Interviews With The "Fallout" Makeup Artist & Production Designer

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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. You are listening to the Next Best Picture Podcast and these are Giovanni Lagos interviews

[00:01:11] with the makeup artist for Fallout, Jake Garber, and the production designer Howard Cummings. Hello there. I'm here to show you a wonderful place. A veritable Camelot of the nuclear age. Not made by God Almighty. You can be a hero by purchasing a residence in a Vault-Tec vault today.

[00:01:38] Because if the worst should happen tomorrow, the world is going to need you to build a better day after. The mission of the vaults should be important to everyone. To come up to the surface one day and restart civilization.

[00:02:07] Can you tell me what's happened in the last 200 years? Holy shit, you're an actual vault dweller. I am. Oh, you dipshits were dead. What you're doing is insane. It isn't like the vault out there. It's big.

[00:02:31] Hello everyone. This is the Next Best Series Podcast. I'm Giovanni Lago and I'm joined by Jake Garber, one of the excellent heads of the prosthetic makeup team for Fallout. And if you've not seen Fallout, you absolutely should. So Jake, thank you so much for joining. My pleasure.

[00:02:49] Well, let's just get the general question out the way because I mean, Fallout, incredibly popular video game series. I have friends who adore this game. Like after the show is out now, we watched it together. They have like not stopped playing. So for you,

[00:03:02] were you always familiar with that material? How did it come across your way? No idea. No idea. I'm not a gamer. I'm a different generation. But I think in some ways that can be a little bit more beneficial. You're coming at it with

[00:03:19] fresh eyes and all that stuff and not dictating to a certain type of look, although we did base everything on there. But I was actually contacted by one of the producers, Jim Scotchdaple,

[00:03:31] who I'd worked with in the past with Quentin on some projects and kind of told me about it. Initially, I said no, because he said he wanted to do a ghoul. It was a ghoul makeup. And I

[00:03:42] had done eight seasons of Walking Dead. And I kind of was like, I'm kind of, you know, I kind of had my fill of that. And he says, good, we were hoping you'd say that. Matter of fact, interestingly enough, I hadn't read any of the Walking Dead and

[00:03:55] graphic novels until I was on the show. And again, we did use it as a reference. But it was same thing. It's like you've got a source material, but it's not gospel. It kind of deviates within that world.

[00:04:08] I love that you mentioned, you know, not being dictated by the source material. I know, especially with video games and things people are like incredibly beloved to, they get very, you know, overprotective with it. So I know when you said you followed it mainly to a degree,

[00:04:23] is there any little detail that no one's pointed out or any change that you made that you were personally proud of, especially with the ghouls makeup? Well, I have to give a mention out as well. Vincent Van Dyke was the guy that designed and

[00:04:36] built all the prosthetics for it. And I brought Vincent in because I'd worked with him in the past with success. And he's got a shop that cranks out some fantastic stuff. So my involvement after the

[00:04:48] introductions were Vincent and Jonah and started discussions, again, based on the source material about what to do. But like one of these things that Jonah kept mentioning was the look of it, he wanted to kind of look like dried leather, which is cool. But also too, that's aesthetically,

[00:05:06] it's kind of difficult, because if you look at leather, it can be pretty, pretty flat, kind of monochromatic, where we needed to kind of break it up a little bit and give it some life.

[00:05:14] But, and we found a happy medium on that. As far as like little Easter egg things on the look, Vincent has a notch out of his ear that he incorporated into the ghoul. So if you look

[00:05:31] at Walton's right ear, there's a little notch taken out of the, I mean, you're looking at it backwards, but his little bit out of right, his right ear, but that was based on Vincent's ear. Adrian I'm glad I'm having this conversation with you,

[00:05:42] because I haven't really had the chance to speak to many makeup artists. And there's like always little details I'm curious about, especially with, and we're going to get into Walton, of course. But like in the general design of the ghoul makeup, Walton's character mainly,

[00:05:56] with the nose, I've seen the photos where like, Walton's nose is still there. And it's taken out with CG. Was there ever an attempt to try to take that out with prosthetics? Or was that just like implausible due to like an actor breathing?

[00:06:11] It's, it was never considered because prosthetic makeup is additive. It's you can add, but you can't take away. So for us to do something like that would make, we would have to build out the

[00:06:26] face so much that we would, you know, it would look like a socket and it would probably work for some straight on shots. But the minute he did any sort of profile or something, now the whole face would have jutted forward. And technology has increased so well that

[00:06:43] it really is not that big a thing to do it. So, and if you look at the photos of Walton before the digital removal, you can tell that, you know, that his nose is a little bit wider than what

[00:06:54] they've done because again, your nostrils exceed the gap where that cavity would be. So the VFX team, which did a fantastic job was able to reduce that. And Vincent made a hard copy of the ghoul

[00:07:09] head with the actually cap, the cavity done cosmetically correct. And after every shot that we would do at the end of it, you know, VFX, they come in with their reference material and all that,

[00:07:22] they would bring in a head on a stick that they would move around and see how the light affected and all that stuff. So they had reference. The other thing that was a big benefit too, was that

[00:07:32] usually when you're doing some sort of removal like that, you're doing something like, you know, a green material or blue that's easy to remove and all that stuff. We had tried that initially, but it was a distraction of Walton because he could see this green

[00:07:47] nose at the front there. And the guys came in and said, all we really need is let's just get, let's just put some tracking dots on there. And we did that in the test initially, but they,

[00:07:57] so there were literally four white tracking dots on his nose that the VFX guys used to do the removal. It's that time we got to bring up Walton. And I, one thing I loved because you guys have a

[00:08:08] great relationship and he posted on Instagram, you know, just a day sitting in the chair of the transformation. And I think he mentioned that I found fascinating was that you two would watch movies while you're applying the work. And I'm just curious first, what movies were you guys

[00:08:25] usually watching and to how that idea comes into play when you're applying makeup. So it'd help you get the makeup on quicker and also ease the person sitting into the chair. Well, I didn't watch the movies. I was,

[00:08:39] so Walton was the one that I got to listen to him. Okay. He just, he tended to obviously pick stuff in the Western genre. We were watching, you know, I, you know, you know, spaghetti,

[00:08:52] Western stuff. We, you know, the whole gang and stuff, Walt would just come in and that was going to be his playlist for the day. And it was, it was good. I've done them with some other actors

[00:09:03] in the past where it kind of distracts them from the process, which can be rather lengthy. And luckily the process got whittled down pretty good. So we consistently were under two hours

[00:09:14] and usually would kind of float at about an hour and a half. You know, I think maybe an hour or an hour 45 was, was about solid, got down to an hour and a half one time. But I just kind of look

[00:09:25] at it as once you've done that makeup a handful of times, usually about like 10 or so you've pretty much debugged it about as much as you can. And then it's just more like a personal challenge

[00:09:36] to try to see how quickly I can do it and still have, you know, maintain the look, you know, and be able to stay on all day. Cause I just, I kind of tend to think it can be a little bit of a

[00:09:46] disservice to production, the actor in particular, because if you have them in the chair for an extended period of time, now all of a sudden, once you're done, then they start their day.

[00:09:56] So it can, it can be pretty tough. So if you've got something that falls in, you know, an under two hours, it's not, it's not that big a deal, you know it's just part of the working day.

[00:10:06] So yeah, so Walton would pop it in there. I get about halfway through the process and we'd have a little bit break in there and kind of go step outside and stretch for a hot minute.

[00:10:15] I'd get the station reorganized for the next half of the process. And then Walton would come back in and we'd we'd finish everything up. You know, I love that you mentioned a bunch of Westerns

[00:10:25] Walton will pick for those of who are listening that don't know, you've worked a lot with Samuel Jackson. You have worked on, you know, the hateful eight, which the ending of the movie is literally

[00:10:36] Samuel Jackson and Walton Goggins. How does it feel? Would you ever imagine that now only these two brilliant actors would be great collaborators throughout your career, but also like friends that you've made and cherish deeply? I feel pretty fortunate. I'm actually

[00:10:50] working with Sam right now in Atlanta. And, you know, I luckily when I do work with one or the other, you know, Sam is, you know, kind of runs more of the priority, if you will. But he understands

[00:11:04] when I get involved with Walton because they are actually very good friends and they've worked. I think they first worked together on Django. Yeah. Wow. And hateful eight. He was on Ptolemy Gray

[00:11:17] with us as well. Last days of Ptolemy Gray. So they're like, you know, they're very good friends and I feel very fortunate to kind of fall into, you know, let's put it this way. If I had to,

[00:11:28] you know, go between those two as actors, I was going to work with for the remainder of my time. I'd be perfectly content with that. Also something that's probably unexpected when you were signing

[00:11:38] on to work this job. Would you ever imagine, you know, you were going to act in it? I don't know many people who are listening realize when you watch Fallout, you're also on the show for an

[00:11:47] episode, let alone that you say this guy was fucking my chick. I am the protector of poultry. Yes. It was. There were there were certain reasons I was cast primary one, I think, was they wanted

[00:12:01] to do something with John Daly as well. And to work in Namibia where we shot that scene required a rather extensive visa process and all that stuff to get things in place. And I think by the time

[00:12:14] they thought about doing it, there was, you know, I don't know if we can pull this off. And Jimmy Scotch to pull who I worked with on Django. I actually was one of the trackers

[00:12:24] in that as well. He knew that I could, you know, well, Jake's actually been on camera. Let's see, would he be good for it? So Graham had come up and asked me about it. And I was,

[00:12:34] of course, interested. But I just said there's there's two things. One of them is I don't want to do it on the day that Walton is working because that's kind of that's my main job.

[00:12:44] And the other one is I am in SAG, so I don't want it to be like a wouldn't it be cool if you could do this? So I kind of let the beard grow out for a while and, you know, kind of scruffed up a

[00:12:54] little bit. And then I don't think I got the I don't know if I got the dialogue or the script. So we were in that. And I, you know, I've got a rather twisted sense of humor. So I was

[00:13:05] right up my alley. So I was OK with it. Jonah directed me and we got notes out of it. And yeah, it was actually quite fun. How many how many takes did it take to get that scene?

[00:13:14] You know, not that many, actually. We were you know, I didn't fuck up too bad. But, you know, just a few, you know, a few here and there, two or three. You know, I mean,

[00:13:26] Jonah may have had some notes here and there, but actually it was it was pretty, you know, it went pretty smooth, all things considered. Yeah, I think we only spent like maybe about a half a day shooting the whole scene. So with Walton, because, you know,

[00:13:37] he primarily worked with transforming him. He's one of the main characters, you know, seeing the before the Cooper Howard version and now the ghoul. There are other ghouls in the show. So I was wondering when you were talking with the creative team and those working prosthetics

[00:13:51] and makeup as a whole, showing the different evolutions of the variations of ghouls, because there are different types that is explained in the series. There are different ones in there, and they were done by a team of some very talented guys in New

[00:14:06] Jersey. Brent and Greg did the main part of the ghoul stuff in there. They weren't involved with the second block of shooting. K&B came in and was involved with that portion of it. So they

[00:14:15] were involved primarily with like the feral ghoul and most of the stuff that was in the second half of the season right there. But I think they were. Yes, I know there are a bunch of different types

[00:14:25] of ghouls that were there and none of them really fell into what the gamers would look at and say, oh, that's that type of one. I think they just kind of wanted to have some generic ones in there

[00:14:36] that were primarily in those and, you know, the freezer units in the, you know, the super duper mart thing. And but yeah, I mean, honestly, it was it was kind of like, you know, a Walking Dead day.

[00:14:48] You know, we did have a little bit of a covid outbreak during that time. So I ended up having to run run lead on that one and pull in some folks. And we had we had some pretty, pretty

[00:14:58] hectic days to get those things together. But I've dealt with, you know, the bigger numbers and all that stuff before. So I just kind of went on autopilot and we got through it and did all that.

[00:15:09] You know, you mentioned Walking Dead, which is also fascinating that you just didn't read it beforehand. I know a lot of people don't like the previous work to really get in their mind and

[00:15:18] affect what they bring to a project. I read the entire comic and I adored the show. So finding out you worked on it was just a blast to hear. So I was wondering if you could just talk a bit about,

[00:15:29] you know, that entire process and working with someone like the great Greg Nicotero and how those lessons, you know, eventually came and forever stayed with your career. Well, Greg's like one of my best friends. I matter of fact, I just saw him using Atlanta

[00:15:42] a couple of days ago and it was his son's 22nd birthday. Happy late birthday, Devin. And but yeah, I mean, I Greg talked to me about it and just check schedule and said, hey, you want

[00:15:55] to you know, we're doing this zombie show. And the selling point was because Frank Darabont was involved and we'd worked with Frank before. So we were, you know, I was keen on that. And I've worked, you know, with Greg 20, 20 some years on and off, you know, rather regularly.

[00:16:10] And when we came out to Atlanta to do it, it was something that we did reference the material. And that's a definite. But I didn't get too involved in far as looking into the,

[00:16:22] you know, the storyline and all that stuff. I did eventually. But I kind of didn't want to get too attached to something and then have something changed, you know, in the series and all that.

[00:16:34] But then we finished season one and it was fun. We had a good time on it and all that stuff. And then we had no idea how it was going to blow up. And a matter of fact, Frank kind of gave us the

[00:16:48] heads up if we saw anybody while we were up here, you know, shooting season one that we thought would be good walkers approach him and see if they want to be in the show. So we're looking for like thin

[00:16:57] people, people that interesting faces that we could use. Nobody, nobody followed through. Nobody wanted to do it. Second season came around and we couldn't, you know, keep them at bay. I

[00:17:09] mean, everybody wanted to be a walker on the show and come by. We just got guys, we you know, we can't we can't do this. And there was an abundant of rather well-fed individuals in the south that

[00:17:22] wanted to be them. And I said, guys, I'm afraid to be portraying these emaciated walkers. But but yeah, I mean, you know, I you know, it was Greg show. And I, you know, I ran the makeup

[00:17:35] effects department for him. And, you know, we had a great team there and we had some great locals that were there and it was fun. And I left after season eight. And for no reason other than

[00:17:48] when you're on a series for a certain amount of time, you kind of get forgotten about it's almost like an actor that's on a show too long. You know, they go out and they almost have to

[00:17:58] reintroduce themselves and all that. So I was, you know, I was kind of planning my exit more or less right around probably season five or six is thinking about, well, I might want to try to break

[00:18:09] away from this. And again, for no reason other than self-preservation on that. And Sam Jackson's team reached out to me about six months before they were going to start to do Captain Marvel

[00:18:20] and said that we were going to my phrase is to euthanize them and to make them look younger. But so started kind of playing around with that. And we started doing tests and, you know,

[00:18:30] gracefully stepped away from Walking Dead. And I went back for a few days in season nine when it was, I think, Andy's last couple of days. And Greg wanted to get the quote original band back together.

[00:18:41] So we had most of the original makeup artists from the show there and kind of gave him a nice send off. That's great. You know, I think there's also just a beauty in like finality when things come

[00:18:52] to an end. And I think entirely society, we don't always appreciate that. So I think knowing when something is like it's time for me to leave and move on is always a good thing, you know?

[00:19:02] Yeah, it was fine. And again, I can't say that I had it like it wasn't a bad time at all. Let's leave on a high note. Yeah, it's always best to leave on a high note. And look,

[00:19:12] and now you're in Fallout and plenty of seasons are going to come to Fallout real quick before we wrap up. I'm just curious, is there anything you're excited for in the next seasons or

[00:19:21] something in terms of evolving the makeup? You know, I know you're going to be spending a lot more time with the Walton. I honestly, I have no idea. I just finally got, you know, some information about when we may start,

[00:19:35] which you're not going to hear. It's all up in the air, obviously. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know how much. I know that there's a lot of unsettled stuff about what happens to Walton

[00:19:49] and flashback stuff. There could definitely be a lot more of that. You know, there's obviously a mountain of data that they could go through to kind of figure out what to do.

[00:20:00] I don't know what to expect. I haven't, no scripts or anything like that. So it's down the road. But one of the things that I am kind of pleased with is we're going to be shooting in Los Angeles

[00:20:13] and I honestly, it's like probably one of the first time I'm going to be on something for a bit of time in Los Angeles. But that'll be different because I call myself a road dog.

[00:20:29] I literally and I'm the perfect animal for it. I'm, you know, single, no kids, no pets, no nothing. I can bop off and leave at any time. I do and I do love it. I do love traveling.

[00:20:40] But being at home for a while to see the house that I rarely see for at least a few months will be kind of nice. Well, Jake, thank you so much for your time. This has been a pleasure. Your work on the series is

[00:20:51] amazing. I'm so excited to see what you and the rest of the team do for the future of that show. So thank you so much for joining. Pleasure to be here. Thanks to you.

[00:20:58] I've had a rough week. Practically every person I've met up here has tried to kill me. I'm simply going to harvest. You come from a world of rules, of laws. You should not be alone. Why did you join the Brotherhood? To hurt the people who hurt me.

[00:21:28] People are going to come after you. Ain't much stays clean up here, Valti. Well, now that is a very small drop in a very, very large bucket of drugs. You look out at this wasteland, looks like chaos. But there's always somebody behind the wheel. What is happening here?

[00:22:18] Everyone wants to save the world. They just... They disagree on how. There you are. You're gonna be okay. You little killer. Hello, everyone. This is the Next Best Series podcast. I'm Giovanni Lago, and today I'm joined by the production designer of Fallout, Howard Cummings.

[00:22:44] Thank you for being here. Hey, Giovanni. I love your work, especially your collaborations with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. I think the worlds you envision together are extraordinary. I'm curious how you guys keep finding ways to elevate your work,

[00:22:59] especially throughout multiple collaborations, and how that led you to Fallout. Greetings from Evergreen Podcasts. We're rolling out a listener survey, and we want to hear from you. The information in the survey will help us gather statistics and in turn make our shows more appealing to advertisers.

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[00:23:28] As a token of our appreciation, we'll randomly select one lucky participant each month to win an exclusive merchandise package from Evergreen Podcasts. Head to evergreenpodcast.com slash listener survey to help a show and possibly get some free stuff for doing so.

[00:23:45] We can't thank you enough for the support. Now back to the show. Yeah, now we've had a pretty long relationship now, which is great. And Jonah and Lisa both have very specific futuristic visions, and they're always coming up with stuff.

[00:24:03] So there's a constant dialogue about that, and that has nothing to do with even projects a lot. They'll just send me cool stuff every once in a while we'll talk about it and say, how do we incorporate this?

[00:24:16] We were actually working on another project that was sort of a space thing, big like space opera. Jonah called it a space opera. And then that got a little bit derailed, and then he said, but we have Fallout. And I said, oh, the script came through?

[00:24:33] And he goes, oh, yeah, and it's great. And Amazon's very excited. So I read it, and I was like, oh, wow, this is retro futuristic, not really the clean kind of stuff that we used to do for Westworld and stuff.

[00:24:46] And it has this real sense of humor, which is kind of great, and lots of color. And Jonah especially, it's like black, white, red, and gray. That's about his palette. And then so I said, what do we do? It's super colorful. He goes, yep, that's what it is.

[00:25:01] And so we got into it. And I started researching just going online and looking at YouTube stuff that people were putting up. And I was very impressed by that fan base. And I actually began to really like this show because of it.

[00:25:16] I began, I said, this is cool. So I said, hey, we got to just do this thing flat out. And I said, that's super hard because all that detail and all that stuff, that's like, I don't know how we do it.

[00:25:29] But fortunately, I got a pretty good amount of prep time, which you don't normally on TV series can get kind of shortchanged. But this time I didn't. And so everybody was all into it and the script supported it.

[00:25:43] You know, the showrunners for Am in Geneva were amazing and had great ideas and stuff. So it was really fun. It was fun to do something that's post-apocalyptic but not crushing or soul crushing. You know what I mean?

[00:25:57] It's like as much as I love, you know, other things like the creator or whatever, you know, other shows and stuff that go into that. But this was an opportunity to like stretch in different ways.

[00:26:10] And Jonas and Lisa are always looking for new things, new ways to do things. So and all new types of material and stuff. So that's cool. But still sort of in that genre. I think you bring up a good point about also the retrofuturism of Fallout.

[00:26:29] And I think just in total, the show has plenty of balance. There is that harshness, you know, when it comes to Wasteland. And we'll get into the details of that. But, you know, there is comedy. There is like that dark grimness that comes with post-apocalyptic futures.

[00:26:43] But in terms of a lot of the flashbacks, although Fallout said in the future, it's got that art deco 60s retro feel, especially how it ties in with Cooper storyline. And honestly, for me, the exploration of Cooper Howard's whole past and pre-bomb timeline was

[00:26:59] what really grabbed me, which as someone who's played the games and has friends who's really into the games, clearly you like messing around in the wasteland. So I'm curious about experimenting and that whole flashback time period and working on those sets.

[00:27:13] That was super fun because it was also a kind of original to our, you know, the storytelling, because that wasn't actually, I think one reason you might like it. It's not something you were familiar with that got added to the layers. You know, the game is so layered.

[00:27:29] The storylines are so layered. But this pre thing was you mostly just see it in the vault guy going around trying to sell vaults to people. It was like really like how people got where they were.

[00:27:42] And that's why I thought, you know, Graham and Geneva did an amazing job. But when we came to those parts, it was great. I was free to like, you know, I was free actually pretty much the whole time. But this is really cool.

[00:27:53] They just kind of they were they collaborated. They were they you know, I had to go to them because I wanted I didn't want to screw up. I mean, I don't know where I don't know the show as well as like a lot of people do.

[00:28:06] And so and I knew that anything I put out there would be scrutinized but also had meaning. So it was important to me to understand what the meaning was. So for this post-apocalyptic pre-bomb stuff, which is really cool.

[00:28:20] I got to work with this great decorator, Regina Graves, and she said, you know, we should do that segment a little more like mid-century kind of almost a reality, more real. Like these are real people. They're not people that have been turned into a ghoul.

[00:28:39] You know, it's like, you know, so we actually tweaked how we approach those pieces differently than we did with the game, not only because it wasn't in the game, but also because it should have had that, like you said, that feeling like, you know, you want, you know,

[00:28:55] the wasteland, our wasteland. What's cool about it is surreal. I mean, that because we Jonah had found this place a long time ago. It's in Namibia and it's a town buried in sand. And it was a mining town, like diamond mining town.

[00:29:13] It was built in the 20s and it kind of went all the way through World War II. And then they kind of tore it apart after that. But this whole town and it's in Namibia, the coastline is crazy because it's just sand dunes and then water, you know?

[00:29:27] And so this wasteland town was there and all that stuff is real. And so somehow the producers let us go to shoot in Namibia, which was really cool. And, you know, basically I just added like the dressing of Americana and 50s retrofuturism into it.

[00:29:49] But it was important to like Jonah, for instance, that it be real so that the emotion's real. And then, you know, and then there's time to do crazy stuff, you know? And so there's a balance and we're kind of always trying to find the balance, which was fun.

[00:30:05] It was fun in the show. And I think, you know, led by the script and, you know, which was great because I love the humor in the script was so like, you know, sometimes flat out, you know, kind of dopey.

[00:30:19] And then other times very smart and kind of like subtle and, you know, just always there's an undertone in there. So that was cool. That was fun to be led that way by that kind of understanding of story.

[00:30:32] I mean, you guys did great because every time it was showing like the house party at Cooper's house, I was just like, it's the most gorgeous house I've ever seen. And that's a real mid-century. That was like that was an architect. It's in Westchester, New York.

[00:30:48] Yeah, we shot the whole thing in New York, which is a little ironic, but not the whole thing. We also shot in Utah, but out in the Bonneville Salt Flats, where all the Brotherhood of Steel stuff that abandoned military. It's not abandoned totally. It's cool.

[00:31:05] Part of it's restored. It's actually museum-ish kind of thing there. And so parts of it they can't couldn't afford to keep up. So it's just leftover from World War II and falling apart and stuff. And it's really cool.

[00:31:18] And then they had a lot of like, there's like a lot of like, you know, World War II enthusiasts and stuff. And they had stuff stored there and they let me use it. It was so great. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:30] There's a couple of crash planes that are in there. And we kind of like we made like fake bomb craters out of styrofoam and put it and then kind of painted the planes and made them took the other pieces and sprayed them with like

[00:31:43] tempera paint, which is kind of you can wash it off later. But it looked burned. And but it was that was super fun. But it was fun because all these people came and, oh, we'll help you do this. It's great.

[00:31:54] So you mentioned New York as I previously talked with Jay Garber and he mentioned you guys film in New York, which is baffling to me because, again, like you mentioned, you watch the whole setting and like, do you know there's a Yalgoa cave?

[00:32:07] That cave is in New York. No way. Really? Yeah, it was it was it's in Roslyn. It's just it's north of New York. Not quite. It's got, I think, 45 minutes to an hour out of New York. But it's like it was the cave.

[00:32:22] It was it was actually dug to get the cement for the Brooklyn Bridge in the turn of the century. And it was this giant cave system that they had dug out this thing and it had flooded. So it was great.

[00:32:35] It was that was a great location, but it was just like, you know, outside. It's there. And with the vaults themselves, because I know you guys filmed that in a studio. How first off, how long was the production in terms of actually crafting the various

[00:32:49] vaults? Because you have the ones that is completely normal and where, you know, they're all living in it. Then you have the abandoned vault with all the dead crops and everything's on a wire. I was wondering how long it take to set those up.

[00:33:00] Was there anything that changed in the story that altered the production that you had to adapt to? You know, it evolved, but it was like I was always sort of kept up on saying they would

[00:33:11] always come with it and people would was great as people were collaborative and they'd come and say, hey, we have this idea. And what do you think we could do? And then I threw it and that was great.

[00:33:21] I think that makes the show has a lot of energy as a result of that. And and so so I knew that these vaults were coming up and that we're going to have to change them over and stuff.

[00:33:32] So, for instance, one thing that really helps is lighting, for instance. You can do a lot just by changing the lighting and so and have flickering lights or weird colors or whatever. So when we put up the lighting for the thing, they work with, you know, Gaffer.

[00:33:47] That's the guy who does the lighting and the electricians, and they put it all on a computer system. And then you could change it like in a moment if you wanted to be weird or flickering. Everything was on like computer things.

[00:33:59] So that we we knew that from the beginning. So we built in stuff like that and then we built in areas that could take water and stuff like that. So we had to waterproof it all. But I knew that, like in the beginning.

[00:34:10] So as we were doing that, we didn't have a lot of time, honestly, between the things, you know, and at one time I had I had a lot of dead corn because we were unsure whether

[00:34:22] because in the cornfield, I thought it should look the whole thing was meant to look artificial like for her. It's like the projected background is really kind of what we call two and a half D because

[00:34:35] the showrunner said, hey, we want it to look like a production of Oklahoma or something. And then so we did this thing and then which was cool. And then the projection thing actually wasn't in the original concept, but it kind of evolved

[00:34:51] and which was cool because I said, oh, great, we can all change the lighting. Like I said, anything to do to make the vault feel alive, we would try to do. But the corn, the decorator also had to find the 10,000 years stocks of corn and then they

[00:35:08] had to be put on things to move around for the camera and stuff like that. But we also grew corn because we were worried that the fake corn wouldn't look good. And so and then but we never did. But I took that.

[00:35:20] So I had a whole lot of dead corn to do the other vault. And I said, well, worst case, we'll just have dead corn. And so we look great. And we we had to prop it up and stuff like that. But that was that was cool.

[00:35:31] And just trying to going through like, you know, like I said, oh, maybe when he gets in there, there's kind of a weird nursery and and there's the guy with the legs missing and stuff.

[00:35:41] It was that part was really fun and trying to figure out how to mix it up. And then we you know, and they had I don't know, in like the other vault for where you know, with the Cyclops and you know, there was a whole fish theme everywhere.

[00:35:57] I don't know. We had a giant fish tank and oh, he needs a giant fish tank, which but it only had silver fish because, you know, later on, you know, you find out the thing about the pregnant women giving birth to silver fish. You would then eat them.

[00:36:13] What it was wacko. You know, that lab that laboratory actually with that laboratory was actually the intervault chamber where Lucy meets her boyfriend, her husband to be. Yeah, I just flipped it around and turned it into a laboratory and added another room to it stuff.

[00:36:30] You do stuff like it. But I you know, that was all part of the scheme of things. And I could lay it out on the stage and stuff and allow for stuff like that to happen, which is fun.

[00:36:41] You've been dabbling with the sci fi series for the past few years or so, whether it's Westworld or this. Another series you worked on I personally really loved was The Nick and Steven Soderbergh just one of a kind.

[00:36:55] I was wondering if I could just hear a little bit about working on that experience and collaborating multiple times with Steven. You know, it's funny. It's like so yeah, I love The Nick and I used to only do people who only hire me for period projects.

[00:37:09] Now I get called this for sci fi stuff. But you can approach them kind of in a similar way. You have to do a lot of research and stuff like that. And Soderbergh is he's cool because he like he also loves to like experiment like every

[00:37:24] every film project he does is a different he's trying to explore something different. And sometimes he doesn't tell you that. Like, oh, you know, but you know, you figure it out pretty fast. I had a chance to, you know, work with him for like 11 years straight.

[00:37:42] It was great. And he's always busy. So we're always doing something. But The Nick actually, I had such a good crew on that, you know, because making all that crazy stuff for the that was all we had like a doctor, like period historic doctor advisor.

[00:37:58] And, you know, it's all set in that that theater and like, I don't know, that show was crazy because there wasn't a lot of stage space in New York at the time. And we were in this place and they hadn't finished it.

[00:38:09] And they hadn't actually put it in the ventilation system yet. And I knew that I wanted to build the whole with Stephen. He likes he doesn't really like sets. He'd rather it would be a location.

[00:38:21] I don't basically I my family came to visit that show and they said, why is there a building in the building? And I said, it's not building. It's my set. And they go up. What? And I go, yes, this.

[00:38:33] And they it was like, oh, weird, because they're all connected because Stephen likes to do continuous shots and although everybody kind of if you can do that, that's awesome. You know, if you get the liberty, the environment for the actors and stuff, too.

[00:38:47] But I built the operating theater all the way up to the ceiling before I put the ceiling. I had a big ceiling, big wood ceiling. I said, get the ceiling up because they had the studio had to put the ventilation around it.

[00:39:04] Otherwise, they would have gone right through and I wouldn't have been able to get it. And I was like, so it was cool. But my crew, which is a great crew, including the decorator, Regina and the prop guys, Michael and Peter, Michael Jordan or Peter Gelfman.

[00:39:18] They're all the same people there on the neck. So everybody was on the neck and the supervising actor, all my all the neck crew did fall out. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

[00:39:27] So it was like funny that you bring it up because and there is like a crazy and and, you know, really, New York, it's a little better, but they don't do a lot of futuristic stuff in futurism in New York.

[00:39:40] And they're starting to and they don't they didn't have a volume, which is the digital stage. So we put one up for fallout because we used that. We knew the farm was going to be in the volume actually where Lucy goes out the door.

[00:39:55] That's also a volume set, you know, so using digital assets. And so because Jonah really wanted to have scale, you know, he said, you know, the game is big and he said, I even want the vault to be bigger.

[00:40:09] That vault, that vault farm thing, it's bigger than any, you know, it's not in any it's bigger, you know, it's a bigger thing. It's all built the same way. I mean, we we actually built the sets as you know, I looked at, you know, how you can put

[00:40:24] build your own vault pieces. We took the pieces that you could buy as the kit from Vault-Tec and actually built the sets that way. But like what you can see, there's like enough flooring and stuff. You'll see metal strips and stuff.

[00:40:38] That's the 12 foot is a 12 foot by 12 foot box basically. And we built everything that we followed the game rules. We had to have a whole thing, which was because they're really weird rooms. Honestly, they're super weird. Like they make no sense.

[00:40:54] And but but I said, that's the way it is. And so you can only get certain, you know, God forbid you want to shrink something slightly. You can't. It's really it's like I had the same thing with Jonah on we did on Westworld.

[00:41:06] We used Frank Lloyd Wright house for Arnold's. And it was like he he designs these very elaborate, like, you know, sort of block, you know, it's part of like decorative. It's not decorative, but yeah, it is. But in the system and it's like I went to go.

[00:41:27] We couldn't go back to the house the second season or third season. And I said, well, I could build parts of it in that. And so I started to build it. And I was going like, oh, my God, everything is based on this little unitized size of this

[00:41:42] block. And you cannot. I was like, I had no idea. I learned more about like Frank Lloyd Wright from trying to copy something or recreate something that you did. And the same goes with the box in the Baltic world is like, oh, wow, it's really, you know,

[00:42:00] you have to learn exactly what it is. Otherwise, it doesn't seem real. Real quick before we wrap up, you know, you mentioned Westworld. I watched every episode, loved Westworld. I thought the production designs unreal, like everything you all brought to that series was fantastic.

[00:42:16] I know we never got to see it wrap up. They didn't option it for the fifth season, final season around a couple of years ago. I was wondering what conversations did you have with Jonathan and Lisa? Did you like was there any scripts done?

[00:42:31] Because I know like how close was it to actually being in production? Did you already have an idea of like going through your head of certain sets you were going to build? Was there anything tangible there or?

[00:42:41] Well, I can't say specifically because what ended up happening is I didn't do season four. But I had a whole group of people that had been on the show the entire time. And then we kind of there's the designers, John Carlos. He was actually my art director.

[00:43:00] But he's he he like knew the show backwards and forward. And he's like really good designer. And so they moved him up. And then I ran off to do the space opera that didn't really come together. But so I don't know directly.

[00:43:13] But I mean, I know that there was a season five at least in their heads. And and you know, who knows what will happen with that? You know, you know, I think the people who worked on Westworld liked it so much.

[00:43:29] We'd all kind of probably do it for free on our own just to just to resolve it. You know, just to have it, you know, just give us a movie. Just like, oh, yeah, it's such a great cast. And it was like really fun to work with.

[00:43:41] You know, I don't know how those people do it. Like, you know, Evan, she like didn't age. I don't know how. Or James Marsden as well. It's like I go, how do you and she's an amazing person. Like she can do all that stuff.

[00:43:58] That's she can do all that stuff. Every one of that show is like Jeffrey Wright. Yeah, it's Jeffrey Wright. Such a talented man and also so much fun to watch, you know. And they're just they were lovely people, too.

[00:44:10] So, I mean, mostly we all just and actually on I can't I think I can say so for season two of Fallout, we are now shooting in L.A. and I get to work with a lot of the Westworld people again on on on season two, the crew

[00:44:26] and stuff. So that's great. We are kind of having a reunion. So I think we'll figure out how to get that blessing resolved somehow. OK, I was music to our ears. Everyone listening. Yeah, we I mean, on our side, we all love to figure it out. Who knows?

[00:44:45] Well, Howard, thank you so much for your time. Fallout's fantastic. If you have not seen it, for those who are listening, go watch it. One of the best series I saw this year so far. I think it's fantastic. It's a blast. Your work is amazing.

[00:44:58] Thank you so much. OK, thank you. It's good to talk to you. Good to talk to you, too. OK, bye. Bye. Bye. Get some exclusive podcast content from us. Thank you all so much for listening, as always. And we will see you all next time.

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