foil just to buy two inches to make it taller.
03:15And we went on camera with this thing, held a piece of lamp, piece of tape, and it went on camera and that was it.
03:21There was the trophy.
03:23So from then on, I had to have it made in brass so that it had some more substantial strength than a piece of tape.
03:30The reason we had to start casting it to have this made as cast by a trophy company was because Lamps Plus discontinued the lamp that had these pieces in it.
03:38And it was, I mean, it was a big tall thing with all these pieces in it and we unscrewed it and I was moving things around and they were the two pieces that seemed to fit.
03:46And so they, so I kept, went to Lamps Plus, bought all the lamps that they had and then they discontinued it.
03:51So now we couldn't go there.
03:53So we had to have it cast.
03:55And so that's why the later ones were heavy because they were actually casting that shape from the original thing.
04:00But this is the original, we swapped out the piece of tape, the roll of tape, but that is the actual one.
04:07And that was the look of the trophy.
04:08And it stayed like that for, for years.
04:10We changed the logo when, when the show logo changed.
04:13But for the most part, this is what the show trophy looked like for, um, about the first 14, 15 years of the show.
04:20Kelly and Alec won season one.
04:21They were sent home with their version of it.
04:23And if you ever see them with their version, this is missing it.
04:26This is shorter because I only added it in the one that was on camera.
04:30So they had a shorter version.
04:31So for every season from then on, we had what was known as the on camera trophy that we would add,
04:36that we would add the names to.
04:37This was, this one was used for, from, uh, up to season three.
04:41And then season four, we changed it because the logo changed and we had a one made that was a little more substantial
04:45because this was kind of, uh, getting weak.
04:48And so then we would make two every season.
04:50We would have the on camera one with all the names on it.
04:52And that's what they were given on camera.
04:54And then as soon as we go off air and the finale, I would add their winning names to the,
04:59I'd have to sit in the finale and I would have all the finalists on plaques.
05:03And they'd say, eliminate the first is there.
05:05So that would go.
05:06And then it would be down to the final two.
05:07And they'd say, and the winner is, and then I grabbed the winning one, put it on the two trophies.
05:11The second we went off air, me and the prop man would go on to the dance floor where it's chaos.
05:15And we would kind of push our way in and take the on camera one off and give them the one with their name on.
05:20So they could go to press with a trophy with their name on it.
05:23And that's theirs to keep.
05:24So every season we made two trophies.
05:26So we've made this point 66 of these trophies and we have two more for this season.
05:30But, um, so they all were given out, but we retained the on camera trophy that was used every season.
05:37Like I say this till season three, and then there was a different one that was used.
05:41And then of course we lost Len and I had lunch with Conrad and I said,
05:46I felt that we should either name the ballroom, the Len Goodman ballroom,
05:50or we should name the trophy, the Len Goodman trophy.
05:52And Conrad really liked the idea about the trophy.
05:54So he spoke to BBC and ABC and Len's widow Sue and said, how do you feel about it?
05:59And they all liked the idea.
06:00So that was where this one came.
06:02And it was, uh, the chance to redesign and update the trophy and upgrade it a little bit.
06:08And it was also a nod to Len.
06:10So it changed.
06:12It was still supposed to keep the same kind of idea, but I always felt Len was,
06:16we all loved Len and Len was also very kind of formal and he was very tall.
06:20And so the idea of it was to kind of almost like not quite be a collar,
06:24but that was why we have these wings on it that it was felt to kind of feel a little more formal.
06:29And we felt that would kind of be a little more representative Len.
06:32It was slightly taller as well to kind of give it his stature.
06:35And then just as a slight nod at the end, we put, I felt it would be cute to put a little bow tie on the bottom,
06:40just as a, you know, a little kind of, uh, nod to Len's.
06:44It's much heavier.
06:45Yeah.
06:46This was a very light one.
06:47When we remade this for later seasons, it was, it was cast and it became very heavy.
06:51Uh, and Conrad always liked the, the very substantial price.
06:55So when you gave it someone, they knew they got something of substance.
06:58So we made sure that the trophy was made out of, I mean, this is made out of steel that's then plated,
07:03but we've made sure it was, it had some weight to it.
07:05So it felt substantial and not a TV prop.
07:07It's became kind of iconic in its own right.
07:09So we wanted it to feel substantial.
07:11So this was, and the later versions of this one were both heavier.
07:15But, um, again, this is the one we have now.
07:18And I mean, it seems people like this one and they like the fact that it has Len's name on it and the little bow tie.
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