New Mexico: The right spot

Production Designer Tom Duffield was thrilled to find New Mexico towns such as Moriarty, Estancia, Tucumcari and just miles from the West Texas border, Clovis and Portales, to stand-in for West Texas towns.

“Moriarty is amazing.” he says. “I can’t believe we found such a perfect area. It has that beautiful tawny sea of grass, those unlimited horizons. David (Mackenzie) really wanted to capture the sense of desolation you feel in some of these small towns, towns that are getting rubbed out by the cities and the mega-stores, with downtowns that are just kind of evaporating. Moriarty is gorgeous but you get that feeling.”

Director of photography Gils Nuttgens and production designer Tom Duffield found these New Mexico locations an incredible canvas, but director David Mackenzie also took them on a field trip to Texas.

“Before shooting began, we took a road trip through the actual locations where Taylor (Sheridan) based the screenplay, and then we went back to New Mexico and saw exactly how we could re-create that there,” Mackenzie says. “It was a tremendous help to absorb those details, and it became a big part of the creative process.”

For the banks that Toby and Tanner hold up, Duffield renovated several abandoned banks but was excited to have the chance to use the operational Western Bank in Clovis to play one of the fictitious Texas Midlands branches.

“It was so important to have real banks,” Duffield says. “A lot of banks didn’t want to let us film robbery for obvious reasons but the Western Bank shut down for a day, and even let us shoot gunfire inside. It gave us something amazing.”