A Behind The Scenes Look At "Silo"

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[00:00:46] Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash income, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash income now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. TV series, Silo, Graham Yost, the show's director, Morten Tildum, its production designer,

[00:01:21] Gavin Beaucquet, the cinematographer, Mark Patton, and its composer, Atlee Oberson. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at Silo. We do not know why we are here. We do not know who built the Silo and why we are underground.

[00:01:45] We only know the world outside our sanctuary is death. Well, thank you for being with me today to talk about Silo. And I've been rereading The Lord of the Rings, and it struck me how the changes Peter Jackson

[00:02:02] made when making the films is kind of as crystal clear an example as it gets for how what works on the page doesn't always work on the screen. There has to be an adaptation process, right?

[00:02:14] So where did that adaptation process begin with you on Silo, especially how you settled on the idea of kind of cutting the book in half for the first season? I first have to stop you and say I went through Lord of the Rings again the year before, read

[00:02:29] them all, listened to them, the version with, oh God, Gollum. Oh, Andy Serkis. Andy Serkis reading them and then watched the movies. And I was communicating with a guy who's the showrunner on Slow Horses. He and I are Tolkien geeks, like he's visited Tolkien's grave.

[00:02:46] And we got into this whole thing about what never gets enough attention is what a brilliant adaptation those movies are. What was taken out, not just Tom Bombadil and The Scouring of the Shire and all of that, but just other things, just the way the elves are introduced.

[00:03:02] I mean, all down the line. That's a masterclass. We've got a different thing here. We've got 10 hours and hopefully multiple seasons. So we can, we have to, when we decided early on, we will start with the Holston and Alyson

[00:03:19] story even though they're going to be dead by early into the second episode, both of them gone. And we flashback to other Holston stuff. But we knew we wanted to end with Juliet going over the hill because there's no greater sort

[00:03:32] of cliffhanger ending that we could come up with. Okay, well then that means we have to fill out stuff that Hugh hadn't put in the books or in that book of Juliet, her life, her backstory, getting into that.

[00:03:48] And then also the big thing is he deals with George or her boyfriend in a very quick way. She's not sheriff very long before she's sent out to claim. So we needed to make that a thing. So that's what gave us the season.

[00:04:05] And by the way, Hugh was in the writers room when we were doing a mini room, just basically breaking the first story and also just getting an idea of what the season would be. And he was open to all of that.

[00:04:19] To him it's sort of like a box of Legos. You just try this, try that. What about this? What about that? And there were times going into production where I'd be calling him and saying, okay, in the silent, would they have X, Y, or Z?

[00:04:31] And he said, I don't know. Make it up. We'd figure it out. Sure. Yeah. And to go back to Lord of the Rings, that reminds me almost of the famous appendices of the Lord of the Rings.

[00:04:39] There's all this supplemental material that you could expand on if you choose to do it. I'd love to ask about something that you mentioned, which is the decision to kind of kill off what appears to be your two leads very early on. And then you kind of backtrack.

[00:04:55] That's actually kind of a risky decision, but it's just so directly pulled off that you almost don't question it. But ending the first episode with really the protagonist of the show, right? We only see Juliet, Rebecca Ferguson's character for a few seconds, really.

[00:05:11] How did you decide on that? Because that's kind of a bold move, even if it doesn't seem like one as you're watching. So there were two things. One is that's the way he started the books. It started as just a short story. It took off.

[00:05:25] Then he had to come up with the books. And then he was like, well, I killed off my character. Now what am I going to do? And he came up with Juliet and Mechanical and all that stuff and built a whole... Then it turned into a trilogy.

[00:05:35] He had no idea that that's what was going to happen. So we felt that there was a certain fan service of let's start it the way... It's like, let's get back to Lord of the Rings. It's Bilbo's 111th birthday, right? And it's the big party.

[00:05:51] And that's the way the book starts. And you got to start it that way. And by the way, the whole thing ends with Sam coming home and says, I'm back, he said. I mean, you have to do these things for the fans because... And this is the thing.

[00:06:07] Peter Jackson is a fan of those books. He loves them. It's not just a job for him. I'm a fan of the Silo series. I'm doing it because I want to do it.

[00:06:20] And that doesn't mean we're not going to change a shit ton of things to make it a TV series. So that was one thing. And then the other thing was the Holson and Allison story is a great way to introduce the audience to the world.

[00:06:34] And but it's got its own beginning, middle and end. And you're getting pulled into it through them. And through them, you meet other characters. You meet the mayor, you meet the deputy, and you're starting to build out who the other people will be.

[00:06:49] So that was the basic decision. And then the reason it happened is because Jamie Ehrlich believes in giving people as much of the books as you can. And he was a big fan of the books, big fan of me getting on the project.

[00:07:07] And so when I said that, he didn't hesitate for a second. He said, good. And an additional, additional, additional. We knew that they would drop the first two episodes together. And so we knew that the if that first episode book people and in the writing, it went all

[00:07:26] the way through. The first episode went through to Holston dying. And it was Morton who shot it that way. And he said, what if we ended on a little bit of a cliffhanger with him going, I need to

[00:07:36] know the truth and then get out and then save his story for the teaser in the second episode? Brilliant idea because it kept people in it. And then once they've watched that teaser, then they get into Juliet and on we go. So that was the thought process.

[00:07:56] We knew it was a risk, but we felt that it was worth it. Yeah, that makes sense. And you talk about how it also served as world building and what really struck me about Silo.

[00:08:09] And one of the reasons I really loved the first season is how intricate the mythology, the lore, the world building, the history is, but specifically how organically they're kind of interwoven into the storytelling.

[00:08:22] And part of that is Silo almost plays like a Chinatown, like noir turned conspiracy for a lot of the season. I mean, so what was the process and kind of making all those elements work together so it all feels like seamless storytelling?

[00:08:39] I will say absolutely that was our goal. What got me about the books? I'll be honest. The thing that hooked me was the mysteries. What the hell is going on? Why are they in there? What happened?

[00:08:52] And then the question that we always get is why are there no elevators? And what I say to people is stay tuned. That's part of the reveal that we'll be doing, we hope, going forward.

[00:09:07] So we've got Juliet who's a character who's pulling on these strings and trying to find out what's going on. And we felt that that's a great way to start to turn the cards over on these mysteries.

[00:09:21] We knew at the end of episode six, we wanted to reveal that there were cameras. And that everyone's being watched all the time. It's like, oh my God, they're living in a totalitarian state. It didn't seem that bad, but oh my God.

[00:09:35] And we knew that we could only have one episode before Juliet figured it out or the audience would get tired of her being too far behind. So it was doing calculus like that, but that's like building any sort of mystery story is when do you reveal this?

[00:09:50] When do you reveal that? And it's fun. And we get to write all 10 episodes for the season. And so then we can see, oh, did we set that up right or did we not? Do we have to go back and adjust something here?

[00:10:06] That's a great luxury to have. Yeah, I imagine it's fun for the audience. I want to ask about how right now we're in this weird time where from AI to fake news, we're constantly scrutinizing what we think we know and how we think we know it.

[00:10:26] And meanwhile, Silo is kind of about weaponizing information and technology against a population. Not that Silo is like a one-to-one allegory for right now or the past, but how did you see this story kind of relating, I guess, to the world we live in right now?

[00:10:41] Well, I'll go to something Hugh said, which is he got the idea for the whole story, the first story when he sailed into Havana. He was like, he'd spent years just sailing around the world delivering yachts and also then just getting his own boat.

[00:10:56] And he sailed into Havana and he realized, oh, this doesn't look anything like what I thought it was going to look like, because I've only been shown one version on the screens that are in America. And, okay, what do we know from screens?

[00:11:09] And what are we told and what are we not told? So that was the spark for him. I think for me, it was just to sort of trust the bones of the mystery that Hugh laid out.

[00:11:25] And then with Morton figuring out what the world was going to look like, how it was going to feel and everything, and Hugh was part of that initial writers room, is that sense

[00:11:34] that it comes off first as kind of a soft dictatorship, sort of East Germany, not the Soviet Union, but East Germany in 1985. You know, and it's not great. There's crumbling, but people are just doing their jobs and they've got the sense of purpose. But there's something going on.

[00:11:55] It seems there's a lot of surveillance going on and there's weird shit and everything, and then just keep on, then it goes deeper and deeper. Right? And you find, oh my God, there's cameras. There are people being watched at all times.

[00:12:05] And when you see, you know, Sims murder a guy in episode five, you really get a sense of, you know, how dark this can be. So, yeah, that's unfortunately a big part of human history, especially in the last, I

[00:12:21] don't know, several hundred years, you know, that it's just, there are these secret forces that are at work and doing dastardly things and trying to shape world events. And, you know, and it's usually a secret service, you know, whether it's in the KGB or to a

[00:12:40] degree the CIA. We wanted to sort of touch on that without hammering it over the head. It's more of these sort of human things that we do. And there's also a sense that always to remember that Bernard and Sims do not think they're the bad guys.

[00:12:57] They think they're doing everything they're doing to save the silo, to keep the silo running. To ultimately what, you know, and this is not a spoiler, is their fear is, Bernard's fear is that people are going to rush the airlock, break it open and kill everyone

[00:13:13] in the silo. And so he will do awful things in order to try and keep that from happening. And one of my favorite reveals of the season is that the people that you think are controlling

[00:13:25] everything maybe don't know as much as they think they do, which just kind of deepens that sense of conspiracy. So I'd love to ask, Silo is obviously a completely different show from Justified, but there's some through lines between them, right? There's an unmasking of conspiracies.

[00:13:43] There's, you know, season long murder plots. My favorite is often you stage scenes kind of as a clash of big, brash personalities. And you just let the actors do their thing on screen. And obviously the first shot of Silo was of a batch.

[00:14:02] So I'd love to ask you, what was the most important thing from Justified or anything that you've worked on in the past that informed how you pulled Silo off? You know, a lot of it was just hiring the right writers.

[00:14:13] And atop the pops is getting Fred Golan onto this. And Fred and I've been working together since Boomtown. And Fred is the, my nickname for him is Dr. No, which is we'll go off on a thing, maybe with the story this and he'll just go, wait a second.

[00:14:31] Are we sure we want to do that because of X, Y, and Z? Or what if we did this? What if we did this? So, and he's also just a brilliant writer, which is why generally Fred writes the season ender of any season.

[00:14:43] He wrote all the season enders on Justified. The final one, the group of us did it, but he had a big chunk of it. So that's a big part of it. And it's really, yeah, getting really good writers who can ask really good questions

[00:14:57] and come up with ideas and not be afraid. I mean, I'll joke, you know, it's like one of my jokes is that I say maybe all the time, maybe. And there's three kinds of maybes. One maybe is absolutely not. One maybe is maybe.

[00:15:11] And then the other one is actually maybe. And then I always say, you know, I don't agree with what you're pitching, but it's going to sound great in three days when it comes out of my mouth, then I'm going to love it.

[00:15:23] And so just trying to create an atmosphere of me giving them all shit and then them giving it back to me. But just really stress testing everything. You know, what about this? What about that?

[00:15:35] And just waiting for the crazy, you know, the wild pitches to come in and go, oh, yeah, OK, cool. And then we'll always keep on setting targets for ourself. We know where we want to get to. How can we get to that? Wouldn't it be great if...

[00:15:50] What's the most fun thing? And I'll say, honestly, if there was one through line, Justified is a very, very funny show. At least that was our intent, right? That Tim is hilarious. Walton's hilarious. Joel is.

[00:16:05] And just down the line, we got Pat and freaking Oswalt on the show, for God's sake, you know. But Silo is not a funny show. There is humor. And we got Rick Gomez in because he's just I've worked with him since Band of Brothers.

[00:16:19] But it was really to find what works for it and to... I'm not blanking on what it was, what the connection was. It was more of a process thing. Oh, yeah. It's basically this thing that Fred and I came up with years ago, which is let's try

[00:16:40] to give the audience what they want, but in a way they don't expect. So in Justified, the end of the series, we knew in that final episode we needed to have a showdown. And we decided, well, it can't be between Raylan and Boyd.

[00:16:53] They can't shoot at each other because we've done things like that. We need that to end in a different way. But we know the audience wants a shootout. So that's when we started building the part that Jonathan Tucker played, playing Boone, which is he's the young gun.

[00:17:08] He's faster and better. OK, what's going to happen there? And that's when we felt we gave the audience what they wanted in a way they didn't expect. And we try to do that on silo. So build up expectations, subvert them, but find a way that feels really satisfying.

[00:17:26] Because we're here to entertain. You know, I mean, that's the thing. If this show makes any statements about modern life or human life or whatever, great. But really, the job is to... People say, what's the best review you've gotten on silo?

[00:17:40] And it's just running into someone who says, I can't wait for season two. That's like the best thing you can hear. As long as you hear it from Apple as well. Yeah, right. Well, Graham, in that case, I can't wait for season two. I haven't read the books.

[00:17:57] So I'm very excited to see where it goes. It's actually one of my favorite debut seasons of the last few years. I'm hooked. And yeah, I had a great time with it. And I hope we can talk about the future seasons together,

[00:18:08] because I could talk about silo with you all day, man. You know what? Anytime you want to talk, just call the Apple people and just remind them that I said that. All right, I will. Thank you so much. Thanks, man.

[00:18:21] Fun talking Lord of the Rings too, by the way. What a joy it was to go back into that again. Yep, for sure. All right. Have a good week. Bye-bye. Take care. If you boil the pact. Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:18:44] I'd love to start by talking about how silo is, in my opinion, a particularly stylish and beautiful show, sort of in an era where streamers are giving lavish budgets to all kinds of different TV shows.

[00:19:00] And a lot of them tend to look a little bit cheap these days. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. How did you go about creating that? Yeah. It was it was so I mean, that was one of the main thing that,

[00:19:14] Matt Turner said Apple when he contacted me is that they needed a filmmaker to come in and help them do the world building. And it's I'm getting to the world which we were going to create was so rich and interesting.

[00:19:29] And doing that, we were lucky to spend almost like 10 months with the production designer Gavin McKay and looking at architecture, looking at brutalism, looking at the great depression, looking at going through like how did the old city of Barcelona develop the small alleyways

[00:19:49] and how to really learn from history and sort of create a show that was both futuristic, but at the same time is looking backward. We wanted everything to look like it was being used as a purpose. And there was an idea behind it.

[00:20:03] So and also, I didn't want this to become a green screen show, which I think a lot of the times it's being leaned into. It was all let's just do it in CD.

[00:20:11] I like we I wanted the actors to come to be on this set and feel like they were in the silo. And, you know, you could so if you wanted to every detail like the costumes that we can

[00:20:23] have zippers because that's too complicated to make the spanking bottoms like what kind of colors can we create? What's the resources they had to be sort of like we went to such a detail on everything. How do you light this?

[00:20:36] How how do you create day and night in something where there's no sunlight? And all of that sort of created a world that I think you can actually believe in. And I think that's some of the part of why we're getting such a good response from the

[00:20:50] is also it looks into it. It looks beautiful because it has big scope. It has the big it looks epic in a way, but it's the idea that it feels it feels real and it feels true and it feels like something that exists.

[00:21:02] And that was that was very important for us. Yeah, I love to hear you say that. I mean, one of my favorite shots early on is I think it's when like the mayor is talking to the town and the shot begins behind her and then cranes up.

[00:21:19] Yeah, over into the silo, which is obviously blending at least one set with the CGI environment. And it gives you that sense of versatility. It gives you that sense of scale that's grounded in the foreground by something real.

[00:21:32] How did you go about developing kind of the visual vocabulary as a filmmaker, not just in something like the production design? I mean, it's the one of the main thing we did is that I didn't want any long lenses, like any, any on the camera.

[00:21:49] So we didn't want the background to be blurry and out of focus. If you want to close up with the camera closer, because that gives the background sharp. If you do so, the camera was here on close ups, you know, and it's because the silo

[00:22:01] is such an important character. That one of the silos should always be there. You should always feel the presence of the silo. And a lot of the times when the camera moves, don't follow necessarily character. Let characters walk in and out of the shots.

[00:22:13] Follow the silo, shoot the silo. The silo is like sort of like the presence there. That's the thing that endures, the thing that's always there. People go move in and out.

[00:22:23] So that was one of the sort of like big ideas that we had when we shot this because it is such an important part. We always wanted to, and that's also something that Apple wanted. They said, please don't make it too, you know, too claustrophobic and too dark.

[00:22:40] And I agree with them. It should feel like a rich world because it is. To them, the people who live there, this is what it is. This is everything. So always be reminded, we only have these big crane shots, these big, we have drone

[00:22:54] shots, we have crane shots inside of this giant world. And always be reminded that this is a very varied, very big world. So it was great fun to sort of like experience that, you know, it would create a very specific, unique look for the silo.

[00:23:13] Yeah, I heard that you helped create or really spearheaded the whole generator set piece in episode three. And to me, that speaks to a lot of what you're referring to right now, right? Where it is at one time really claustrophobic, it's a really tight environment and high stakes,

[00:23:31] but it also feels massive. How did you visualize that sequence and put that together? It's one of my favorites in the whole season. Okay, no, I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, we wanted to play with, first of all, it has to come with ideas.

[00:23:44] And that would actually happen after we shot almost half the scene. We came up with the idea that we wanted Rebecca into that tank of water because she's afraid of water. That's something we played off and it was like, no, we can't swim, she's holding on the rope.

[00:23:58] So you have a character that's afraid of water, let's put her in a dark hole and fill it with water. That's the most terrifying thing though. So you have that claustrophobic thing, the red light and everything.

[00:24:09] And then at the same time, you want to feel this giant structure that is falling apart. So we storyboard everything. You have to because it's shot, that whole sequence is probably shot over four months. We shot two days here, a few days here.

[00:24:25] Then we have the control room, which is a separate part. People yelling and screaming and running in and out. That's a separate part. Then you have her in the tank. That's the separate part. Then you have the two of them up top.

[00:24:35] That's a separate part in another studio. And then you have the main part of the bottom part of the generator. That's a different part. And some of the shots goes from this without editing, you go between them. So it was incredibly hard.

[00:24:49] You really have to choreograph and plan it really rigorously because it's a, it was great. It should feel very random. Everything should feel awesome, handheld. Kind of when you should feel very hectic, but it needed to be precise because that room doesn't exist.

[00:25:07] That whole place, it doesn't exist. It exists in small pieces here and there because it's so big, you can never build it. So when it all comes together, it feels like, oh yeah, now we can see it. It's a giant generator room, but the generator doesn't exist.

[00:25:23] So yeah. That's amazing. And actually goes into something I wanted to ask you about, which is something that always fascinates me when I talk to filmmakers who work on features and in television about how your process changed on TV from features.

[00:25:39] But the way you're describing it right now, you almost brought the shot by shot attention to it that you might to a feature. I mean, how do you think about those differences? So for example, when you're creating the visual language for a whole new show that could last

[00:25:54] seasons, how conscious are you of creating a visual language that could be cohesively executed by other filmmakers? How much are you thinking about these things? A lot. That's literally my job coming into it is to create a language.

[00:26:10] And as what kind of lenses, what's the, and working with my DP, Mark Patton, and how do we light this? What kind of lights? How do you like just the challenging of, if you have interior lighting, everything looks like evening because we're so used as humans to watch.

[00:26:27] If there's a lot of practical lights in the room, it looks like the evening. So we're always having lights up on the window when it's daytime. So how do you do that when there are no sun? There is a lot.

[00:26:37] So we have to create all of that and all the light where lighting comes, how lighting works, how's mornings, whatever. All of that has to be thought about the credit. This is what you do if you're going to have a morning scene.

[00:26:47] This is what I do when I have a night scene. This is what I do this. This is the current kind of lenses you should do. This is how you do close up. Like all of that had to be really particularly thought out.

[00:26:57] And then you have to communicate that to the other directors. And so that is a big part of it. It is great fun. And so you have to just not only create the language for your own episodes, you have to create the language for the other episodes.

[00:27:13] And that's the other one. It's Silo is unique in that way. And a lot of the actors, when they come onto the set, said this is the biggest set they have ever been to on any feature. And this is a TV show. So everything is very blurry now.

[00:27:30] It is different. Yes, you have a little bit less time on a TV show usually. You have to shoot past it. But the expectation is when you see on some shows now, it is as thought.

[00:27:41] I mean, I think that there's a lot of shows now, TV shows that have more interesting visuals than a lot of movies I've seen. That feels even more rushed. I see like the effects on some movies that really suck and it feels really bad.

[00:27:57] And then I see some shows where this is very impressive. This feels very thought out. This feels very precise. So that rule now about movie and TV is sort of like it's blended, it's blurred. It's a very interesting time now, actually.

[00:28:13] Yeah, I think particularly so because on television, it's almost like the filmmakers are trying to stretch the dollar. They're trying to squeeze in as much production value as possible as they can to flex the budget they have, to flex the premise they have.

[00:28:29] So they're trying to expand that. That kind of goes into what I wanted to ask you about too, because Silo often can almost feel like a film noir or at times even a Western. The first shot is of a sheriff's gun, right? Yes.

[00:28:44] I'm wondering, how conscious were you specifically of like, I don't know, the cinematic traditions of genre that you were bringing into it? Yeah. A lot. And I really appreciate you saying that because it's actually a sheriff star. Oh, there you go. Sorry. There you go. Yeah.

[00:29:00] No, but it is. It's a classic shot where we see him in the mirror, which is actually a trick shot. It's a double behind it. Because he looks into the camera in the mirror, which is impossible. So you have to do a double there.

[00:29:13] But yeah, it is a noir. It's a mystery. So we lent into the noir genre, into the classic cinematic language of those and try to avoid your typical TV language if you're going to create that. Which again, is shot on a lot of choices.

[00:29:36] Traditionally, TV is done because of time. You know, cameras are usually you have three cameras that are going between close-ups and wide shots in the same takes. You know, we have multiple cameras that moves.

[00:29:48] And because they can't be in each other's shot, they're all shooting with long lenses and they're all far away for the actor. That's how you traditionally do TV. That's why you get the typical network TV look. It's like, we're not doing that. We're shooting with short lenses.

[00:30:04] We're being very close. You have to think about it differently. You have to frame it differently. We want a very precise framing. So it's definitely a more traditional cinematic language to it. And that was very important for it.

[00:30:21] And I think that's also very why these, I mean, they call it like premium TV or prestige TV or whatever you want to call it. But it is a very interesting time because you are a filmmaker. And that's the language I know.

[00:30:39] I don't really know the other TV language. I haven't, that's not my background. I don't even know how to do it. If I was going to do a sitcom, I literally wouldn't know what to do.

[00:30:50] So that's also why we're taking our film language, which we brought up with and you put it into TV now. And that's why I think you see a lot of interesting TV shows that has that language. Yeah. And we only have time for one more question.

[00:31:07] I wanted to end by asking about how a lot of people, I think, underestimate the degree of filmmaker is really just managing departments. And I was lucky enough to talk about or talk with so many different people on silo on all levels of production.

[00:31:24] And it really struck me how all the different departments talked about actively helping each other out. How the line, for example, between production design and cinematography was even blurred at times where everybody was trying to help each other's work be better.

[00:31:39] So as the director, as the filmmaker, how did you kind of marshal all the departments to have one unified vision on this? Because it feels particularly cohesive and all the departments spoke so highly of one another. Thank you for that.

[00:31:54] And first of all, we had incredibly department heads on the silo. And I think that is your main job as a filmmaker, because a director doesn't do anything. We literally do nothing. The only thing we do is actually talk and point and have a vision.

[00:32:15] So this is the dot we're all going to hit it. This is the star we're going to hit. This is where we're going to land. So the job is to constantly share and talk and also get people's idea and say, this is what feels siloed.

[00:32:30] This is the vision. This is the look and have constant meetings and bring everybody together. We had so many meetings and talk and also show and share research and bring everybody and what it brought their own research. And you say, this works, this doesn't work.

[00:32:46] You're sort of like the marshal or the guy sort of like went to all of that and sort of like guiding people. Everybody brings a lot and then you have to say, this works, this is what we're going to keep and this we're taking away.

[00:32:57] So in that sense, you have to sort of drill it down so everybody gets it. And then at the end, everybody knew that someone didn't feel siloed. That was something you talked about. No, it doesn't feel siloed. It's not siloed. Is it siloed enough? Yes, it's siloed.

[00:33:13] And maybe it becomes because there is a certain feel, there's a texture, there's an idea behind it, that there's something that you need makeup, costume, production design, lighting, everybody needs to understand the same feeling. And you can just do that by talking about it constantly.

[00:33:32] And it was pretty remarkable at the end because they felt like, why is that green color silo and that green color not? It's like, why does it feel? And in the end, everybody got it. It's like, you felt it more than you told it.

[00:33:46] And that is what's fun with something like this. And then you create a world and the world actually becomes coherent and real and gets its own rule and all these people get it. Yeah, well, you pulled it off. I appreciate that.

[00:34:02] Yeah, well, thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thanks. Don't you ever think about the world beyond the silo? What we see is not what's out there.

[00:34:17] I've done a mechanical. There's always someone who has a theory about the silo. I need to find out the truth. All right, so let's just dive in. I want to be sensitive to your time. I appreciate Gavin, you being with me today.

[00:34:32] I wanted to start by just asking, how did you begin conceptualizing what the silo but also silo the show should look like, especially the kind of brutalist, almost Soviet era? Architecture, where did all that come from? Well, interesting how these things start.

[00:34:52] I mean, I first got contacted through my agent to Graham Yost and Morton Tilton, the showrunner and the director, the key director. And in normal situation, you have an interview basically for the job. And often when that situation comes along, I do some preparatory work, some ideas, just

[00:35:14] get a few ideas together just to get myself into the project. So you've got something to talk about. And interestingly, I actually made a few little quick 3D models, digital models, just little ideas of how this world could look. And that was good.

[00:35:34] You never really presume that's going to be what you do. That's just a conversation starter. So that was great. And obviously, the meeting went well and there was no real previous concept art. There were a few fan bits of art.

[00:35:50] But I think Hugh Howey was sort of involved as well at the beginning and well, all the way through. But he didn't want to be sort of thrown by anything that had maybe been suggested before.

[00:36:05] And interestingly, he always felt that everybody would see it in a different way. He had his way of thinking about the show and he never wanted to presume that his way was the only way. So we were quite free to go in certain directions.

[00:36:21] So what we would normally do in that situation, which happened, we had about a five or six week sort of pretty concept soft period with Graham and Morton very involved and about two or three concept artists I normally work with just as sort of an ideas phase, really

[00:36:38] just throwing ideas either very painterly, some 3D, but sketch ideas, nothing finished. And to go along with that, research becomes a huge element of what the job I do or production designers do, whatever the project is, you sort of live on your research, really.

[00:36:57] So we had a few ideas thrown around. We got a researcher, Nicola, in who brought up a lot of images. Initially, I can't tell you where the idea for that sort of the Russian brutalist idea came from, but it definitely came.

[00:37:11] I think initially Graham had suggested some sort of Soviet era type of architecture, sort of nondescript. And we explored different physical shapes, obviously in a sculptural form and also having

[00:37:26] to be practical, you know, always in the back of my head is how are we going to make this? You know, it's easy to draw something or to model something. But then the next question is, got to fit it in the stage.

[00:37:38] You know, that's obviously something that's always back here somewhere. You know, it's not a free thinking world. The writers are free thinking. They can write whatever they desire. It's our job to try and interpret that.

[00:37:48] I think one thing that sort of clicked with the Russian or the East European sort of look was the use of concrete. We all felt that concrete in a sort of texture and aging way would work really well.

[00:38:03] You know, over 300 years later, what we've all seen various bits of architecture in concrete of whether it's motorways, highways, how they can deteriorate over decades to become visually very interesting. I mean, not necessarily structurally the best.

[00:38:22] Some of the early concepts we did, we did use that style, that very sort of hard edged style. But we did introduce a lot of metal work as well into the structure, like support structure.

[00:38:36] But it soon became apparent and I think Morton picked up on this pretty quickly, that it started to look a bit too sci-fi. It started to sort of feel as though you're in a spaceship rather than in a living environment.

[00:38:50] And the nice thing about that reference to the sort of concrete architecture was you hopefully always felt you were in a building rather than in a craft. But I think so there's never really one, you know, flashbulb moment of why you end up in that.

[00:39:10] You know, if you saw all the different ideas and the various ideas and research work that we put in front of Graham and Morton, you gradually sort of narrow it down. The most exciting day and the worst day is the first day when you've got a blank piece

[00:39:25] of paper. You know, you've got to get something done. But interestingly, when I look back after we had really got into the show, surprisingly, those first few ideas I put together for my interview were pretty close to what it ended up being.

[00:39:45] And it's interesting how your instinct or your gut feeling sometimes is where you end up going. You know what I mean? I mean, you can have 10 months prepping on a show, but sometimes you look back and the

[00:40:00] first ideas you came up with were what you came up with in the first three or four weeks. You know, you can have too long. Don't tell it. Don't tell any producers that. Yeah, of course. Wow.

[00:40:14] I mean, going back a long time when we did the first Triple X film with Vin Diesel and I know we had nine weeks prep on that and we were shooting in three continents. So you really had to trust your gut feeling and the director, Rob, and everybody.

[00:40:30] You had to sort of your first idea, if it worked, you went with it. Whereas on this, we had a reason. We had a good four or five months to really develop everything.

[00:40:39] But as you probably will, you can see that it was hard because we were basically inventing a world that had everything in it and had to have a basis reality. I mean, we were fantasy, but you wanted to have a base of reality.

[00:40:54] Anyway, there's a very long answer to your first question. That was wonderful. Yeah, thank you. I'm glad you brought up this idea of conceptualizing a whole world because something that really stood out to me is that within the brutalist architecture, it would be so easy for that

[00:41:10] to feel alienating and cold to the viewer. And yet it's full of warm tones, oranges and reds and browns in the drapes or the chairs, the furniture, there's throw pillows sometimes that are in that color, that different warm tones. How did that come about?

[00:41:31] Well, I think the set decorating, Amanda Bernstein was a set decorator. We worked together before and just understanding that world in all its levels, even reduce it to the simplistic upper, middle and lower in a sort of class structure.

[00:41:44] I mean, not really class structure, but you certainly wanted to make it. You had to feel as though people enjoyed living there. Although you were in a rather cold and damp world sometimes and certainly more damp at the bottom of the silo than at the top.

[00:42:01] There was quite a clever use of textures and fabrics and materials with myself and Amanda and Morten and Graham about how we would grade that as you moved down through the silo, that

[00:42:13] everything was a little bit more bespoke in the top end and everything as you moved down became a little bit recycled and remade and handmade and reused. And there was quite a nice sort of synchronicity there because Amanda and Johnny, the prop

[00:42:29] master, we had a long shoot, so we couldn't afford to hire all this furniture and dressing. We basically either had to buy it on eBay or antique fairs or junk markets and have our own store of furniture.

[00:42:46] And Amanda and Johnny were really good in terms of reconstituting that to work in different environments. They were almost following the recycling world of the silo in terms of things that we would

[00:43:00] break apart to use down below would be something that might have been used up top earlier on in the shoot or in another moment of the shoot. But I think that you've got to give a good shout out to Amanda Burns to get that sort

[00:43:14] of homely feel within the world of the silo. We always understand that our sets and our dressing, all they do in a sense is help tell the story and define the characters a little bit. And when you've got domestic environments and people's personal belongings, they're

[00:43:35] real places that you can get somebody's character and the warmth of their living space. On Office, not so well. Office has become a bit more general and a bit anemic in that sense. But as you probably saw, we had a lot of people's apartments and living spaces.

[00:43:52] So to make that you wanted people to look like they enjoy, they didn't know anything else, but they enjoyed this world. So I think those sort of that sort of colour balance, nothing was really brightly coloured. They were mostly tertiary colours and pastels.

[00:44:08] But just those little pops of colour every now and then, people's personality of handmade goods. I think one thing we were really happy with, and you never know with these things until

[00:44:19] you see the show, you know, a lot of it, you theorise an awful lot about what you're doing. But you're never quite sure, you know, until it all comes together. And I think one thing we were pleased about because physically we had to have a module

[00:44:37] of apartments just for the set building, just for cost and space. We never had the same apartment. Nobody ever lived in the same shaped apartment, but they all lived in apartments which we had like a Lego.

[00:44:50] We had to make out of different apartments as it was a modular system that would be quite sensible in a world like that, architectural world. So I was quite pleased that we never really felt that we just kept going into the same.

[00:45:04] Well, it's up to you to answer that. We never felt that we were just going into a redressed apartment. Obviously, they had a similarity of styles and curves that we used a lot and textures, but we never actually had the same shaped apartment. They were all different.

[00:45:22] And, you know, that was quite a subtle thing to get right when you've only got 20 shapes to play with, you know, because it had to be like that, because that's how the founders would have built, you know, like they did in the East European bloc.

[00:45:36] You know, it's very modular, simple system. But within that, if you looked at that sort of architecture very closely, you'll notice that even the architects in the Eastern bloc countries, they would still add little flourishes.

[00:45:54] They would, you know, it was in there, even though they were working to quite a severe brief, by nature, they were creative people. So they would always just add little things and shapes and sculptural bits. So we always felt that we were at liberty to do that.

[00:46:09] And I think as you got down further in the silo, the idea was a bit like a shantytown, that whether it was with graffiti or the colours they could paint there, there were little

[00:46:19] things that were a little bit more personal as you got down below into the darker world of the lower silo, whereas the upper silo is a little bit more organised and regimented because it was the official side. So a lot of those things come out in your process.

[00:46:37] You know, you don't necessarily have the answer in the first day or the first week or two. It's, you know, often done lectures in, you know, for colleges of how we do things.

[00:46:48] And the students are often asking, you know, what was the theory behind that and the theory behind this? And often you just have to say, well, it seemed a good idea at the time. Because you have to sort of go with that.

[00:47:02] It's sort of like there is no master plan on day one. Everything gets sorted out. So it's a very organic process. And I say you never know until the show comes out whether we've achieved what we meant to achieve, the director has, the writers has.

[00:47:17] But it seems we've got good response. So hopefully we did OK on that one. Sure. And I love that idea of this balance between planning and intuition. Right. And so I wanted to ask, the look of Silo is almost retro futuristic, you know, with technology from different eras.

[00:48:07] We have the computers that look like they're from the 70s or the 80s. In some scenes, it almost looks like something out of Alien and how the computers work and everything like that. So I wanted to ask, how was it decided what would be included and what wouldn't?

[00:48:24] You know, meaning what technology or what anachronistic things would be brought in, things like that? Well, when you see obviously when you start to see the relics, they offer, you know, we didn't know what the relics were really in the first scripts. They weren't meant.

[00:48:37] They were things that came up with ideas with Graham and with Morton and the other writers. But I think we always felt the basis as we are furnishings, our dressing, our technology, apart from the computers would be anything sort of non-specific 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.

[00:48:53] It was going to be a mixture of all those things. You know, the silos in theory were built 50 years ahead of now and were 300 years old. So anything that came along could have been something that was gathered that existed from

[00:49:09] the 40s, the 30s, even the 30s, 50s, 60s. So we didn't mind where the furniture sort of came from, the dressing, as long as it felt that it was sort of right for that period, not too manufactured.

[00:49:22] But I say a lot of the furnishings were meant to be recycled, made from other bits. The computer technology was obviously something for the founders that they obviously had the technology to do more than they were doing.

[00:49:35] And as you'll see in the next season, it goes to another level on that basis. But what we saw in season one. So we knew we wanted to design a computer system that looked pretty basic, looked 80s sort of style. And I think it was great.

[00:49:49] I think it was Morton or Graham's idea that came up with a square format rather than the landscape or the portrait. So we went back and we designed with our concept guys, Gert and Max, different ideas for early computers.

[00:50:05] And it was quite hard because they all ended up looking like things that had been designed in the 80s. You know, it was like that. And obviously, we were working for Apple. So we had to be a little bit careful. I mean, interesting.

[00:50:21] Apple don't want you to use any of their technology if it has any detrimental. Of course. Yeah. Of the story. And what we came up with this sort of box design, when we look back at it later, it's very interesting.

[00:50:37] It was very similar to a design that Jobs had done before he joined Apple. Just by chance, it just came up when he was I can't remember the name of the company.

[00:50:49] I mean, the company was what he was with before Apple, where they were really just it was something pretty close to that. We did mention it to him. Is this a problem? They said, no, no, it's not a problem at all.

[00:51:00] But if you strip it down to its simplest, we were obviously going to design something that had been like something in the 80s, because that's how it designed a square box with a screen on it. There's only a certain amount you could go.

[00:51:13] But the whole idea was from a story point of view, not ours from Hughes was that it was it was like a medieval society, really. There wasn't really books that were the books were very kept separate and everything was by mouth. Everything was talked. Everything was discussed.

[00:51:27] They classic they didn't know the founders didn't want the population to have communication, which has been throughout history, whether it's books, written words, you know, they don't want the populace to be able to communicate. And obviously, the Internet and everything these days is an extended version of that.

[00:51:44] And I think whether the founders had been through that 50 years from now and they wanted to exclude all of that, I haven't read the book, so I don't know where it goes after that.

[00:51:56] It's funny, I talked to some other designers the other day, and I tend not to read source material. I find it sort of can be quite confusing in terms of the script and the original. It's almost like an even Hugh Howey said.

[00:52:10] He said, you know, the written word is a very different beast to the the film world, you know, the visual storytelling. So we were always passing things through you just to check that we weren't sort of off guard.

[00:52:21] But I always prefer to stay with the scripts, really not think about, oh, was that in the book or was that part of the book? And so I think that was more I suppose I should read the book one day, but it's sort of, you

[00:52:34] know, just have a clear mind and go in your own direction and be governed by Graham and Morton and Hugh. Yeah, you could trust your own creative process if you're able to.

[00:52:44] I mean, it's funny, other designers I spoke to about it said, no, they they have to read the source material because there might be little Easter eggs they can put in for there. But yeah, we all work in different ways.

[00:52:56] You know, I'm sure Hugh, I'm sure Hugh would have said if he wanted to include something that was something from a future novel that would be represented in this season one world,

[00:53:08] then somebody would have told us and said, look, can we play a bit of lip service or homage to what may happen later on that? But I find it easier just to, you know, there's enough to think about without getting confused

[00:53:19] about something in the book or in the or in the in the scripts we get. Yeah, of course. I only have time for one more question, and I wanted to ask about one of my favorite set

[00:53:29] builds and locations in the show, which is where we meet Rebecca Ferguson's character, Juliet, which is the big furnace. Yes. Could you walk me through quickly the idea of that, like where the design exactly came from? Because it looks so mechanical.

[00:53:44] You can kind of feel the sweat and the toil in that scene. It's really excellent. Well, again, it all comes down to research. The first thing you do is look for any bit of mechanical research of turbines, of any

[00:53:55] generator energy generators of that period, almost like a Jules Verne version of something that was very mechanical from that period. And you basically throw that in altogether, stir it up and see what what comes out the other end.

[00:54:11] There's I did in the strike in the strike time, I did actually create an Instagram account where I've got a lot of development work from Silo on there, how we developed it. I think it's Bokeh 66.

[00:54:25] I think if you wanted to have a look at it, you'll see a lot of like a lot of the research what we did on the turbine and what and what it should be and what it would get there.

[00:54:33] But there was a lot of I think one thing we were trying to do in that turbine was with the special effects, the physical effects was to try and create something as much as possible, apart from the big shots were actually in camera physical effects.

[00:54:48] So whether it was the steam, the lighting, the water going in, everything was actually physically real. And I think and I probably couldn't tell it, but you could probably say, I'm sure the noise, I'm sure the sound was very important in that world.

[00:55:04] You could imagine when we're shooting, we don't obviously have any of that, you know, but yeah, and it's quite funny being on stage when, you know, all the actors are shouting because because in the show they have to shout.

[00:55:16] Yeah, but obviously when we're shooting it, there's no noise to cover, be covered by the shouting. So there's a lot of shouty people. Yeah, I imagine so. And just to, I guess, ease your concern, it is funny, but the 5.1 track for Silo, I think

[00:55:33] is one of the best of the recent streamer shows. It's really, really strong. It uses the surround channels really effectively. So it's interesting. Interesting. Yeah, I think certainly Morten and I think Morten was coming from a feature world as well. Morten was, he was with Graham.

[00:55:51] He was the real instigator. I mean, that sequence in episode three about the general, if I remember, that wasn't really in the scripts when we got them. That was something that Morten wanted to create, that jeopardy and that history of Rebecca's character. Yeah. On that.

[00:56:09] And I think it sort of set the tone for the rest of it. And what was, you know, we didn't do the second series, which is fine. You know, there were 90% of the sets were going to be the same.

[00:56:18] So it was never going to be quite the same exciting project. But the only frustration to that was, and they weren't in the second scripts, was just all the other environments that we'd sort of touched on in our concept world.

[00:56:32] We'd actually got into the fisheries and the food and the cows and the electricity. You know, you're trying to think of all these things. So we had some nice sketch concepts of where those could go. But in the end, you're obviously guided by the story.

[00:56:46] You can't just go off and we can't just go to a cow field just because we'd like to. Right. I mean, even glances at those things through the series really enhanced the feel of world building. And yeah, I know.

[00:57:00] I think for me, there probably wasn't enough of it. You know, there was a, we could have seen many different levels and many different flaws of how of how that was. But I think, yeah, as long as you saw it as a separate thing and you understood that,

[00:57:13] yes, there's a lot of other things going on in here. And I know in the second series and the third, it all starts to expand and get out of there and down below and out and about. But no, we're very proud of what we did. You never know.

[00:57:25] Sometimes, you know, we always work really hard on every show we do, but you never know whether the magic dust is spread. Oh, you pulled it off. I could talk to you all day. I think it has beautiful design all through the whole season. Congratulations.

[00:57:40] And thank you for your time today. Yeah, no, always happy to chat about things like that. So nice to meet you and maybe see you again sometime. Yeah, I hope so. Have a good day. Have a good weekend. Thank you. Bye-bye.

[00:57:50] I found something that might hold the answers to a lot of questions. You have to stay quiet. You're willing to give everything you have for this. Thank you, Mark, for joining me today.

[00:58:11] So I imagine that you read the script, you're going scene by scene, and at some point, you kind of realize that almost all the locations are cramped, claustrophobic rooms, and it takes place underground. Where do you begin with that as the cinematographer?

[00:58:31] In a kind of a dark place. Yeah, it was interesting. Once the concept of the silo landed on the shoulders of visually how you had to embrace that, the cogs really started to work in terms of as a cinematographer.

[00:58:58] Firstly, how are we going to move on a vertical axis regarding camera movement? For those who don't understand, this is a vertical chamber almost a mile underneath the earth. You transition from the proletariat at the top to the mechanical workers at the bottom.

[00:59:21] It was quite a difficult concept to understand how we're going to move vertically down that space. Snowpiercer did it on a train, but on the x-axis where the workers were at the back of the train and had to move to the front.

[00:59:39] But we inverted the train, and as a giant spaceship, we were sailing through this long period of time on a y-axis where light didn't come from the top because it's underground. There wasn't any dome that filtered light. The light was generated from within the silo.

[01:00:11] Conceptually, how do you do that? I worked very closely with the production designer and visual effects to understand how light could filter that deep down. I had read about areas in Switzerland where, in the winter, the cantons that existed on

[01:00:35] the east side of a valley would not get light. The administration put these objects called heliotropes which could gather light on the west side and filter, reflect the light into the villages. Those are known as heliotropes.

[01:00:56] I took that idea and thought, what happens if the silo could generate these powerful lights that were pushed into a giant heliotrope? That gathered the light and that disseminated the light through the vessel. That took quite a long time to think about that process.

[01:01:20] But once that came, then we knew that that was our template almost, that there was no hard light. It had to be a soft reflected light that would infuse not only the actual architecture of the silo, but also infuse the psychology of the people. Right.

[01:01:45] One thing I wanted to ask about, which follows that directly, is that one thing that really stands out about Silo is the lack of natural light and how many diegetic light sources are built into the sets.

[01:01:59] Often, no matter where you put the camera, it seems like you have all these opportunities for interesting frames. All these opportunities for interesting things happening out of focus, interesting ways to rack focus or things like that, because there's so much lighting built in to the sets.

[01:02:16] I wanted to ask about the collaboration with the production designer and the directors to find that kind of strategy so the show could often look very beautiful no matter where you put the camera. Yeah, it was a well-built.

[01:02:31] Right from the start, Gavin Bucket worked very closely with Morton Tilden, the director. You know, we sat in rooms and discussed how those inbuilt light sources could also delineate society and structure because as you get further down towards the very basement of the structure,

[01:02:57] I hope that the viewer sees that it becomes a little more dirty. Everything has been repurposed, so what society in this first season, and it's quite complex in terms of what the viewer is led to understand, is that everything's been salvaged, apparently, or has it been managed?

[01:03:19] You know, without giving away season two when that comes up, you've got to understand that for 400 years, this society had lived underground. And so that gave the designer a language to use in terms of, it's a repurpose, it's a

[01:03:46] it's a rejuvenation of materials that become uniquely important to make that light work for 400 years. It's not questioned why those lights are there, you know, we all know that analog filament light bulbs, which we don't use anymore, break down.

[01:04:09] So how do we, you know, what are we saying? What those light bulbs are, everything becomes super precious. And I think that was a really interesting concept to work into the design of the silo. Right, that makes sense.

[01:04:29] And speaking of the light fixtures through the show, I want to just ask about how it's just a darker looking palette, right? Often in low light, there's kind of rich browns, rich grays, deep shadows, very, very tightly controlled light levels. But the color is still really rich.

[01:04:51] It doesn't feel like it's desaturated or all these shades of gray. It's very rich in color. And yet, you know, you allow the show to linger in the dark. So how did you find that right balance? Because it's so precise, I feel like.

[01:05:07] That's very kind of you to say that, I think. It was a long time discussing with the art department, the set deck was really good. And we had this amazing painter, Brian, who, you know, we would pour over many hours of

[01:05:25] like, what is the right reflectivity of the paint, the right depth of color? Because I was only ever really pushing soft light into these rooms. And my worry was, how are we going to engage the audience for 10 hours and make each level different?

[01:05:46] And that was a huge challenge. You know, how does the administrative sector delineate from where we find our lead protagonist come from in mechanical? It's almost like traveling from an industrial zone of a city to the financial district of a city to the bougie part of the city.

[01:06:11] You know, you have to incorporate all of that psychology into a very narrow space without using hard light. And it became a real challenge on reflected light, you know, as I got bolder throughout

[01:06:31] the year, because obviously, I realized that the end of nine months to shooting, I lived in a silo, as you can imagine. You know, you go to work in the dark and come out of work, you know.

[01:06:45] I started experimenting with the way that light reflects off different surfaces and incorporated that into the maturity of each episode. And I must say that my fellow collaborators, you know, the DP's Laurie Rose, also embraced that language so that there was a continuity of color and texture.

[01:07:14] So that hopefully, after 10 hours, which is a long time, you don't want to bore the viewer. How do we keep them engaged in all of these different minutiae of a society? And that was a huge challenge.

[01:07:35] I mean, I think the first time I shot something outside after that project was like almost Nosferatu coming out of the coffin. You know, it's like, well, I can use hard light again. So it was a really good exercise in restraint.

[01:07:55] But then you realize that the reflectivity of surfaces, of skin tones, of really pushing the boundary with what the art department could do with, you know, you walk into the eye and these sets would look absolutely wrong. You know, why are you going with that color pink?

[01:08:16] And then it would render a really deep hue of velvet almost. And so it became another language on how to paint the light into these spaces. I'm so glad that you talked about kind of the difficulty of keeping it interesting for viewers

[01:08:40] over the 10 episodes, because I wanted to ask about the fact that, in my opinion, something that's not appreciated enough for TV directors and cinematographers is how I think people like don't understand how difficult it is to constantly find new angles and new lighting

[01:08:57] approaches within the same handful of sets. You return to the same locations again and again and again. And I imagine that's even more true for TV when you have a lot of the same palette and a lot of the same kinds of locations.

[01:09:10] As you point out, you have above and you go further underground, but it's all dark. You know, there are all these shades of darkness. And yet the show, to me, never felt visually stale. It always felt like it was showing me new ways to see within that space.

[01:09:26] So how do you try to keep the series kind of visually alive and distinct? You already spoke about that a little bit with the reflections and the reflective paint, but could you elaborate on that? Yeah.

[01:09:36] I mean, a very good friend called Jakob Ballinger came up with this process of reflected light. And he developed this product, which basically is the concept of how you can shape reflected light through his range of products by the Cine Reflected Lighting System.

[01:10:04] Once that was explained to me, it became this invaluable tool in terms of how you can mold reflected light into these spaces and double reflect them off all of the all of the actual nuances of the set, because I couldn't really throw a hard light anywhere

[01:10:28] because that wouldn't make sense. That it doesn't exist. So that was the challenge. And I hope that during the storytelling and the narrative that that is underlined, you know, obviously, as you go even deeper below mechanical, so then you get to the diggerhead,

[01:10:52] that became conceptually, OK, there's these huge arc lights that might are thrown on when they go to the secret place. So I could possibly use a bit of hard light there because it was artificial hard light, but still, it's just so many layers of darkness.

[01:11:14] You know, the studio is going to be on your back in terms of it can't look too dark, you know, and we've got all of the range of skin tones played throughout all of our protagonists. So that that was always playing on my mind as well.

[01:11:32] And it's how you collate and generate a strong visual narrative that connects everything throughout nine months of filming. And that that to me was was a huge challenge. And I hope that I've. I hope that I've addressed that. Yeah, I think so.

[01:11:57] And I was just wondering with all the darkness we're talking about with all the claustrophobic spaces, I'm wondering how that impacts camera and lens choices on set. Morton was adamant that he wanted to shoot anamorphic.

[01:12:14] He wanted to the silo to be a character, even though we didn't frame scope. So that means we were pulling the middle out of of those anamorphic lenses to the layman who might be listening or whether you're going to process this. It means that.

[01:12:35] On the anamorphic lens, we had to shed the edges where the interest lies. So then I was almost lighting for the middle of a lens, which is technically quite challenging as well because I was losing all the beauty and the drop off from the edges, knowing that

[01:12:57] the middle was going to have to be pulled because of the end framing. So how do you build into your into your lighting that you still got interest on the edges of that frame, even though you're not letting the lenses do that work in hindsight?

[01:13:16] I wish I pushed Morton to shoot spherical, but I inherited the job because his his lead DP had to go on to another project. So then when that happened because of the push during covid, I interviewed, but then

[01:13:34] had that set of lenses on on the slate, as it were. Sure. I mean, I could see why you would say, you know, shooting spherical would would in some ways make sense. But there's something about the anamorphic and silo that I really enjoyed.

[01:13:48] Specifically, you brought up was one of the first things you said, those like vertical pans that often unfold to the series. There's that like tracking shot in episode one when we first see the full scale of it. And you do see some anamorphic blurring of the edges.

[01:14:07] You do see that. You see the light distortions. And I wanted to ask about, you know, the versatility of the location because you want the silo to feel real. And I think that the anamorphic for me as a viewer did help achieve that a little bit

[01:14:22] when you have more texture to some of the lights, to some of the bokeh or whatever, you know? Yeah, I mean, obviously it was a major collaboration between. You know, the VFX department, we only ever had a floor and a half. Wow. So when you yeah.

[01:14:40] So when you when you cut to the central spine, which is the the corkscrew that takes you lower and lower and lower. I mean, it was huge. Well, the build was huge, as you can imagine, to get the scope of what the anamorphic was doing.

[01:15:00] But we only had a floor and a half. So every time you look up, that was takeover. Right. And then look down, that's takeover. And then on the one floor that we had, then that would sprawl through, you know, to various

[01:15:15] different sets that would be repainted, repurposed, reproduction designed. And then I also said that we need to have a blue floor because the art department couldn't turn around the floors and the different levels that were needed quick enough, because it's

[01:15:37] so I mean, we took over three KFC cold stores on an industrial estate and, you know, and built and built the silo within those, you know, those structures. So that also was a challenge in terms of, you know, rigging, rigging out those spaces. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

[01:16:05] It was very successful. I'm out of time. But thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. And I honestly can't wait for season two to see what you all cooked up for that. Okay. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you so much. You too, sir. Cheerio.

[01:16:20] The clock is running. There's not much time left. This is a threat to order in the silo. I don't care about order. What about finding out the truth? Some mysteries, they're best left unsolved. So, Atlee, thank you so much for being with me today.

[01:16:51] I wanted to start by just what drew you to the project of working on Silo? Well, I suppose a few things. First of all, the director of the first three episodes, Morten Tilden, and I worked together before on Defending Jacob for Apple a few years back.

[01:17:11] And so, you know, at the end of the day, he basically asked me if I wanted to come back and do this with him. And, you know, which is, I was already sold. So I didn't need much more, you know, kind of convincing than working with Morten,

[01:17:31] because he's amazing and we get along. So that was already a no brainer for me. But then, you know, as I started sort of getting to know the characters in the show and all that,

[01:17:43] it just, it was kind of a bit of a dream come true to work on a proper sci-fi show. I've always wanted to sort of be able to dig my, yeah, sort of get stuck into one of those, because it's so much about the world building.

[01:17:58] And I think that the music has to exactly do that as well. It has to be, the music has to be a really important part of building the world. Yeah, absolutely. And that makes sense.

[01:18:10] One of my questions I wanted to ask you about is that Silo is sort of a murder mystery. It's also this, you know, sci-fi epic in some ways that spans all these novels. And I wanted to talk about that because these are genres generally known

[01:18:27] to have a lot of expositional dialogue. There's a lot of world building. There's a lot of catching up with who's who in the suspect list and things like that. And yet not every episode, but there's episodes in the season that are like wall to wall score almost.

[01:18:43] There's score pulsing through much of it to your exact point. And yet, because of the dialogue, you don't want those two things to be in opposition, right? So what was your process in scoring the show so that it would further that journey and

[01:18:58] that experience without necessarily, you know, undercutting the dialogue? Because there is so much score and that does give the show, I think it's rhythm and it's momentum that it does. Yeah, it's a really good question and a good observation, to be honest.

[01:19:12] But that said, I think it kind of sort of sorted itself out in the sense that because there are actually episodes in the middle of a season that don't have that much music. Right? They're quieter. Because they're sort of more, yeah, they're quieter.

[01:19:28] They're more, you know, they're more about the mystery, the journey, what's going on, et cetera. And then there's episodes that are very sort of action driven. And somehow it's OK to put music under dialogue when there's a lot of action in the background

[01:19:45] or when it's sort of propelling the story in that sense. So it actually was a very kind of, I don't know, the show, it wasn't hard to figure out where to put music and where not to put music because it just kind of was laid out in a

[01:20:02] very logical way in that sense that like, you know, this dialogue doesn't need any help. Right. But this dialogue, you know, really is a part of a bigger kind of an actiony sort of plot that it makes sense to keep the music going.

[01:20:19] And there were even episodes, again, sort of somewhere in the middle of the season that I would just kind of go through and think, wow, I can't believe that there isn't more music in this episode.

[01:20:29] But then, you know, in the beginning of the end, it's just like music wall to wall almost. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It struck out to me because I was revisiting some of the episodes of the season to prepare for this.

[01:20:41] Just happy to do because I was such a fan of the season. And there's like dialogue scenes in the first three episodes, especially where they're talking about the murder mystery aspect. And you'll just hear this like electronic droning filling you with with dread. It's very effective.

[01:20:57] And I wanted to ask, so as you're breaking down the scripts or as you watch footage, how does your writing process kind of actually begin? How do you begin shaping the musical themes when you first get started?

[01:21:12] Well, you know, I think that's the million dollar question, isn't it? I mean, it's all about ideas. It's all about kind of trying to break down, you know, what's happening. What is this about? You know, what kind of reality do these characters live in?

[01:21:33] What are their inner worlds like? What's the damn thing about really at the end of the day? And, you know, a lot of interesting things started kind of sort of dominate my thought process because. OK, one thing which I find really interesting, it's a sci fi show.

[01:21:52] At the same time, the technology looks so dated and old fashioned and kind of dodgy. So there's kind of this dichotomy that comes into play. But if you actually think about it, the only way for these people to survive is because

[01:22:08] of technology, because of the generator that keeps the electricity going, you know, the ventilation, air conditioning systems, et cetera, et cetera. So I started really thinking a lot about kind of old school technology.

[01:22:24] And literally the first thing I did at all for the music was programming using analog sense, starting to program weird kind of drones. And, you know, I just think what would it sound like?

[01:22:38] Because there has to be sort of a hum of a machine almost everywhere in that place. Honestly, it was almost like sort of halfway between, you know, the hum of an AC and a static radio or something. And I just I started playing around with these things.

[01:22:54] And then so that, you know, as much as I'd love to say that I was inspired to write the melodies first, that was the first thing I did was kind of like this. Let's just find this weird sort of uncomfortable, claustrophobic bed of noise that could come

[01:23:10] out of these machines that look like computers from the 70s and then build something on top of that. Yeah, that's amazing. And I'm wondering then about the main theme, because it almost has, I don't know, like

[01:23:24] a religious quality to it in a way where to me it begins with this kind of solemn piano and then it escalates to mystery, you know, almost hope, hopefulness. There's some melancholy in there at the same time.

[01:23:40] And it gave me the experience, which mimics the experience of the characters of thinking there's something more than what we're seeing, right? There's something beyond what what we're seeing, especially because that theme often plays specifically as they're uncovering more of the central mystery of the show. Yeah, yeah.

[01:23:59] Well, I love hearing that because, I mean, you know, that that wasn't really what I was thinking about, but I'm really happy to hear that it sort of kind of inspires yourself and other people perhaps to come up with your own sort of interpretation of it.

[01:24:15] Well, what was your intention with the main theme? If I'm honest about the main theme, it was one of those things where, you know, it looked on paper like I had quite a bit of time to do the show.

[01:24:28] But then all of a sudden, I just got an email, we need music in three days. And I was just like, oh, and so it was sort of thankfully I'd had some time to think about it, but I just had to come up with something.

[01:24:41] And it was actually, yeah, they wanted music for the beginning of episode one because, you know, they were using some temp score for editing, but it wasn't working out. And Norton was like, can you please write something bespoke for this?

[01:24:56] And so, you know, I just as I said, I started with the drones. I started playing some stuff on the piano because I'm, you know, I'm actually sitting at the piano right now that I wrote this on and and it just sort of started coming to me.

[01:25:15] And I kept playing with this since I'm here. So I realized later that that tune is trying to go up. Right. You know, and it's like and even the, you know, like the arpeggios that come in later, everything seems to be wanting to move up to the surface.

[01:25:41] And I wasn't thinking about that when I wrote it. But after the fact, I'm like, that's kind of cool that maybe subconsciously that it is like you're in the silo and what you really want is just to get out. Right. So so who knows?

[01:25:57] But to me, the main aspect for me were, like I said, I talked about claustrophobia and feeling isolated. But there's also the hope and the idea that seems to be prevalent in a lot of the characters deep inside. There is something outside.

[01:26:19] There is something more to life than being stuck inside of the silo. And obviously, there's endless mystery and I just which just keeps unraveling. And, you know, you'll see maybe you've read the books, maybe, you know, all of this.

[01:26:35] But season two is full of surprises and new mystery. So, yeah, I mean, it was just kind of some sort of combination of these three things. And as you know, frequently happens once you once you're able to kind of connect your

[01:26:50] like intellectual process with the creative process, it just sort of starts finding its own life. Wow. Yeah, that that makes sense. And I wanted to springboard right off that question into something I was really curious

[01:27:05] about, which is silo can feel like this big budget sci fi series one minute. But to use one of your words, intensely claustrophobic the next. Right. You have this huge cavernous silo structure. We're always discovering new parts of it.

[01:27:20] It can seem endless, but you also can't leave really. And most of the drama, many of the dialogue scenes, the most important scenes of the show take place in small, almost like oppressive spaces.

[01:27:33] So how does that intense contrast between kind of the really large scale and the very intimate kind of inform what you're doing as a composer, if that makes sense? Well, I mean, I think, for example, being drawn to the piano is a product of that sort

[01:27:54] of loneliness, because it's like, and it's intimate, you know, you can you can sort of. So let me rewind. As you said, it's like that juxtaposition between the intensely lonely and and and sort of intimate loneliness of being an individual in that weird environment, juxtaposed with

[01:28:17] a hundred and something floors of people trying to coexist, you know, tens of maybe ten thousand people or whatever it really should be. But it's that, you know, how do you go? You know what represents that intimate singularity of the of the individuals?

[01:28:37] So for me, I mean, I used the music goes from incredibly small and personal to really vast, you know, and in some cases very electronic and kind of just like otherworldly in a way.

[01:28:55] So but I mean, honestly, for me as a composer, that's kind of like the amazing fun that comes with writing for silos that is that range, you know, it's like maybe there's a solo violin for somebody, you know, because you want to be with them intimately.

[01:29:11] And and then the next scene is like, you know, ten thousand people on the stairs and you have to come up with something really big for a string orchestra or something like that.

[01:29:20] So, I mean, it's like, you know, you try to kind of find ways to represent whatever scope you're working with through the music. And, you know, I think that's I think that's one of the things that makes the show and the

[01:29:36] books really successful is that, you know, on the one hand, you're talking about literally the continuation of humanity and then, you know, it couldn't have a bigger sort of subject matter. And on the other hand, you're just trying to sort of

[01:29:52] feel how these lowly people would feel like. Right. And I'm guessing then that informed why the music often kind of blurs the line between orchestral, piano and electronic. Obviously, there's even some choir in there throughout. Yeah. And I wasn't always sure what was electronic and what was live.

[01:30:15] So it was an interesting thing where those elements kind of feed into one another. No, that's my design to be honest, because it's like there is so much in the silo and in the

[01:30:28] power structure behind the silo that you don't know about that like ambivalence is such a big part of the storytelling and such a big part of the plot that the music, it feels right that the

[01:30:42] music kind of does the same thing. And I did a lot of kind of resampling of things, you know, sample strings or choir or something like that, and then just tune it down two octaves or run it

[01:30:57] through an amp or whatever and sort of kind of like rehash a new electronic sound out of those sources. And I don't know, I come back to the role of technology in the story and in the silo and how

[01:31:13] you know, I don't know, it just the sound design of the technology and like the, you know, those drones and synth ideas that I started with actually kind of permeate the whole score there. They tend

[01:31:28] to just be there somehow, because, you know, we're still in the silo and there's still the hum of the generator behind us. And it's really amazing because it's like the palette is so flexible,

[01:31:41] you know, you can get away with just about anything because who the heck knows what music for the silo should sound like. It's just such a, you know, it's just such a freeing palette,

[01:31:57] freeing canvas, if you will. Right, right. I'd love to go into Juliet's theme because for her character played by Rebecca Ferguson, to me, the theme is not what I would expect it to be

[01:32:13] when I think about the archetype of her character, but it works so effectively. So I would just love to hear what your process was for that. Yeah, I mean, I think, for me, the theme is more than

[01:32:25] anything is about her childhood. You know, because I think everything like for most people, I suppose, everything that she does is explained by, you know, the trials and tribulations of her

[01:32:38] childhood and how she grew up. So the main kind of musical idea in that theme is just that constantly sort of going from major to minor. And I feel like her character is a bit like that.

[01:32:52] She's always going, she's going back and forth between major and minor as a person. She's a bit, you know, kind of unpredictable. And she's sweet, but she's really tough. So it's like, like those are sort of the ideas that that is based on, you know, and somehow,

[01:33:15] I don't know, the voices because her theme is quite often represented, you know, with a solo vocal or even a choir. And, you know, there's kind of like a broad idea with the voices that they're

[01:33:30] kind of like the ghosts of the silo. And she lost her mom when she was young. So the solo voice for me is kind of almost her mom singing her a lullaby or something like that. Wow. So yeah, I mean,

[01:33:43] well, thank you. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's, again, it's like those, having time to really think about what you're going to write before you write it is so invaluable. And just like, even if

[01:33:56] it's something that is almost like, seems so obvious or silly, it's like, you know, it's like, it just kind of helps you to narrow things down to figure out what it should be, or should not be.

[01:34:11] Right, right. All right. Well, we're out of time. Thank you. That was absolutely wonderful. I can't wait for season two. I'm not a book reader. So I'm excited to go in. Yeah, yeah. I don't think

[01:34:22] you're going to be disappointed. No, I don't either. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. All the best. Cheers. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to Brendan Hodges interviews with the screenwriter for silo Graham Yoast, the director Morten Tildum,

[01:34:36] the production designer, Gavin book, wet, the cinematographer, Mark Patton, and the composer Atlee over Arson silo is available to stream now on Apple TV plus, and is up for your consideration in all eligible categories. You have been listening to the next best picture podcast,

[01:34:54] we are proud to be part of the evergreen podcast network and you can subscribe to us anywhere where you subscribe to podcasts. Be sure to leave us a review on Apple podcasts and let us know what

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[01:36:03] Hello, and welcome to novel conversations, a podcast about the world's greatest stories. I'm your host, Frank Lovallo. And for each episode of novel conversations, I talked to two readers about one book. And together we summarize the story for you. We introduce you

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