Leading production designers John P. Goldsmith (“Perry Mason”), Lester Cohen (“The Undoing”), Kalina Ivanov (“Lovecraft Country”), Joel Collins (“His Dark Materials”) and Chris Seagers (“Raised by Wolves”) discuss their approach to building out the look and feel of their shows. In the Variety FYC Fest conversation, moderated by Variety TV Senior Features Editor Danielle Turchiano, panelists debate what the right mix of physical and special effects are in designing environments to creatively fit their shows’ storytelling.
Goldsmith notes, “I think I’m someone by nature who likes to build it as much as we can and I like the physical aspect of it. I so appreciate the digital, which can augment or extend or help. And I was lucky because the visual effects supervisor on ‘Perry Mason’ had also been on the show that we were on together previously, the ‘OA’ Season 2, and we had our own relationship and friendship. So we worked well together and that was both on a micro level, where he would call from the editing bay and say, ‘Hey, I see this thing in the background. Can you look at this? Does it catch your eye?’ And I would say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s got to go.’ It didn’t exist in ’32.”
Ivanov adds, “I think that the VFX supervisor was hired maybe a few weeks after me so we really went through the whole process together and it was wonderful. I’m very hands-on and I like to do my own black-and-white sketches and I like to do my own passes first on the world before I send it to concept artists who do the color world and everything. I really was very lucky with my VFX folks, because we were true collaborators.”