2015-05-16 Martin Leviathan Leviathan
Leviathan's note: It can be regarded as an extended reading of yesterday's article. In the past two days on business trips, there were too many messy things. Re-watching "True Detective", I only saw the beginning of the second episode intermittently.
However, the words that best reflect the point of view of yesterday’s article are what Luster (played by Matthew McConaughey) said to Marty in the car in the first episode: “I think human consciousness is a sad mistake in evolution. I know too much about myself, and nature takes a part from itself and turns into nature. From the law of nature, we are creatures that shouldn’t exist. We are enslaved by the illusion that we have ourselves, a sensory experience. Combined with feeling, it is set to believe that each of us is someone... But in fact, none of us are. For all species in the world, the most noble thing is to refuse to be set and stop reproducing . Hand in hand to perish."
Text/Denise Martin
Translation/Virgil
During the filming process of HBO's "True Detective", in order to help create the desolate atmosphere of the remote area of Louisiana, the first season director Kerry Fouyong recruited the production designer Alix Digrando, who had For "Southern Beasts", a very characteristic semi-sunken bay was created. Previously, Fukunaga worked in a short film by the director of "Southern Beasts", Baine Zetlin, which was also shot in the southern delta after the flood. Vulture talked to Di Grando, talked about how he created the impressive atmosphere in this detective drama, and asked him to introduce us behind-the-scenes photos of 13 exquisite props.
Devil's Nest
All the works of art in the play—from the “devil’s nest” on the branches to the paintings in the church—are created by Joshua Walsh. He is a Detroit artist who has worked in New Orleans for 20 years. "He comes from a family of funerals and is an avid hunter and taxidermist-he is probably the best candidate for this job." Di Grando told Vulture. It took Walsh nine months to produce more than 100 works for the show.
Di Grando said that the script barely talked about the appearance of the "devil's nest". Nick Pizzolatto’s rough guidelines specify that it must be spiral and able to stand on the ground independently. "In the first crime scene, they were described as some kind of'guards.'" Digrando said. They decided to adopt a tripod structure, which would naturally produce a spiral from the bottom when placed on the ground. “We were also told that this work must reflect the murderer’s thinking and the way he understood the ascension into the spiritual realm,” Digrando said. “Therefore, many tripods have been added from the bottom to the top. Ladder-shaped bars.” But not all "devil's nests" have bars added, they have different shapes. These objects have appeared one after another in girls’ dollhouses, abandoned schools and Ledoux’s drug-making dens. “In order not to be the same, we will make each one have some subtle differences when making it. It’s not like assembly line assembly. It’s just as easy to make. Joshua Walsh has individually designed the shape of the "Devil's Nest" in each scene."
By chance, Di Grando discovered Walsh. In order to find inspiration, Digrando has introduced ancient art and voodoo culture, and also referred to the works of peripheral artists Henry Dago and James Caso. At this time, he saw it on the desk of set designer Cynthia Slagott A small hummingbird sculpture made by Walsh. The sculpture is made of twine, rubber bands, reeds and twigs, which is consistent with Di Grando's conception of the murderer's creation. "We want to give this object a rough and depressive feeling." He said, "The murderer is not an art school student. He has a deeper desire to express himself, to satisfy himself by murdering and making these things. So Joshua's The method of creation is very suitable. He made most of the works using materials he thought the murderer would use: soil, torn children's clothing cloth he bought from a second-hand store, and roots of plants. He would be in the swamp like a supermarket. Wandering."
Crime scene
In the premiere episode, Marty and Luster discovered the body of the murdered prostitute, who was tied up, raped, tortured, and put on a crown of antlers and placed in a place in Eras, Louisiana. The charred sugar cane field.
In the original script, when the detectives discovered Dora Lan's body, it looked like it was bowing in the woods and praying, with wings sticking behind its back. The first link to be realized is the bush. "There are not many woods in Louisiana. It's more like a swamp," Digrando explained. When looking for the filming location of the final episode, the crew came to a particularly conspicuous sugarcane field (of course, the filming location of the final episode was not here anymore). "At that time, people started to burn that piece of land. The smoky and gloomy atmosphere made it look like a weird altar." Pizzoolato replaced the wings with antlers with the same effect. "He remembered that wings were also used in other works. I think it was "The Trilogy of Scarlet Reconnaissance"," Digrando said, "but creators always like to make the female body kneel and pray to the tree. There will always be three or two branches looking down on her."
spiral
You can see them everywhere. The shape of a flock of birds flying over, on Dora Lan's back, on the newly mown lawn. There is only one spiral that is not deliberately set.
Related stories Digrando can't reveal too many details about the spiral-but we can assume that they are all contained in Raster's metaphysical monologue. ("This is a world where nothing has been solved." Luster once said on the 2012 timeline, "Someone said to me that time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or will do Things will be repeated again and again.") This is all related to the murderer. Pizzolatto himself drew a spiral, and Walsh used a wire hanger to complete a spiral, confirming the irregular shape used in the final play. "This idea became the exclusive sign of those people-the murderer and the Ledoux brothers." Di Grando said.
For those who are bent on searching for spiral emergence, you can ignore the one in Marty's house. That is a mistake. "I didn't even pay attention to this." Di Grando said, "We took a bunch of works from the daughter of a friend of mine in the neighborhood to decorate Marty's home. We didn't even notice that it formed a spiral. "
Rust's empty apartment
White walls, a mattress, a cross. Raster: "That's for meditation." Hart: "How to do it?" Raster: "I am silent in the garden to hone myself."
Di Grando and Fukuyong initially wanted to find a location similar to the place where McConaughey's character in "Dallas Buyers Club" lives. "Like a cheap hotel," Digrando said, "but in our search, we realized two things. One, there are many similar scenes in the show; two, one police detective, one watching It doesn't make sense for people who seem crazy, or have a strong tendency to self-destruct like Rust, live in such a bad place." So they looked in the opposite direction: a bitter and simple style. "No more, no less, just to meet the survival needs, that also tells the audience what they need to understand this character. He doesn't need any extraneous burdens." The crew happily threw away almost everything in the room, including one There is a sofa bed, a box-spring mattress and a bedside table. "Later when McGinn showed up and saw him shining the antlers with the flashlight, trying to figure out the clues, it proved to be worthwhile." Digrando said, "He didn't want to be caught by any foreign objects. Excuse me. He lives in the case. In other words, he lives in his own mind, there is nothing superfluous there."
Beer can villain
They are an image throughout Pizzolatto's works. "I think that is also reflected in his novels." Digrando said, "you need to ask him where this idea came from." After a lot of experimentation to find the shape of the villain. That had to be something that McConaughey could easily make even when he kept throwing out Luster's gloomy worldview. Pizzoolato began to want to use the ring of the can to make the head of the villain, but it didn't work. "We found that the guy who did this looks a little stupid, it's ridiculous." Digrando said. "We cut the circle on the top of the can and folded it up, so the hole that we usually drink against becomes a hole. The villain’s mouth was closed. It looked like Munch’s "scream," dangling with a big head."
Another version uses two cans to make a figure. But like they did with Rust's apartment, they happily reduced the villain to the simplest adopted son. As for the use of Lone Star beer, Di Grando said that Lone Star’s brand marketing strategy is to make beer cans more useful than the wine itself. "It was not deliberate to make those stars appear on the beer can villain."
Burnt church
At the end of the second episode, Marty and Luster arrived at the old priest Celiot (Sia Wenhan) church after the fire. The Digrando group was built from scratch near the Bangkale floodway, and this church also appeared in "Beasts of the South".
"The burned church is too hard to find, so we knew we had to build it ourselves." Digrando said. The most difficult part is to find the right place, it must be a place with few people-so that Marty and Luster can follow their leader to come here-but it has to be on the side of the road. They selected a place near the flood diversion channel that is not suitable for human settlements, and even needs to be paved with gravel to reach it. "We have wondered many times about'Is it worth it?'" Di Grando smiled, "But we all like this place, there is water, there is a refinery in the distance, and a railway. We were even lucky enough to stop at them. Right away, I caught a scene of a train passing by. As for letting wild bushes grow beside the church? The path leading to the church looks great.” It took a month to build the church. They kept the fire burning until the flame burned the exposed part of the bracket at the back of the house into charcoal.
Inside the church, they called Alan Denson—the seven-year-old kid who drew Marty's daughter—to paint the biblical scene on the wall. The content required by the script emphasized David and Goliath, Jesus and the leper. Later, Volash added a girl with antlers on top of Ella's painting, using an applicator stick made of charcoal wood. "A lot has happened here," Digrando said. "If you stop and take a closer look, you will see the parts he added to her work, as well as the plants and vines coiled above. The reason for this is It shows that the church was burned down a few months before the arrival of the two detectives, and at some point during that time the murderer appeared and left his traces."
Louisiana State Criminal Investigation Branch Office
This is the only scene that appears in every episode. The interior of the scene was modified several times because the narrative changed back and forth between 1995, 2002 and 2012.
"The room at the time of enquiry in 2012 was one of the biggest challenges we encountered when designing, and it was also one of the most important parts that people usually didn't pay attention to." Digrando said. This was a conference room in 1995, and then gradually turned into a storage area. This is why there were piles of boxes and typewriters in the background when Marty and Luster were interviewed. "It took a lot of effort to move the old computer out and replace it into the new computer, exposing and hiding the wires of the IT equipment." He said, "We did it all: the evidence room where Marty broke into, the blue and green squares. The floors are all of them.” The office was set up in an old light bulb warehouse in Elmwood, Louisiana. "The imprint of the times in this place is obvious. The texture of these stones, the small vaulted windows, and the great lounge with movable stairs are all in the style of 1995." Digrando said, "We don't want this place to be different from 1995. It’s too new for the year."
Rust’s Big Hug Mug (the mug with soot)
"It's nothing to do with me." Digrando laughed. "Prop designer Linda Rest has made several comments about tacky mugs, and Fukunaga picked the one that said "big hug." This is one of the props Cary wants to keep for herself. "He said, "I didn't go to eBay to buy a dozen before the broadcast. I really lost a lot. Now each of them is worth a small amount of money." "There is no hidden secret in this cup, although Digrando admits that they did have the idea of this cup and wanted to add a sense of relief to the show, "because the show is so dark that it makes people breathless. "
Pastor Celiot’s Mobile Revival Church
At the beginning of the third episode "The Locked Room", Marty and Luster discovered that the priest was preaching in his new church ("This world is a veil, and your face at the moment does not belong to you." Celiot said), The church has a tent roof decorated with painted Bible excerpts. "This is one of my personal favorites." Digrando said.
During his investigation, Digrando found that many of the tents of the Revival Church were striped and felt too circus, so he chose a monochrome one with a large cross on top. He found a company that specializes in this, but had to make 3D modeling in advance to figure out how big a cross the company can make to make it match the size of the bracket, and also to cooperate with Pastor Celiot's sermon. The scene artist also deliberately “dirt” the tent and write some words to make it feel as if it was handmade by the members of the assembly. "The tent-like revival church will give people a feeling of being abandoned by time," Digrando said. "It is rarely seen now. It always carries a bit of sentimentality that I like very much."
Abandoned school
At the end of the fifth episode, Luster visited the abandoned school that Rianne Olivier had read. He and Marty never investigated here because of Ledoux. He went back to investigate and found that there were decorated with a statue of Mary, a devil's nest, and the most weird portrait of an angel.
Piles of tables were set up in advance on the site of Kenner High School in New Orleans. This was one of the best filming locations Di Grando was fortunate to find. "We deliberately put the table in a labyrinth pattern for Luster to walk through and lead him to the place where he found the devil's nest. We want the devil net to be placed there as if a student is sitting in a classroom." He said, "They will. Let us think of the photos taken by Robert Polidori for Chernobyl." Walsh painted the scary angels on the wall with the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". "You can look from below when he picks up the devil's nest, it will form a spiral."
Beth's apartment
In 1995, Marty persuaded the young prostitute to leave in "Rabbit Ranch". She reappeared in 2002 (the sixth episode "Haunted House"), changed her job, had her own residence, and set her sights on Marty.
"Many of these characters have been poisoned physically and mentally and are in a very bleak situation, while Beth is a character who pulled herself out of a bad situation halfway through." Therefore, he made her 2002 apartment look like It's a kind of extension of Jan's trailer in "Rabbit Ranch", where Beth worked. "We tried to make the trailer more livable, adding a lot of femininity... to make it more gentle, not just where the terrible lady took advantage of these girls. The dialogue in the play shows this. This is a little more humane than Marty thought." Digrando said, "We want to make sure that Beth's character is fuller and has a life that really belongs to her. Her apartment has to be the kind she is willing to say. 'This is my house' where she lives in. She has a decent job and she wants some decent things. We don’t think that means a cookie-cutter apartment." In order to add some character traits to her place of residence. , He installed the arches, pasted the flower wallpaper, added a layer of weird stucco texture, and made a four-poster bed that he assembled. Di Grando once saw it used in a boy scout event. This kind of bed made up of blankets and old skirts.
Ledoux and his associates' drug manufacturing den
At the end of the third episode, we saw Reggie Ledoux at the drug den for the first time, when he was wearing an elastic bodyguard and a gas mask. Marty and Luster didn't check this place carefully until after two episodes of "The Secret Fate of All Life", Marty found something terrible in the house and killed Ledoux.
Di Grando wanted the dens to have a sense of frankenstein-style self-destruction: a trailer as a residence and a shipping container as a laboratory ("We set up an entire laboratory, but it is a pity that you I can't see what it looks like.") There will be a deer hunting device, scrapped cars, barrels, and demon nests everywhere.
"The residence itself must be like a labyrinth, so that Marty and Ledoux pass by in an instant without Ledoux not knowing it." But for Digrando, the most important detail is that the child's lock is hidden. Room, "Earlier I wanted to use a box truck box to do this," he said, "When I opened it, I knew there would be a kind of drama."
Rust's Warehouse
As a result, Luster's fascination with the case was deeper than we thought! Di Grando mentioned that the prop planner Linda Reese’s team spent months producing the evidence collected by Luster over the years, which are presented in the seventh episode of "After You've Gone."
"The day before the shooting, Matthew McConaughey was sleeping there, drawing and writing. He was looking for inspiration." Digrando said. The warehouse is the culmination of everything that Luster has been searching for in the 17 years from 1995 to 2012. To make sure that the place was full of things, Reese took a lot of photos, hired artists, made books (such as the book "Teach You How to Make a Devil’s Nest"), and produced detailed documents and newspaper clippings-all for Demonstrate the sense of commitment that lasts for several years. "It's not like calling the image library directly and saying:'Give me all the pictures of your corpses.' We have to do everything by ourselves." Di Grando pointed to those weird and mysterious portable tools , The girl with the horse, photomicrographs, photo copies, yearbooks, and everything that appeared in Rust’s apartment before.
"That has to give people a feeling of'maybe Luster is not as distant as we thought, but in fact he seems to have been investigating for several years'." Everything reveals a sense of order. "He (Rast) is a very organized person, so even if it looks messy, everything still fits in. This map and the other photos are all things that can inspire him. There. There is even a place for experimentation, where Luster tried to make a demon nest."
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