TV production designers panel roundtable: ‘Fargo,’ ‘A Murder at the End of the World,’ ‘Shogun’ and ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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Production designers have one of the most interesting jobs on the crafts side of film and television production. They’re tasked with crafting worlds and telling a character or characters’ story within it through visuals. We recently gathered four elite members of the production design community for a “Meet the Experts” TV production designers video roundtable. They include Trevor Smith from Season 5 of the FX “Fargo,” Alex DiGerlando for the FX limited series “A Murder at the End of the World,” Helen Jarvis for the new FX edition of “Shōgun” and James Merifield for Hulu’s “We Were the Lucky Ones.” Each discussed tricks of their trade while also answering the question, “What’s the favorite part of your job?” Watch the full roundtable discussion above. Click on each person’s name to watch an individual chat.
So what is the favorite part of their job?
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“I think it’s the conceptual phase,” believes Smith, “when we’re most inspired, in prep. When we’re gathered with the other creatives and imagining. It’s like (we’re) kids in the sandbox. And recently I heard a Jack Fisk interview where he said, ‘It’s like I get to revisit myself building forts as a child.’ And I think that’s it for me. I really am a farm kid at heart, and I love spending other people’s money and realizing ideas. It’s the realization part that I actually find most fruitful for me.”
Jarvis too prizes the conceptual aspect of production design. “I love sketching, and I love the probing into the unknown, as it were,” she says. “It’s having an idea and then spending an entire weekend drawing something and then realize it’s not the right thing. Now I know what not to do. And so I like that process, a lot. But I have to say, I absolutely love getting into the workshop at 10 minutes to 7 every morning, having a cup of coffee with the paint department, with the construction and greens (departments). Just going through that process of analyzing where we’re going every day, all of the building blocks. I really absolutely enjoy that part most of all.”
For Merifield, it’s the collaborative aspect of his job as production designer that he loves the most, “when you have a team of artists and people coming together to create (something) and bring a script to life. But on another level, one of my favorite moments is when we’ve wrapped on the set. People always ask, ‘Are you sad to see the end to a set?’ And I’ll say, ‘No, I’m so happy. I can’t wait to see it go on a skid.’ Because you then know you’ve done your job. Hopefully, it’s in the camera and you move on to the next. So there’s something about the saying goodbye that is also then saying hello to the next. And that’s exciting.”
Then there is DiGerlando. The thing he treasures most about what he does for a living is learning new things. “I love what this work exposes one to,” he confirms, “between research and location scouting. You often get a script about a topic you know nothing about, and then suddenly in a matter of months you become an expert on that thing. And often, it’s things that your own personal interests wouldn’t have drawn you to, and you then discover something that you love.” DiGerlando uses as an example his work on the feature “Ocean’s Eight” that took place at the Met Gala. “I never gave one thought to the Met Gala (before). Now I know more about it than anyone could hope to imagine, and it’s fascinating, actually. So I love that, as I do the location scouting, because you get access to places you wouldn’t normally get access to.”
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