It ended up being the title card in the entire first season of The League on FX.

So there, that’s how that came together!

This isn't us, Justine would never hold a balloon.

We were in the middle of traffic for this one.

Nice huh, now I have to go get this framed for the wife. Can I borrow 300 bucks?

It was intense, last minute madness and seven days a week.

So, if you know me at all you’ll be able to see my influence in a lot of the design this season. (black was prominent)

Julie, Josh, Shane, Angela and I really raised the bar on what they were doing over there. As a matter of fact some people actually said we raised the bar, and when a producer says that to you it means they are never calling you again.

I think.

I never really knew that until my director friend Danny Boyle told me over dinner. “Raising the bar”, he said “on a show that wants to save money means you spent too much of it”. I am paraphrasing. 

The art department actually saved them a ton of money. Check out these lighting fixtures we came up with LAST MINUTE that ended up being the practical lighting set dressing in the dining room.

See that fixture on the column? Here's how it was born.

One trip to IKEA and Home Depot and the dining room looks like a New York City steakhouse. They literally cost less than $20 a piece to pull together.

Screw a socket to a piece of wood. It's that easy.

Paint it black and screw it to the column.

Screw in some Edison light bulbs and you've just saved Bravo a ton of money.

Cluster a bunch and spray paint some plastic tubing for booth lighting!

These old things?! I had to take a picture because they use them in all the commercial bumpers!

I know I say it every time but this is why you need a strong art department on your show. The producers could not make up their minds about the lighting fixtures on the columns and above the booths. Finally, the day before shooting we said “how about cords” and 30 minutes later we had a prototype. Bravo loved them and we were able to put out another fire. The art department saved the day. Again, as usual. (OK, was that too much?)

Meanwhile I want to have these in my house but I am too lazy to make them for myself.

I have a killer group of people I work with all the time to make sure there are never headaches for producers in the art department.

We just get it done, fast. We keep it within the budget and always raise the bar. The sketches below are drawn up last minute, sometimes we have weeks to prep and design sets, but last minute is the rule most of the time. These are last minute.

2009 so far has been a strange year. We have been working a lot but the game has changed a bit. This downturn in the economy has seen network after network outsource their shows to third party producers. To save some cash they are having reality producers doing sketch comedy and hiring lousy line producers who think they can just cut corners with crew and low ball them to keep their budgets low. Yes, I know budgets have been cut and I realize they have a job to do but certain producers/ line producers have no idea what an art department does so cutting that line item down to nothing is too easy (lazy) for them. I do believe there is a special place for these people and it is a mediocre career with nothing to be proud of. I have met with a bunch of them this year.

Of course, If it was all bad I would be ready to get out of television.

Everything happens for a reason however because the projects I am working on now have been such better experiences, with a higher caliber of talent, than anything I would be doing with some of the producers I met with this spring. But I digress.

Here are some more sketches I scanned in that represent what it is like when the art department gets a script that is shooting in less than 2 days. (If you want to see more  check out some earlier blog entries)

So yeah, the art department has been working-we have a show (Top Chef Masters) premiering on Bravo tonight, shot pilots for CBS, Sony and Harpo and start an ABC series next week, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t just a little annoyed by Hollywood right now.

Being annoyed is a good thing though, it forces us to get better projects and weed out the bad guys (and if you are reading this right now you know who you are).

I remember going in to Nikki Kessler’s office (she held the purse strings) and begging for some cash to pull this one off. Why not, it was out last episode and if the script is asking for the front porch of an old black man down south, and it has to roll out during act 3 in front of the audience, there is only one way to go…and that is all the way. Actually now that I look at the script it tells me nothing.

This lack of information from the writers room never stopped the art department before.

Set decorator Bianca Ferro and I put out heads together and and came up with an idea that could come together quickly and give lighting, the director, the executives and the stage manager just the right amount of anxiety.

First, bang out a sketch.

See what I mean, here is stage manager John Stewart wondering if we can pull it off.

Nothing made me happier than crowbarring a huge tree on the set to give the director more stress.

Here we are with the final product. Set up live in 6 minutes!

And then Ned and the actors were gone, the set was struck and the series ended.

I was really into the detail of trying to copy a photograph down to the pore, the hair and eyelash.

How would I keep myself interested in a drawing that would take a few days to complete? My solution to fight attention deficit disorder was to draw babes- especially rock star babes or movie star babes! Comparing my drawing to a picture and trying to make it perfect was a way to know if I was doing it right. I spent thousands of hours as a kid going through pads, illustration board and paper my dad brought home from work drawing rock star babes. Of course as I got older, and eventually went to art school in New York, I got away from copying someone else’s photograph to draw a portrait because I had my own ideas and my very own living subjects. Still, I credit the hours I spent in my teens trying to draw the light reflection in the eyeball with giving me an insane attention to detail that has now served me well as a production designer and art director. 

Here are a few fanboy drawings I drew circa 1986-87. Again, note the obsession with getting the detail perfect, I am sure a kid would be diagnosed with meds today if they spent that much time on a drawing instead of being outside.

You would think I didn't have any friends...

The adult me worries about the teenage me

A teenage boy and his love for Pat Benatar...

Maybe I need to share more of these old drawings here to openly examine why I no longer spend any time drawing.

How did I go from drawing people and portraits to drawing set designs? I think I miss doing this.

My first encounter with the people that work behind the scenes in the entertainment business was almost twenty years ago, and to this day I still think that their stories and experiences are usually more interesting than the PR spin that any actor would reveal. On most shoots I hear the most insane stories about Hollywood in the location scout van, or at the craft service table and I always wanted to give these below the line types a place to share a few. The Dirty Close-Up interview is just that. I am starting them as written interviews and will be posting video interviews soon, both give a behind the scenes look at the personalities and quirky individuality that make up a call sheet on any film or television shoot. Oh yeah, in film slang a “dirty close-up” is a close up shot of an actor with a little bit of the back of the actor they are talking to in the shot…but I digress.

A couple months ago you met Thomas (TK) Keith, my good friend who works as a 1st Assistant Director and 2nd Assistant Director on many of the projects I art direct. TK works hard, keeps his cool and from the moment I met him shared great tales from Van Halen music videos (read about those in an earlier post), the Seinfeld sitcom and multiple sightings of the Virgin Mary, so of course, he is my first Dirty Close-Up interview. 

TK worked on the Seinfeld sitcom for years, here’s what he has to say…

Here is a great picture of TK in Jerry's apartment.

GK: How did you end up at Seinfeld?

TK: I worked on an American Express tv commercial with the regular 2nd AD on the show. THAT was a big deal and it was a lot of fun. She liked how hard I worked and asked if I wanted to work with her as a part time 2nd 2nd AD. I had never worked on a sitcom before.  

GK: Last time we were in a van on a location scout you were telling everyone some great Seinfeld stories, I was in the back and couldn’t hear any of them. Hit me with one.

TK: Seinfeld would shoot in front of a live audience on Wednesday nights. We would pre shoot many scenes on Monday and Tuesday because there were just too many scenes. The day we were shooting the “Festivus” dinner scene turned into a long night. It was now about 9PM and the cast and crew were all tired. When Julia would get tired, she would get giddy. She would begin to break up laughing, and it would be hard for her to stop. About 11PM everyone hit a wall so they just did what they could to finish the scene and call wrap. It turned out very funny; but it wasn’t something everyone thought would develop such a cult status.  

GK: Was working on the last episode an incredible experience? How did they pull it off without the plot leaking to the media?

On the last episode, the producers decided to use a different name on the permits and call sheets so media and photographers wouldn’t know it was the Seinfeld crew. The name they used was “A Tough Nut To Crack” except everyone on the crew showed up on location with the Seinfeld logos on their hats, crew jackets, T-shirts, etc. Only the director and one writer had a full script for the last episode. The day player actors were only given the pages of the scenes they were in, and at the end of the day, the pages had to be returned. During the (last episode) courtroom scene, we had every single dressing room on the CBS Radford lot filled with our actors. We never had to go to their rooms to find them. Every actor got dressed and stayed on the set for hours. Every one of them wanted to be part of the history.

Thanks TK, we really need to be on a show together again soon. Maybe the Seinfeld reunion? Oh wait, that’s already happening but I am not allowed to talk about it…