Set design on any film is critical, and Machinima is no exception, especially when your environment is as much a part of the story as your characters. In the film “The End Of The World,” a Blizzard has descended upon the midwest; In fact, one of the worst Blizzards in recorded history. Our protagonist lives in remote farm country, isolated, cut-off from civilization, in an old farm house built in the late 1800′s. It is here she experiences her first visions of what is to come.
The world the characters inhabit was custom created directly from the pages of the original story, from the bleak and dismal skies to the sturdy but aged farmhouse. The audience needed to feel as claustrophobic as the Main Character. from the winds blowing the snow outside to the creaking walls of the old house, the tension must steadily rise. Despite the raging storm outside, we needed people to feel as if there were something else, perhaps something more sinister, stirring in the foreboding atmosphere we had created.
The Farmhouse itself is another character integral to the store, set upon the vast, snowswept terrain, it stands like an artifact from an era long past. It needed to be old but not ancient. It’s age needed to be somewhat evident but it couldn’t be dilapidated. It needed to look like it was a house with many, many stories to tell. In re-reading the story all these years after I had originally written it, I was able to build the house to precision. We’ll be looking at the interiors in a later post.
The snow will be added later in post production, however the rolling clouds were something we built into the set- because I knew i would not be able to achieve the depth and dimension needed to show clouds both nearby and on the distant horizon. Essentially, what we had to do was build an entire world in a bubble, maximizing our usable space and giving the viewer the feeling that the world went on forever rather than dropping off at the edge of a simulator into water. Moxie Polano, the producer, blew me away with what she created for ambiance in this setting.
