Set Design - Blog Posts

🌌

Klance but make it JC Leyendecker ig

Kuh Luh Kuh as I call it

SAS: Rogue Heroes + locations David's apartment

 I’ve come too far for anything else. 

Update on my delusional future. We have moved on from Smosh to being apart of building the set for if/when Epic the musical gets a stage adaptation. This one is more realistic cause set design is actually what I want to do with my life.

Supernatural’s beer of choice thanks to Wisconsin boy, Jerry Wanek, producer and production designer for the show. He named the beer after his mother and the Wisconsin beer Leinenkugel.  

Set and props from Jayson Musson: His History of Art at the Fabric Museum and Workshop, Philadelphia, PA. Photograph by Esther Welsh

I went to Philly to see "His History of Art" by Jayson Musson at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and wrote about its pedagogical use of satire to challenge art educational conventions on my blog Artfully Learning. Read about it in the post "Whose History of Art?"

SET DESIGN

jazz night - january twentysixteen

In My Mother’s Skin (2023) | dir. Kenneth Dagatan

I agree with you 100%, the designer/designers did an amazing job. I really like Farewell the Sea, I think it really shows grief can affect people. And how the monastery looks, helps show that. The spaces most used and would be lived in are a mess, not it a people are enjoying them selfs mess and living mess, but in a depressive mess, like they don't have the energy to pick up and the trash has just piled up

fuck it im gonna do it.

Let's discuss the subtleties in the shots of the monastery in Farewell the Sea, because I think it's fascinating how much detail was put into shots we only see for a few seconds at maximum for the sake of showing how much Nya merging with the sea affected everyone.

So the first shot of the monastery we get (that isn't a shot of the entire thing) is the courtyard. There are leaves scattered on the ground, a leaf blowing by in the foreground, and a broom against the dragon statue.

The second shot we get is of this hallway, where the ninja hang pictures of their loved ones. The reason this one's interesting to me is because it feels like nobody's touched Jay and Nya's picture; everything else hanging on the walls is straight and even. The picture of Jay and Nya is crooked and dusty.

The third shot we get is of the kitchen. It's an absolute mess. It looks like nobody's bothered cleaning up in months. Dirty(?) dishes are just stacked everywhere, there are (presumably) empty soda cans all over the place, there's a stack of empty pizza boxes being used for extra garbage storage, it's just a mess.

The fourth shot before we get to the hangar bay is this one of the recreation room. Cole's soda guzzler is on the sofa, there's more garbage just laying around (including under the sofa), there's a game controller on the edge of the sofa, and it looks like nobody's really bothered doing anything seriously there for a while. Let's compare this to shots of the monastery we get in season 11.

When the rec room is being used regularly, yes, it's a total mess, but it feels lived in; additionally, the ninja don't look like they just throw the garbage wherever. Anything that seems to be empty is behind them and out of the way, compared to in Farewell the Sea where it feels like the garbage gets thrown around haphazardly. In addition to this, look at how many pizza boxes there are in the screenshot from Wasted True Potential, then look at the screenshot from Farewell the Sea. If we take the Farewell the Sea screenshot as meant to be implicative of Cole being the most active in the rec room, the team breaking up has either resulted in less pizzas being ordered or Cole's eating disorder from season 8 relapsed (link is an explanation in case it's needed).

Onto this hallway. I couldn't get a good screenshot of the hallway from the same angle, but it is the same hallway. It's not much different when it's being lived in, but how they show it in Farewell the Sea makes it feel empty, especially the specific zoomed out shot I used for this post. Like the rec room, this hallway doesn't feel lived in in Farewell the Sea.

I'm not sure what to say about this, except that in A Rocky Start (the episode I got this screenshot from), the courtyard is incredibly clean because they use it to train and practice fighting. There aren't any leaves, no brooms, it feels lived in because it's clean.

Finally, the kitchen. The dirty bowls aren't stacked on top of each other, the floor is clean, the counters aren't covered in trash, it just feels clean, maybe like they had dinner sometime before Aspheera attacked the monastery, which makes it feel lived in.

Whoever did the design for the monastery in Farewell the Sea did so well making things feel like they haven't been lived in for months. You can feel the effect that Nya merging with the sea has had in 20 seconds. It's honestly heartbreaking.

Ron Cobb, you're my hero