The Production Design Is in the Details

THESE EMMY-NOMINATED PRODUCTION DESIGNERS FOUND INSPIRATION IN SURPRISING AND UNLIKELY SOURCES

The Mandalorian

Production designer Doug Chiang began to plan the forest planet Corvus, a virtual environment, early on with executive producer Dave Filoni, who also directed the episode titled “The Jedi.” “Unfortunately, we had fires in Northern California, and some of them were very close to Dave’s home,” Chiang says. “That drew the inspiration in terms of this desolate landscape.” Adds production designer Andrew L. Jones: “We did actually go out to the burned forests around Los Angeles to get samples and scan them. It’s a terrible, terrible situation, but it inspired the design quite heavily.” The films of Akira Kurosawa (also an influence on George Lucas) were a reference point for the castle’s “Japanese feudal” design.

Perry Mason

The interior courtroom of the L.A. County Courthouse was a set built on Paramount’s Stage 27. For the ’30s-set series, research focused on modern courtrooms from the period. “An important detail was the quote behind the judge’s bench: ‘Find Truth, Seek Justice,’ ” says production designer John Goldsmith. “It [reflects] on the legal system, but also more broadly on the mystery at the heart of our story, and on what drives Perry Mason.” He adds that they wanted to convey that Los Angeles was in transition. “Modernity was approaching. And we, like Perry himself, are in between two worlds. The courtroom was traditional in form and scale and gravitas, but given a spirit of streamlined modernism in its detailing.”

The Queen’s Gambit

A sequence set at the 1966 U.S. Open chess championship in Las Vegas was actually filmed on location at Palais am Funkturm, an event space in Berlin. Production designer Uli Hanisch relates that the complex was constructed in the ’20s, though filming took place in an addition built in the ’50s. “We have researched … the whole great glimmer and tackiness of this glorious period of Las Vegas. What we have found was overwhelmingly crazy and wild. We really had to catch up with the standard of this unique place,” he says, adding that the biggest challenge was dressing this large space with midcentury modern pieces. “We were lucky to find a wonderful small furniture manufacturer right in Berlin.”