Angel

A Story in the Sets: Interview with the Angel Art Department

Art Department PA Joe Pew, Art Director Stuart Blatt, and Assistant Art Director Leonard Harmon

Beyond the gates to Pylea, across two parking lots, a dozen soundstages, and a twisted labrynth of alleys, is a small, hot, ramshackle trailer. Inside, amongst dozens of posters, fabric swatches, an ocean of mismatched couches, and office furniture, there’s a guy sitting at a drafting table, imagining what Hell might actually look like, whether it has windows, and if Satan might prefer marble or hardwood floors. Then he sketches it out, and it becomes a set for a scene of Angel through the magic of ‘round the clock carpentry units, painters, and set dressers. That was an example. I can’t tell you what they’re actually designing, because that would be a spoiler. Nyah. But it’s hard to believe that the majestic Hyperion hotel, or Cordy’s darling little haunted apartment, and the throne room of Pylea were born out of this tiny trailer on the Paramount lot, I dragged my friend Paula on this latest interview, to take pictures of the sets, and the crew that designs them. She can also bear witness to the fact that I am such a pathetic fangurl.

The Hyperion hotel in Angel has become the silent character amongst our broody floppy haired vamp and his Ministers of Grace since the episode, “Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been?,” in which the set melted seemlessly from present day Los Angeles into 1950s McCarthy era old Hollywood. I’d add that up until recently, the Hyperion has had the best lines, but that would be mean, so I won’t say anything of the sort. Anyway. There’s a distinctive feel to the Hyperion. The Art Department has managed to capture an era of glamour and classiness, with the side order of aucaciousness that screams old school Hollywood.

Set Designer, Andrew Reeder, pictured in front of his handiwork, was and pretty much still is, an architect. Instead of office buildings and mini-malls, Reeder designs hell dimensions and demon lairs. Reeder says that the hotel was inspired by historic LA hotels like the Biltmore. The set is also incredibly functional.

The crew can set up inside the office, or slide the counter back to shoot scenes, and there are walls that can easily slide back for various shots. “The lighting inside the lobby of the hotel is built right into the set, on the pillars. It allows the crew to control the lighting from above, from a natural source.”

“We had six weeks to build the set of the hotel lobby. We usually have six to eight days to build a set.”

If you check out this original sketch of the lobby, you can see that the set remained true from concept to completion. When you walk onto the lobby set, and someone flips on the lights, the pillars and the floor do take on the look of marble, but when you look directly up, you’re taken aback by the fact that there is no ceiling.

One expects chandeliers and skylights, but there are edges, then nothing but soundstage. It’s jarring, as a fan, to see the hotel without her bloomers on. It’s designed in such a way that it feels like it must be shot on location.

Leonard Harman, Assistant Art Director, is pictured in front of the drawing for the hospital room from Darla’s ultrasound. Leonard is deliciously funny and hospitable, and kept our photographer company while I spoke with Reeder. He told her that an episode that is shot only on the previously existing sets is called a bottle. The Whedon penned, “Spin the Bottle” was shot in a bottle. The title both describes the episode, and is a shout out to the Art Department as well. So cool.

Da Big Boss, Stuart Blatt breezed into the room, all handsome smiles and firm handshakes. Stuart has been working on Angel since the very beginning, witnessing several of his sets get blown to smithereens, napalmed, or ripped to pieces by portals to demon dimensions. He’s remarkably unscathed by the experience. “I think there might be one bookshelf leftover from the first season,” he says, with an easy cool and a wide grin. His job is to create the world in which our characters live out their weekly dramas, and he does it within mind-seering deadlines. His life is such that he must design a world in which demons toss each other through walls, and out of windows in a few takes, and rebuild the next day...or within the next few minutes. He’s like Xander, with a better budget. Wait, that’s that other show. I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason that the nimrods on Friends get those amazing salaries is because the producers don’t have to constantly replace windows and walls. If Ross got thrown out of more windows, the payscale would totally decline. Stuart designs these sets with the knowledge that there may suddenly be a need for a large water source under the floor, or that the spirit of a former tenant may feel the need to give Cordelia a sponge bath. “The thing about Dennis is that he wasn’t corporeal very often.” No, but they did have to bust his carcass out of a wall that then had to become an alcove.

I’d kill to see Monica and Rachel dig a body out of a wall.

I was wondering how much input the writers have in the design of a set. If you’ve ever read a shooting script, locations are pretty vague, “INT. THEATRE” is about it. Then the Art Department has to decide what that theatre will look like, how it will function within the parameters of the action that will take place.

“David Greenwalt was very specific. The specifics were more about needs than the look of the sets. When Jeff Bell took it over, I asked him to trust me.”

And who wouldn’t trust Stuart? Before he opened his mouth, I wanted him to bust through the wall into my kitchen and double the size of my apartment, and install some plugs in my windows so I can periodically toss my landlord out on the sidewalk.

“If the sets don’t further the story, all they are are pretty pictures.” And these sets do further the story. I’m broken hearted every time they blow up Caritas. It has a life and character all its own, like the hotel, or the spartan space of Wesley’s apartment. Most of Wolfram and Hart was on loan from IKEA, and now I’ve made an unholy connection between functional Swedish furniture and which attorney Lucifer has on retainer.

Stuart took us on a tour of the soundstage to see the sets, sans those pesky actors. The soundstage looks not unlike a splinter farm at harvest time; fields of plywood boxes.

We turned a random corner when suddenly the concrete turned into the carpet of a hallway inside the Hyperion, and the eagle eyed PM Carlson gasped, “Oh my God, is that “Lilah’s” blood? There was still a “bloodstain” on the carpet where our beloved Lilah got a knife in the throat from that bitch Cordy.

We spiraled through the hotel, to the courtyard, which was recently redeigned to have a more realistic look, with dappled light coming through the vines. The set was originally designed to have a thicker overhang of snarled vines, so that Angel could go outside and brood with becoming engulfed in flame. It’s lighter, now, has more of an “outdoors” feel to it. Around a corner, down a hall, and we’re in the basement, where Angelus’ cage was still standing, empty, except when Stuart walked inside to give the bars a good shake to show us that they actually were made of steel. “We had to have this made out of metal, it had to be heavy because of the sort of action that was happening around the cage.”

“This used to be the set of Angel’s old apartment, you know.” Nope. I did not know that. Inner giddiness was kept in check.

Once the tour was over, Stuart walked us back to my car, six lightyears from the soundstage. I was thinking about what a damn lucky fangurl I am for having the opportunity to see the inner workings of Mutant Enemy, and to talk to the crew that brings the show to life on my television.

Mushy, squishy, heartfelt thanks to the Art Department for letting me snoop through their work. Please drop over to their web site at http://www.angelartdept.com/. They’d love to see more traffic over there, so let’s turn up the "hits" to their site. Lots of cool pictures there too, gang.