S2E25-SPECIAL-PT02-Interview-PropMasterCatMiller

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello Refiner, and welcome back to the Severed floor. This week,
we're continuing our extended discussion with Severn's property Master, Katherine
kat Miller. As we approached the dog days of summer,
volunteer researcher Vinnip and I needed some more catch up
time to continue prep on the rewatch episodes. The season
two rewatch episodes are very full and detailed. I'll be

(00:34):
back with part two of the cheek I Bardo Breakdown
next week. This week, it's the conclusion of our Cat
Miller interview. We got together via zoom on Saturday, August second.
The discussion ran for nearly three hours and it was fascinating.
If you have it already, make sure to check out
part one from last week. We're going to do this
again with limited commercial interruptions to keep the podcast server happy.

(00:55):
I do have to take breaks within the show, but
I didn't want to interrupt Cat worked out so well
last time. We're going to do it again. We'll take
a break right now, then we won't take another one
until I'm saying goodbye at the end of the interview.
That way, you get to listen to Kat without interruption.
It's not as many breaks as the server would like,
but at least I'll have taken a couple of breaks.
So we're going to take a break right here, and

(01:16):
when we come back, you'll be into part two of
the interview. So here come the commercials. Hey, this is
Ben Stiller. Thanks for listening to Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast.
All right, let's do a lighter Vinnie p question here.
The original front door from the show Cheers recently sold

(01:36):
at auction for one hundred and sixty two, five hundred dollars.
If you could choose one prop or set piece to
put up for auction, which Severance prop do you think
would bring the most at auction?

Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's oh wow, Vinny with the heart hitting questions.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
No, these are the palate cleansers. These are the lighter ones.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I will I. You know, it's not technically a prop,
but I think the quad desk, the MDR desk is
so iconic and I think somebody out there would definitely
want that desk in their office or something.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
I didn't. It actually cost one hundred thousand dollars, so
you definitely want to make some money off of it
at all.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
You want to we want. I think Apple would want
to make more than that off of it. Yes, I
will say that the MDR monitor and the keyboard is
very coveted, and I've gotten crazy offer that as somebody
who's like, I'll give you forty thousand dollars on the
spot if you give you an MDR computer right now.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
Now, it's going to be a lot more than that.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Okay, Now, that's actually where I want to head is
some of the weird stuff things are the major part
of your job making things, and you get to make
some really weird non existent things for this show. You
mentioned the workstations, MDR severed floor management because you know,
Miltchik's got his and as long as got hers, the

(03:00):
watchers under the severed floor, all of those are creations
of your department in the art department, right correct.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
Yeah, they're props there.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
They're definitely stuff that we've worked very very hard on
designing and fit like engineering and figuring out. The MDR
computers are based on the data General Dasher design, and
we scanned a real data General Dasher and we created
our own version that would be able to our own

(03:34):
model of it, that would be able to hold a
real CRT screen. The tube CRT screens was very important
early early on to have the texture and the look
of what an old screen, a retroscreen was, So we
didn't just put an iPad. You know, the cheat, the
prop cheat is you make a housing, you put an
iPad behind the housing, and then you put a curved

(03:55):
piece of glass on top of it, and you try
and like pretend and that can and there's nothing wrong
with that, and if people do that, that's fine. But
our show we were going to be interacting with it's
so much. The actors are in front of it for
hours at a time, and it's such a character in itself.
And the refining of numbers is this kind of part
of this mystery Box a major part of it. That

(04:19):
we wanted to really insert a real CRT tube into
all the computers. And so once we did that, Miss Kobel,
Mister Melchik, and Miss Wong's computers all had to have
tubes in them too. In Mammalians, you know, Lauren has
has another one, a different.

Speaker 4 (04:34):
Kind of computer that was fun to make as well.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
So I work with our concept illustrator, Eric Felberg, you know,
he works with the art department in Jeremy Hindle too,
but I work with him all the time trying designing
and creating models for these computers. And then all the
computers are made by the Specialists, which is a fabrication
company here in New York, and I work with them

(04:58):
and we kind of engineered to fit all the parts
that we need to fit into and we need to
like hide all the cables, and we need to run
things through the desk, and so there's a lot of
collaboration in making those The watchers, those monitors, those were
supposed to be have a feel of being security monitors

(05:18):
like that. There's they were in front of security monitors
that would be in a big bank of security in
a security room. And so those monitors we found very
vintage and we couldn't find very many of them. Three
bank monitors, small, three bank monitors on the bottom, and
then we built the big one on top, and then
we created a housing over it.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
So those and those three on the bottom are discrete,
unique monitors.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
They're three unique monitors.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, I thought you were cheating it and displaying a
graphic of three monitors. I did not think those were actual.
I'd see it would be too difficult to get real monitors.
But those are real monitors.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Those are real monitors in that tiny size. Yeah, I
think they're five inch monitors.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
And how are you feeding anything? As a tech guy
who I had a TRSAD was my first computer radio
shack going way back, every three to four years, the
plugs change. You can't plug video old video into new
and get a signal into an old monitor. How are
you doing that? What are you plugging into to get

(06:20):
signal into those CRTs?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
They are converting the inputs whatever the actual input is.
Eric Galupo is our playback supervisor and he is creating
converters that will convert from the input signal from whatever
those each of those tubes takes to his computer.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Digital analog first to get them correct correct, and then
to get it at about Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
So the kind of path for you know, for the
MDR computer for instance, Basically they're running an input cable
and two power cables through the yoke of the computer
down the desk, through the column of the desk under
the floor off set to one of the closet spaces

(07:10):
in the hallway space, and he is controlling all of
the signal there and sending him back that way, and
so it's it's a very complex run.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Then you guys have made keyboards at different scales like
for Woe in Nerves Dream and ms Wong's workstation is
how are you doing that? Creating items to different scales?

Speaker 4 (07:34):
That was really fun.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
So everything that Miss Wong has is thirty percent smaller
than anything that Milshik has and that was just a
function of you know, she's she's you know, thirty percent
smaller than ru meltchick.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
As we gave where do you find keys that she
is for the keyboard that are thirty percent smaller?

Speaker 3 (07:56):
We make them. So we make all the keys for
all the keyboards from scratch, and so with Miss Wong's computer,
we made the monitor thirty percent small and we found
a smaller CRT tube And then we had to cut
some of the keys off of a keyboard because of
a wireless keyboard because it was too wide to fit

(08:18):
on it. So we have all the keys in there,
but not all the keys of a real not all
of them are functioning h on her on her keyboard.

Speaker 4 (08:27):
Most of them.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
It looks great, I mean, yeah, ultimately that's what it
has to be. It has to look good on camera.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah, and then for the larger one, we made the
one for Woe thirty percent larger, and so scaling those
keys up and making them be able to still clickity clack,
because we were gonna that was the whole point to
have her real the actress's real fingers on a much
larger scaled.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
Keyboard to make her look smaller. That was really cool.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
That was a fun one to do. We had laid
in each one of those keys.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Oh wow, now were you there for that shoe with faith?

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Yeah, that was fun.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Look like that. Now that was done at a studio,
but not at York studio, right.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
That's correct. So we were doing a bunch of work upstate,
you know, Minnehasca and Sand's point, and they found a
studio up there in Hudson, New York, or near Hudson,
New York, a small one, and we.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
Already had the desk up there.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
We already had you know, the computers and the light
box computers up there. So instead of bringing the entire
company down, we just stayed up there for an extra day.
They built the scene up there in kind of a
controlled environment.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
All right, I want to shift. Here's more things pictures,
specifically like past events and characters' lives. The wedding day
of Mark and Jemma, the shot that we see of
Dylan's family in the outy visitation suite, all the pictures
around the haleshouse that they've got on, all those tables
of the group of them. Are you doing a photoshoot
with the performers? Are they bringing in old pictures of themselves?

(09:56):
A little of both? How are you creating all of
this history of these people in these old pictures.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
We're doing a lot of photo shoots. So the wedding
picture Mark and Jemma's wedding.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
Picture was a photo shoot.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
That was definitely a photo shoot, and they were in
full costume and they were, you know, at a location.
GiMA is our set photographer or stale photographer, and he's amazing. He's,
you know, like one of the best. And they get
presented to Ben, and Ben and the creative team choose
a final answer on those and then Tansy will crop
it into size and print it out for us. The

(10:29):
other photos are a combination, like especially the background photos
a set, decorating and dressing photos at the Hale's house.
I think those are a combination of we did do photoshoots,
but there are also other ones where the actors provide
photos and they get photoshopped in to our backgrounds, to
backgrounds that Tansy you know, and Tansy's doing all this

(10:50):
work our graphic guru. We did a photo shoot for
Gretchen and Dylan's Western photo.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Like the novel.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Yeah, exactly exactly, And that was really fun for us
because we just kind of went to town on those props.
We you know, pulled research on what they could have,
and on our team, Amanda Shi was our production assistant,
and she was sewing the hat and making the bandanas
and figuring out everything kind of bespoke but still recognizable

(11:23):
as something that we all know and I have seen before.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
And that was a really fun photo shoot.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
What we're talking about is, and what I'm sure she
was intending was she's bringing in a family picture. How
was it decided that that would be the family picture?
Who said, Okay, we don't want to do a normal
you know, like you go to Sears and get the
thirty eight dollars package. We want this. Who came up
with that?

Speaker 4 (11:45):
We did two different types. We didn't we don't ever
just do one.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
We did we did that kind of western novelty, tourist
y type of picture, and then we also did do
Sears portraits as well.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
Ben took a look.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
At them and the Western picture was just so hilarious
and the kids' faces are just so precious on that,
and so we went with that, and it also offered
a little bit, you know, once we went with that,
then it offered the Dylan line could be written in
of we're on a like we're cattle ranchers or.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, yeah, so we live on a cattle ranchers and
he says that just so openly, and of course we do, yeah,
authentically trusting. Yeah, what I just can only imagine had
to be a psychotic photo shoot. The cover of Rickens
book that you you are now, that was a custom
shoot getting Michael Churnis the Lion Maine going there and

(12:35):
everything with the book. Tell me about that. Were you
on that shoot?

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Oh? Yeah, that was super early on. We hadn't even
started shooting yet. I think that was kind of even
before COVID shut us down in the first season.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, there was a lot of talk.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
About this book because this book was going to define
his character, you know, entirely and be such an instigator
and and and kind of this catalyst for.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
The severed floor to like spark this revolution.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
And an unbelievable narcissist. So you had to have that picture,
so we did.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
We did a lot of research, and I started researching
a lot of just self help books and what those
covers look like. We researched a lot of Tony Robbins
books where his is gotten center with a big old
smile on it.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Another one that struck me was Dianetics Hubbard book. That
one had a lot of that feel to it too.
The font looked like the Tony Robbins and the Dynatics books.
You guys nailed it.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
It, just yeah, we literally had those. I brought those
two books in Dianetics and a Tony Robbins book in
and the idea of like the Dianetics volcano exploding and
and so I think Tansey did such a great job
of marrying the layout of that. And then once we
knew what the layout was, and we just put like
a placeholder photo in there.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
Once we knew what the layout was.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
And everyone loved it, and Ben thought it was hysterical.
Then we had the photo shoot with Michael and it
didn't take long. Like everyone knew what it should look like,
and so did he, and we kind of just photographed
it and we got the best one in there with
the turtlenag, and you know, Sarah addressed him just so.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Perfectly and so obviously in character. Michael Turns is not reckon,
but man, when he is Ricken, he is insane.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
I love Wrickon so much easily.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, it is just so man. Continuing on the subject
of things, I want to talk about possibly the most
underwhelming thing in the whole series, the board speaker. That's
like a buck thirty nine little intercom, isn't it, And
that's hey now transmitting the board. So what is it?

(14:40):
Why was that the decision that this is going to
be the representation of the most powerful entity at Lumen
is going to come out of this little tay speaker.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
Well, it's a speaker and it's a microphone too.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Okay, yes it does actually hear what the characters are saying.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
How did this device? Was it actually that to begin with?
Whatever that is? Was that something that you guys created
or is that something you've repurposed?

Speaker 4 (15:04):
We designed that entirely ourselves.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
So what we did is I bought a bunch of
vintage interoffice systems, like intercom systems that are interoffice mad
Men era, where the executive would push into the intercom
and talk to the secretary just you know, ten steps
away on the other side of the wall, and so
we bought a bunch of those as our starting point.

(15:28):
Some of those were very large, some of those were
very small. We thought maybe we would build it into
the desk so it was just always there. But there
was something great about, like Miltchake having to scramble to
like plug it in to make you know, oh, the
board wants to talk to us, Let's.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
Scramble it and plug it in.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
So we wanted to make it small enough to be
kind of portable and hide away in a cabinet.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
I did love when Natalie showed up at Harmony's office
and had it set up. So then she said, the
board is with me, and she's kind of gesturing to
the speaker, and that speaker becomes the board. Does it
actually make any noise in a scene or it's not
hooked up to.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Anything, it is not It does not make noise.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
So basically we Eric Felberg helped us design that our
concept illustrator. We went through a bunch of different three
D files and we showed and finally we kind of
all came down and decided on this one look.

Speaker 4 (16:20):
I made it in three different.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Scaled sizes so we could We three D printed it
in three different scaled sizes so we could take a look.
We definitely wanted the perforated grate in the front to
make it feel like a speaker.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Great.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
A lot of them were in a metal but we
wanted it to be blue so it wasn't shiny and reflective.
We wanted to be kind of in our MDR blue color.
And no, none of them made sound. It was all
a kind of staticky sound.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Was playback just has that look of kind of the
fiber board that you'd find in old radios in the
backs of them and with the holes and everything. Yeah,
it really evokes that sixties kind of era of how
electronics were house. Yeah, all right, another thing, rickenspe writer.
We identified this as the East German built Optima M

(17:06):
fourteen and it also works on as a boat anchor.
If you'd like.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
That thing is heavy, I will say that is very heavy.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Is that is it an M fourteen? Where we write
on that.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
You know what I will say, I did not source that.
That was all David Slessinger, And that was that was
just dressed into the scene. That was just dressed into
the house. That was not something that was originally gonna
be him typing away. We started having discussion, is is
Ricky gonna be working on his manuscript on a computer?

Speaker 4 (17:37):
Is he writing it out? We had like all these
like legal pads. Is he's got to write it out
on legal pads?

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Having that piece there, having that typewriter was, Oh, he's
got to be typing, He's got to be typink.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
So's it's the most pretentious and heartsy possible way that
rick and could write a book. So when he wrote it,
he didn't handwrite it. But when he rolls it off
that plate and that's the only copy of it, and
it's you know, that's so much of rick Oh it is,
it's so ricking. Did it work? Were there are ribbons?
And did it actually print onto paper? Did Michael Turnis

(18:09):
actually use it?

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes? Remember, once we knew that that was what we
were going to go, we had a whole tune up
of it. We took it to our typewriter hospital and
had a huge tune up of it and bought a
bunch of extra ribbon, and it was functioning, and we
did type, not all of the pages that you see,
but we did type individually type pages that you see
on that table. So because typewriter, yeah, it has a

(18:34):
different texture. It does makes a little bit of an imprint.
It's not perfectly aligned the way if you printed it
off from a computer would be. So we wanted to
definitely have those in there, at least for the pages
that they were handling.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
So this typewriter hospital you speak of, it's just down
the block from the buggy Whip.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Factory an hospital.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know anybody used the
actual typewriter anymore. Okay. Another thing they got a ton
of screen time and was really cool but looked like
something really specific to me was Miltchik's performance review booklet.
When Drummond pulled that out and flopped then slammed it
down in front of him. Is this props or does
that become an art thing? That's what it was?

Speaker 4 (19:16):
All props? Yeah, it was. It was props and graphics.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
So is me and Tansy working together to figure out.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
It looks like you were using a template from Word
from nineteen ninety two. So what that layout looked.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Like with the little like icons that you can look
at that you can.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Oh, and the word the word reversed out of the
light gray as like that hasn't been done since the midnineties,
as you don't do that anymore. So who wrote it?
There's a lot of text in it.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
There's a lot of text in there, and Dan wrote
a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
The workflow of that is, Okay, something needs to, you know,
be written on a page in some way, and Tansy
will We'll reach out to Dan and other the their writers.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
Mark Friedman, Okay, I need some texts.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
And Dan, I think, loves nothing more than to write
these what we call X pages where they're not scripted pages,
but there's stuff that needs to be seen on camera.
He wrote out the entire newspaper, the redacted newspaper. He
wrote out all those articles. We didn't even see them
on camera.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Oh I did.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
You know?

Speaker 4 (20:23):
He's great at it.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Tansy is also so dialed in after being on the
on the show for so long and dealing with the graphics,
that they let her take a stab at it and
she can all they show it to them and they'll
tweak it and she'll say, I need it in general,
I need this kind of a thing and I need
a two thousand word count something or other, and they'll
hand her the copy of it and then she she

(20:46):
works her magic with it.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
But yeah, Tanzy's really dialeded.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
We didn't know what that should look like.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
At first thought.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
It was going to be the training manual which has
the twenty one is a twenty one ring binder, and
I thought, oh, it could be that, and then you know,
a little bit of flippering around and jumping around, like
if they answered this, then we do that. Then we
wanted something that was maybe more user friendly and would
be more lumin like optics and more what Luma would call.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
Personal cool look.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Yeah, yeah, and so we came up with the booklet.
So so the ring binder is there. The booklet, we
wanted definitely a booklet that could lay flat. So that's
a special printer that we used in order to create
to bind a booklet like that to lay flat. And
then the lunch little bucksheet just was like, what's the
most lame lunch menu that you could possibly give somebody?

Speaker 4 (21:41):
And the way that Dari just like flipped that over like,
oh no, we'll be ordering lunch now. So good. It
was so good.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
And then the kind of insert things that we needed,
the insert pages about the paper clips and stuff that
was added in as well.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, and I just think about that bound book for
a monthly review. They do that every month. Man, Lumen's hardcore,
all right. Moving on to another thing, the goat sacrifice
chamber where Emil was placed. When did you get the
assignment that you needed to build a goat sacrifice chamber?

(22:16):
And did they call it that when they first told you,
It's like, we need a box where we can kill goats.
Can you be for us?

Speaker 4 (22:22):
I think we referred to it as the goat room. Yeah,
I don't think.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
I don't think we're talking about killing the goat every
single time. There was a few different paths for what
that was going to be and what the kind of
ending of two ten was going to be, And so
that was something that we didn't have a whole lot
of time. That was something later that they came to
be kind of later in our filming. That room is

(22:47):
all Jeremy Hindel and his design team as well Eric.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
I think Eric Felberg was again the concepting that.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
And so having all the walls tile was very important,
like in the way that animal testing is done, and
like kind of those awful kind of rooms that could
be hosed down easily.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
And then but then there's supposed to be some sort.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Of reverence for this. So they created like a look
of an altar for the actual chamber, the actual housing
for the goat. Tanzy did the hieroglyphics that were around it,
that were carved into it, which were kind of a
later development. They thought, oh, something that would have some reverence,
some mythology, some lore, getting the kind of lore into that.

(23:28):
And then the problem was when we started building that room,
and when Archreprement started building that room, Peggy, which is
the goat actor playing a meal, was not yet born,
so we didn't know what size a meal was gonna
be when a meal turned fourteen weeks when we could
use baby goats, and so it was a lot of like,

(23:49):
how's fast is Peggy growing? Okay, Peggy's grow?

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Okay, Peggy's still cute and white? Right, okay, okay, all right,
oh wait, Peggy shot up.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
So now we have to make the chamber in which
he's going to be housed a little bit taller.

Speaker 4 (24:02):
Do we get a ramp so Peggy can walk up there?
We're gonna put Peggy inside.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
So there was a lot back and forth.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
About Peggy, our fabulous goat actor.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
I mean, we couldn't have asked for a.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Better goat actor in Gwendolen CHRISTI loved her.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
Oh my god da, she couldn't stop.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Talking about her. Yeah, she loved her. Vinnie has been
following your assistant propmaster Travis oh on his Instagram and
he found something that Travis posted. It has twenty different
severed floor key cards on it in twenty different colors.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
Oh yeah, I know that picture.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah yeah, there are these more departments we should expect
in season three? Or what was going on there?

Speaker 4 (24:44):
I know nothing, Come on, we want Detailsmeller.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
That was we needed to come up with a color,
a key card color for Mammalian's nurturable And so that
was a camera test of just a b bunch of
different key card colors to start the conversation.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
Okay, what color it should be?

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Not twenty different different new departments we should be looking for?

Speaker 3 (25:09):
I know nothing, I guess render Allan.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Let's talk about some more old tech here. That cam
quorder that Mark did the scene that he's going to
win the Emmy four good? What was that? Was that?
A Sony handicamp? About?

Speaker 3 (25:27):
It was a Sony That was a handicamp. That was
a Japanese Sony handicamp. I believe it was a d
C r PC one hundred, but don't quote me on
that because we quickly covered all of the branding on
it very quickly.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
What was it shooting like c or what? What was
it shooting?

Speaker 3 (25:44):
It was a little it was a little tape mini DVD,
That's what it was.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Okay. I was shooting a lot of video back at
that time for commercials and things, so I was involved
with a lot of win those. The tape kept changing
all the time.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
They did they did, and if we ordered a bunch
of the wrong tape and it wouldn't like shove in
and we lost a couple of cameras to us trying
to jam it in and jam it open. We bought
we had to buy a lot. We bought a lot
of those because we didn't know how long they were
going to last, and we knew that scene was going
to take span like many days and our playback supervisor
Eric Glupo figured out a system in which after Adam

(26:21):
they shot that in order, and so after Adam would
shoot one of those sides of that scene, they would
immediately render the tape, plug it in and make a
new tape of it and really in real time show
on the video screen. And they were really filming the
video screen the best tape that they wanted to use

(26:42):
from the last so they were kind of like editing,
you know, Ben was making choices very.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
Quickly about what takes they wanted to use.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
They saved all the footage so if they wanted to
burn something a different version of it in after. But
that also helped with Adam's performance, or I imagine it
would help with out his performance. It was intended to
that he was really reacting to real thing on screen
and not just a blue or gray screen.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
But we are actually seeing what he's seeing, correct, Yeah, wow.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
And he was actually holding it too, so he was
his own kind of cameraman well in recording that, and
there's little sony handicans they held up.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
They actually recorded those scenes.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
It was all right cool. He has mentioned that he
practiced recording himself, trying to figure that out. He was
doing some rehearsals with the camcorder. Yeah, so I guess
he got more familiar with it. Yeah, this is like
going way way way back for a vintage recording device,
the Phillips Pocket memo. When Mark got the board device

(27:39):
and was yelling in Miltchik's office, they were recording him
and to hear that back. That's the little thing that
we see the close up of in the boardroom. They
played back on this Phillip's Pocket Memo that went through
a process. It is branded Lumen in the show. How
do you decide some things are going to be Lumin branded,

(27:59):
some things are going to retain their actual brand. What
causes that? I guess what is lumin into production wise
must be so there at some point they've been making electronics, yes.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
Or at least they're having electronics branded so that they're
content constantly and continually reinforcing that they are this kind
of all encompassing parent company.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
And so we just bought so many tape recorders.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
We bought so many tape recorders, and I have you know,
I have.

Speaker 4 (28:28):
A pretty deep kit.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
I have been doing this for a while and I've
done some vintage shows. So anytime I see a garage sale,
I'm like, I tell my husband, pull over, it's a
garage so and he's like, please, don't bring anything more home.
So I kind of dug into my kit and the
one that ended up getting chosen was one just that
I happened to have in my kit.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
Thank god, it happened to be working.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
And so we had our scenic department painted and then
we applied the logo onto it. It was so graphic
and it was so you know, again divided one color
and once I went calling the other was we called
it severed.

Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, it was. We were really happy with it.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Some actual medical and dental equipment has made its way
onto the show, and we're wondering about doctor Mauer's dental
instruments that he picks up at the beginning of two
O five and then he uses in two O seven.
Are they real?

Speaker 4 (29:20):
They are real?

Speaker 3 (29:21):
They are not used that we did not get used.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
They look they look way too real.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
They're very they were real.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Travis on our team went down a deep rabbit hole
of learning everything there is to know about dental equipment.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
And there's some scary looking ones out there. There really are.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Now would that be a situation. Did he like call
up dentists and say, hey, where do you get your
stuff and what are you getting? Or did he just
grab dental catalogs and figured it out.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
He does a little bit of bout, so he did
get a bunch of dental catalogs, you know, do budget
dental research. We didn't know how vintage we wanted to
go with the equipment. We were still trying to figure
out what doctor mery Ours roll and look was in
all the different rooms on Jemma's testing floor. We were
trying to figure out what the esthetic was for each one.

(30:08):
We also engage a dentist tech advisor, so we also
didn't know how much we were going to actually to
film going into Diechin's mouth with these these pieces of equipment.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
We did notice you've only got like two mirrors and
like thirty of the pick things. That's right, so we
could tell what he was wanting to do with it.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, and we you know, again going back to the story,
doctor Marr is in there to make it an unpleasant experience,
per se, So to find out how much you can
take with the kind of pressure testing the limits of
the chip, you know, we assumed doctor Marrot doesn't know
anything about dental cleaning either, so we just picked the
ones that looked like the sharpest. We thought what doctor

(30:50):
Marra would be picking. Yeah, we didn't know there was
a whirl where we were going to go and do
a whole actual teeth cleaning of Deechin.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
It don't need to do any of that, that's right.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
And Jessica realized, like the fear of dentists and how
much many people dislike dentists was just implied just by
you know, not even touching her mouth. I think it
was a great.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
Balance that she made.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
It was it was perfect. It was it was just
enough horror and then you got away before it got
too gross. For me, the worst dental torture scene and
movies ever in history's Marathon Man. And I've always thought
that's it. I don't need any more than that. I've
got all the dental torture I need right there. I'm
all done. So the locks, But getting down on the

(31:34):
testing floor, we're kind of talking about some of the
testing floor stuff. Those biometric locks at each door are
utilizing a blood draw to identify the user. Now, who
came up with that idea? Who built those and I'm
really curious how much of what we see on camera
when that thing comes down and how much of that
cgi how much is actually hitting your finger. You're not

(31:56):
really making anybody bleed, are you?

Speaker 3 (31:59):
You never know?

Speaker 4 (32:00):
You never know on somebody.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Those hand hand scanners is what we call them. They
were written in as an action into the script that
Dan and Mark Friedman came up with. Originally, they were
just scanners. They were just going to scan biometrics and
not take any blood. And as they were trying to
figure out two ten and how the culmination of Mark

(32:23):
getting into Cold Harbor Room was going to happen, this
idea of having it be blood that was your entry
in was very intriguing to the creative team, and so
they were like, can you make it so they it
pricks a finger and draws blood. And a lot of
thumb scan thumb readers or a lot of blood draws

(32:44):
that are on the market are something that you lay
into an indented thing, so you don't really see it.
Jeremy Hindle came up with this idea that it would
be kind of a wedge on the outside wall, right
outside the door, and we had this huge moment where
We're like, well, is it going to be her right
hand or left hand that the nurse is going to use,

(33:06):
And so I.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Came up with this terrible, terrible concept.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
We made a prototype of it having six fingers, so
it'd be four regular fingers and two thumbs so.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
Either hand could fit on it. Oh okay, so bizarre looking.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
It was very unsettling, and I was like, we'll just
figure out which hand it is. So we made left
ones and right ones, and we figured out which side
of the door she'd be standing on. As to your
question about CGI, all of it is practical except for
actual blood being drawn. So everything is practical. We created
with little servers inside. We created the sheet that comes down,

(33:43):
We created the needle that comes down and pricks, and
we created the tubing.

Speaker 4 (33:48):
That the blood, the sheet that the blood would go through.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
The only thing that we didn't do is we actually
didn't prick anybody's fingers in posts. They helped us out
with the red quote unquote blood getting drawn up there,
but everything else was practical and in real time, and
that was a big win for us because it was challenging.
It's a lot of mechanism and not a lot of space.
To hide because we didn't build into the wall. We

(34:13):
wanted to make each unit interchangeable. They want to change
left or right hand and so that was there was
There was like three remote buttons at the same time,
and we had to be close enough for it to work.

Speaker 4 (34:23):
And timing wise, that was a fun one to build.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Oh wow, it sounds like it. I had a question
for you. Vinie and I are both kind of film nerds,
so we know about faky bags. There are grocery bags
out there that have been built with fibers that are
more like vinyl where they don't make noise on camera.
When Mark walks in from he's been shopping for whatever
sweets for Gabi needs because she's a hummingbird. But he

(34:48):
comes back from the Egan emporium, we clocked it. We
saw the grocery bag. But now the question is is
that one of the faky bags or is that just
real paper that he was holding.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Personally, I always I prefer real whenever I have a
chance to do anything propwise. But I do love our
sound friends, our sound brethren and brothers and sisters and again,
and I will, out of solidarity with them, make a
version the silent Bag version of them. I don't like

(35:18):
it because the texture looks a little bit different, and
so we'll we'll make both and we'll match the sizes.
The silent bag versions are always four inches shorter than
regular bags. I don't know why they do that, so
we need to always in order to match to the
silent bag version, we cut our paper bags regular paper
bags down by four inches with a scissor that has
like a zigzag shape on it to make it look

(35:39):
like the fashion paper bag. And so we have both.
So we will use in the scene the real one
as much as we can until it becomes a problem
and then we'll swap it out. But I think for
that scene it was the real bag because I think
we're able to not interfere with the dialogue at all.
I think he sets it down before.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
We get barely barely moves it, yeah, moves, and then
moves it out of the way after your hands are
her icing or something she's frosting, are frosting. She's eating sugar.
Volunteer Research of NYP is actually an engineer by day,
so he love that blueprint that Miltchik unrolled to show
Dylan about the audi visitation suite. And he was curious,

(36:19):
is that a real blueprint, because actual blueprints on the
blue paper just aren't made anymore. Did you did you
make it to have that look or did you really
have a blueprint made?

Speaker 3 (36:28):
We really tried to find a place within the tri
State area of New.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
York that would make a real blueprint.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
There was one place left that we all prought people
knew about, and they closed down.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
And they're just down from the Typewriter Hospital. They're in
the same day the Typewriter Hospital, right.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
And unfortunately, yeah, they were closed down. So we did that.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
Big machine that makes the blueprint with all that.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
Toxic h and has tell me better for the environment.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
But we found somebody in Red Hood, New York, in
red Hoock, Brooklyn who made a photographic transfer onto that
type of paper and did this whole process of transfer
that looked I could have been fooled by it. I
thought it looked really authentic.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Then he liked it, and he knows blueprints, so he
liked it.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
All right.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
I got one more thing before we move on here.
We got to talk Miltchick's motorcycle helmet. Was that a
real motorcycle helmet? And it looks different? You modified it somehow?
How did you do that?

Speaker 3 (37:30):
It is a real helmet, And I kind of insisted
on it being a real helmet because real people, tremel
and stunt people were really going to be driving on
a real motorcycle and I wanted a real helmet.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
I didn't want.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Anything that was going to potentially be a danger. So
it was a real helmet. So all of the helmets
that we are indeed were real helmets. What we did
a lot of research on was different designs.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
We put tear drops.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
On the we put the lumin logo on them, we
put you know, MDR color stripes on them. We tested
all of them, and then we just had one that
was just a matte black. We just painted it. Our
SCENICX painted it just a kind of matte black. It
was just kind of very cool and we just we
liked it and we went with that. Advisor was a

(38:15):
visor that is sold for those helmets, and we had
blue colors, we had totally darkened like sunglass color. We
had green, the mint green, and we camera tested all
that and everyone thought the mint green was just the
perfect thing for Milchik's suddenly cool side, Like whoa, this
guy's cool.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Put him on a motorcycle, and that's just cool.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
He is.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
He's cool anyway. Man. You put him on a motorcycle
and the way he goes, and I got another lighthearted
vinype question. Let's go all right. New York's Museum of
the Moving Image houses incredible pieces of film and television history.
If there were a severance exhibition and you could send
three props from the show to include, which three would

(38:58):
you choose in that exhibition?

Speaker 4 (39:01):
I would definitely make them set up the MDR Quad desk.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
Day, and I would send every prop, like on those desks,
so all the dressing on those desks is a prop.
So I would send all of that. So I'm just
gonna make that one thing. That's That's one. I would
send the breakroom table from season one. Oh, the third one?
What would it be?

Speaker 4 (39:23):
I think it would be the watermelon head. I think
that's yeah, it's got to be your head.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
I figured you'd go hers head number two. The breakroom table.
Got to check on something we caught that you recycled
it for the new and improved breakroom and you painted
the hands blue. Who came up with this? It's like
you're taunting them It's like, remember this, all those where
your hands were.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, so in you know, Luman is listening the new
improved breakroom. Basically the torture table wanted to be there.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
Yeah, but new and improved.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
So how would we change it? So we decided that
we would shove it into the wall. And we were
going through a lot of different ideas for that room.
We were going to do like an arcade, a video
or a video game arcade, and we came up with
an entire video game, you know, of the refiners running
through the hallways with the chasing goats. It was was amazing.
We did a whole slew of loomen board severed floor

(40:20):
board games. We made the breakroom table. We thought, okay,
let's make the breakroom table into a game. I decided, like,
if the glass was going to be pressed against the table,
we would have the projector would still be on the
other side. Like, we're not changing the table anymore, We're
just shoving it into a wall. Those hands were still
going to be there, and what do we do with that?
So I thought, hmm, let's make them into ping pong paddles.

(40:43):
So we made those hands into ping pong paddles and
Originally that table was going to be a ping pong
game in which we were going to let the refiners
with a little ping pong ball use the hand paddles
pink pong paddle hands and try and hit with the
ball and the paddles a floating lumin logo that looked

(41:04):
like a pong like like the Pong video game.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
If you hit it, it would explode. So we did this
whole thing. Ben loved it. Ben was really good at it.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Actually he was able to play that game and he
was fantastic at it.

Speaker 4 (41:17):
And Zach was able to do it a couple of
times too.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
But basically Ben reblocked that scene so that they weren't
walking around that in that first break room scene.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
It didn't get the play that and the love that
it wanted. But that's what the blue was. They were
actually ping pong paddles in the show.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Okay, we just saw the thought. They just painted in
the hands just to torment those four refiners. I've got
a section here. I was going to ask you about Pinko,
but we've kind of talked about Pinko. Can you just
rough thumbnail off the top of your head. The things
he has created for the show. I know Ms Wong's game.
He crafted that. Yeah, the statue and the town square,

(41:56):
he did that. The seal, correct, what else, the irv's head,
the earth head. How about the tiny, the very tiny
snow seal that Helly or Helena brings into IRV in
his tent.

Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah, he did that too.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
And that was a last minute add That was a
day before they put that into the script, where I
was like, oh, okay, Panco, what are you gonna do?
And so he sculpted that out of foam and cornstarch
flakes onto it to make him look like it was real,
and I would wet it right before we tried. I

(42:37):
tried in Vain. There was one little patch of snow
left on the ground. It was like a little corner
of a parking lot. And I went and I like
scooped up all the snow I could get into this
little bucket. And I kept trying to, like, in real time,
make a seal in the shape of the one that
Panco made. Mine was terrible and we just went we
did with pancos. But yeah, he made that. He made

(42:59):
the duck wrap it behind Miltchik's desk. In season one,
he made the cure head behind Cobel's desk that I
was entirely tasked him with a task of Okay, we
need to make cres head a kind of statue, a
bust of cures head, but you could only use items
that would be found on the severed floor, so you

(43:21):
can only use vending machine packaging. He used the wooden
rulers as the structure of the inner structure. He used
packaging for lunches, so he made a whole slew of
lunch packaging. We didn't see very much of it in
the two seasons, but it was there and legitimate, and
so I just handed him a big old tub of
all these things that were legitimately pens and post it

(43:43):
notes found on the severed floor, and he went to town
and he created this amazing cure head bust that was
like kind of always And it was the thought that
Kobel grew up doing arts and crafts like this, like
paper crafts with just found objects, because she didn't grow
up very rich. That was kind of referenced in her

(44:03):
basements when we went into her altar with the four
temper heads that were made again just with paper and
different very simple, inexpensive structures, and then when we went
to Sissy's house and we had the miniature four tempers
in her altar, we kind of learned that she learned
this craft from Sissy and presumably, Okay.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
So is Pinkoa new to you? Have you worked with
him before?

Speaker 4 (44:30):
I never worked with him before.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Everyone in New York kind of knows of him as
like one of the best sculptors in the business. He
started with us at the in prep of Season one,
and very quickly I was like, Oh, I'm going to
you for everything.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
He's great. I mean, he's amazing.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
You give him a task and or we read in
the script and we discuss it, and he talks to.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
Ben and we see what kind of direction we want
to go in, and then we just let him run
with it.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Yeah, because actually one of my questions right here, does
he require a lot of oversight or you do you
just leave him alone and.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
You just let me go a corner. Yeah, he is
a corner in the scenic shop. He just does his thing.
And if he says I need more vending machine packaging
because I'm making this thing, I go and I get
it for him. Whatever he wants, I get it for
he says, I need another watermelon. I get him a watermelon,
and he makes these amazing creative in the cannon of
the show stuff that is really now defining a lot

(45:25):
of the look of the show.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
When you gave him all that stuff, it reminded me
of that scene in Apollo thirteen where they told the
end they said, this is what they have up there,
make a filter out of it. Yeah, that's what it
sounds like what you were doing there. I got another
lighthearted question before we get into another topic here. Both
Vinnie and I are left handed. Any chance you've created
an MDR keyboard for lefties but the track ball on

(45:47):
the other side.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
No, why would Luman do that? Luman would never accommodate
such things.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Oh, you must be No, you must be tortured.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
No, you got to be right handed. Okay, all right,
let's start for a second. And I'm I know we're
coming up on three hours here that we've been talking.
I don't want to monopolize your evening, but I've just
got a couple more things here, and I definitely want
to get to the patron refiner questions. I've got some
good ones, But talking about outside fabricators you use certain
outside people. Can you talk about like Tetra Pack, I know,

(46:17):
does a lot of your drink work. That Make three
Fabrication House did the Woe Meter in Cheek I bardow
to talk about how you pick outside fabricators and some
of what they've done for you on the show.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
I've worked with fabricators that are amazing and what they do,
and also that I've worked with for a while, and
prop fabricators, especially in New York. I'm sure in other
places too, but I'm just biased are amazing and can
really reverse engineer what the outcome needs to be and
figure out how we get there. And they're also very

(46:47):
aware of what's going to be camera friendly and also usable.

Speaker 4 (46:51):
I work with the specialists a lot.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
They made all the keyboards, all the monitors, just kind
of across the board, a bunch of stuff. I was
introduced to Patricio at Make three during the strike. He
started talking about how he engineers things and how he
uses computer apps to run certain servers and little motors,
and I was intrigued by it and he knew a

(47:13):
lot and when it came time to make the Woe Meter,
Eric Felberg came up with a bunch of designs, concept illustrations.
We kind of narrowed it down with Jessica Legane the director,
and Ben. We basically had a design but had to
engineer how all these dials and these lights were going
to work. And we wanted to make it look very sleek,

(47:34):
very manufactured. This was this was a scientific tool, you know,
a medical tool. It was not for show and to
create an aesthetic on the severed floor. This was using
this is being used every day conceivably. And so we
had again Panko sculpted the rocks that Gemma holds in
her hands and make three, then c and seed the

(47:55):
metal housing. We had it powder coated into the pantone
color of Gemma's medical suite. And then we put in
Nagra which frankenstide off of old Nagras that the dials
and the knobs and we use those. We put those
in because those are just cool. And then and then
make three kind of made it practical using little remotes

(48:15):
and apps to make all those dials move in real time.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
I was a little offended. In one interview I read
either with you or Jeremy, you referred to one of
the Nagras as vintage I remember when that thing came out.
I was reading reviews of it in stereo magazines like Vintage.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Apologies.

Speaker 4 (48:35):
Yeah, yeah, apologies.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Now to finish this off here, I have a Patreon
page for Severed and have some really fantastic Severance fans
on there. So when we found out we're going to
be talking to you, I put up a post and said, hey,
what would you like to ask Catherine Miller if you
could ask her? Well, we got some good ones here.
First ones from me, though I had to slip one in.

(48:59):
You have met that Patricia Arquette drives her own vehicle.
Tell me stories about miss Bobell driving.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
You know, Patricia Arquette is a force of nature.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
I would not want to stand in front of one
of her cars, and she's ever driving.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
So Adam Scott was taking his life in his hands
in that final scene. Right, Goodbye misscal Or, goodbye missus Selving.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yes, No, she's She's a consummate actor and professional.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Whatever she engages.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
In, she's intense and so smart and thoughtful about what
she does. I have the I have so much respect
and I'm so grateful to work with her.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
She does like to drive, and she is she can drive.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
And she definitely that that you turn that she makes
when she's turning around from the sign of salts Neck,
that was really her. Everyone was like, oh, we need
the stunt person to do it. It's such a narrow road.
There was really a ditch on the side of the road.
She's going to drive off into the ditch and she's like, no,
I got it.

Speaker 4 (49:58):
And you know, it was like an.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Old So the turning the steering wheel like you gotta
like really turn you out to really power it. She
was amazing and so she Yeah, she's all in at
all times.

Speaker 4 (50:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
In episode eight when she was in the snow and
the kind of harsh conditions, she was in it and
she was there and yeah, she's intense and I have
I love her.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
That is cool, all right? From Peggy K. This is
patron refiner Peggy Kay. She says Tremell Tilman requested the
Iceberg painting and the optical illusion statue for his character.
Are there other props that have been requested by other
actors for their characters? And that optical illusion statue she's
talking about was the Pinko creation.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
The duck rabbit, right, Yeah, the duck grabbit.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Line drawing is so any other props requested by other performers.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, Patricia has a lot of ideas and thoughts and
she shares. No one's ever saying I need this, and
you know everyone it's all very collaborative.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
There was like a lot of luggage.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Patricia when she was loading up her car wanted a
lot of you know, missus Koe Bell Selvic having her
like have to load up a bunch of luggage. She
wanted it inside of the of the car to feel
full and real. The in the first season, uh Dan Ericson,
the writer and creator. We were all standing around in
Cobell's basement trying to figure out what her altar was

(51:17):
going to be, and Dan was like, it needs to
be anchored with something, and he had ideas, like, you know,
something like like a breathe like the mom's.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Breathing tube or something like that. And he's like and
I was like, oh wait, give me two minutes.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
And I ran back to our kid and we had
this old vintage breathing tube with the with the mouthpiece
in it, and we brought it back and he was
just like I was that was just like something I
said out loud that wasn't even I wasn't even really
thinking that, like we were going to actually have that,
And he's like, you just pulled that out of your kid,
and so that's that's like an example of something that
then gets written into into the scene. Yeah, we try

(51:53):
and work with with everybody that Christopher walk In asked
for a pen. He wanted a pen in a scene.
He called called Travis, our assistant primester in the day
of you want to see the pen, And we gave
them like three different options, sorry, seven different options of
vintage Parker pens that are severed. They have silver on
one side, green on the other, so they're two colors.

(52:15):
He picked one, we took.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
It was a beautiful vintage one. We brought all away.
He called Travis back in and he said, this pen
is this pen's too clicky. It's way too clicky.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
I need another pen. But we wanted that pen because
it was so perfect. The pantom matched his key card.
It was like perfect. So we did our own little
surgery on the pen and we cut the spring. We
made it less CLICKI but yeah, this is just a
fun story of how we will try.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
They are such.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
Amazing artists, all the actors that we will try and
get them anything that they want in any moment.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
I got one from Catherine s. This is about the
plate that Helena eats her egg off of for breakfast.
There is a ton of interest in this plate. People
want to know where did that scene come from? Did
somebody draw that scene? Was that already there? It obviously
has import regarding the storyline. So did tell us everything

(53:07):
about that plate?

Speaker 3 (53:08):
That plate was all David Schlessinger, our decorator, our set decorator.
So in the Waffle Party in season one, we made
that plate. So that plate that had that the specific
lines on it, we made that plate from scratch. This
time David went back and started looking through a bunch
of vintage china that would have conceivably been in the

(53:28):
Egan family passed down and he found this amazing. I
think it's like two hundred year old. Don't quote me
on that plate with this scene in it. That makes
so much sense for kind of the Egan child, whoever
the Egan child was of the generation to be eating
off of. You know this the scene of these these
authority figures kind of forcing this child into place.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
And so that was that vintage plate.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
It exists existed, existed. Wow, do you think you're going
to tell me that was something you guys had support
this story.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
You know, that was one of those weird things that
made so much sense.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
And you know, at first he was like it could
be a reference, but he's like, no, I think it
has to be this plate and everyone agreed. But what
he didn't have was a double of it. There was
only one of them in the world. Oh what he
ended up doing, and to his credit, he's amazing. What
he ended up doing was figuring out a way to
replicate make a double of that plate, which was his

(54:27):
team worked very very hard on it because I didn't
feel comfortable with as much of a focus on that
scene that we were going to have on that egg
and the egg plate and this egg slicer, and.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I could have got dropped.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Yeah, what if a you know, what if a sea
stand fell on it or something, or a light fell
on it.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
So he made a double.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
We didn't need to use that double, which was amazing,
but we had it just in our back pocket.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
I got one from helly R And this is one
I have too. Why didn't Irv's egg squish everywhere when
he slapped in the handbucket. It looks like you should
have gone every or how did you do that effect?

Speaker 4 (55:01):
To be very honest, I had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
That is all John Taturo's amazing egg acting ability. He
figured out a way to close that book with the
egg it really inside of it and not have it
squish out the top.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Or really there's really there was.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
Really egg in there. So we I made extra.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Pages, and we put extra pages in, and we put
some wax paper behind the pages. We just had him
go to town and squish it.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
I really thought at the last second you were going
to like a picture of the egg in there.

Speaker 4 (55:33):
No, No, that was a really.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Really squished the egg. I actually this is going back
to first season. Actually in that podcast, I said, I'd
love it if anybody wants to test this. I want
to see if.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
I would test it.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Nobody has yet tested it, but I would still love
to see that.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
I mean, John Tatros we'll talk about force and anger.
I think there's so many good actors on this show.
Like I got this.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Loved him his whole career. He is amazing. All right,
Helly had a multi part here. She's also curious where
you found all those dance pepper mills. Were they already
at the Lust House that whole huge pepper mill collection.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
No, that again, that is David Slushinger and Jeremy Handle.
That was a Jeremy Handle ad as well, and they
source a bunch of vintage pepper mills and they just
went to all sorts of antique places and just kept
started collecting them for many months.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
That is cool. This is another one from Helly R
patron refiner. Helly are a favorite epic fail moment involving
a prop or a surprise fix, something that you were
able to pull off in the middle of a shoot.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
On this show, we have very few of those, I
will say, because everything is so planned out ahead of time.
There was a scene is that did not make the
final cut, and I don't think it's because of me.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
I hope it's not because of me. But there is
a scene in.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Which I needed to create a battery pack to power
a lumin battery pack to power a device. And that
battery pack was very problematic because it had to be heavy,
and it was very heavy because I had to actually
have a battery pack inside of it, and it had
to be held from a top handle and one of
the actors had to run around with it across some streets.

(57:12):
We came up with a really beautiful design and it
looked amazing, but then the minute you actually put a
battery pack inside of it. You know, we came up
with a housing around it, but the battery pack inside
of it, all the engineering kind of flew out the window.

Speaker 4 (57:23):
And so when I got.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
The actual prop the object from the fabricator, none of
us had actually tested picking up and running with it
before an epic fail, total rookie move. Should I should
have been completely tested. So when we took it out
of the truck and I picked it up from the handle,
all four sides of the housing just like kind of
flapped open like a surprise birthday cake, and the whole

(57:48):
thing was just shattered, and this ugly battery inside. You know,
the thing was supposed to be.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
White, the battery was black.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
It was.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
It was awful.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Like I said, I have an amazing team, and we
all just completely hopped to into line and started scrambling,
and we had a bunch of alternate options, and we
took one of the alternate options, which was actually much
smaller and lighter but still functional and wasn't as heavily
concepted and designed.

Speaker 4 (58:14):
It was very simple and sleek, and we had our.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
Onset Scenic take some contact paper over it and make
it a different color. And we have these dry transfers
which we use to put our logos on things. They're
actually like letter like old letter set transfers, and we
print those out in the logos and then we can
quickly transfer a.

Speaker 4 (58:33):
Logo and make it look like it's printed on many objects.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
And so we quickly dry transferred the logo on then
looked at and he.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
Was like, huh, what happened the other one? But I
like this one better. I'm so glad you had two.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
Options when you worked so hard on it fell apart
right out of the truck.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
I was like, I like this one better too.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Wow. All right, I got another one here from patron
refiner Martin D. And it's about herbs paintings of the
vesting floor elevator that he was painting every night obsessively.
Were all of those paintings that we saw actual paintings.
Were they made by one person who was in on
painting them? And how many of them were made?

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Yes, they were real paintings. Yes, our Scenic Department, who
was amazing did all those paintings. They were done on
a lot of found objects, So we had a bunch
of ceiling tile pieces that they painted on them. We
had wood versions of them as if IRV was going
out and not buying canvases but going out and finding

(59:34):
pieces in trash.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
That he would pick up and use to paint.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Because of the repetition of it, he had so many
of them, and so everything that you see in there
was actually really painted and was really in there. There
was no CGI of any of that. There was a
lot of R and D that went into the texture
of that paint because to make the connection of the
story that Irv's dreams of the goo was actually the

(01:00:00):
same texture as the paint. To make that connection, we
had to make sure that the goo match matched the paint.
So we we did a lot of R and D
and found this really thick acrylic paint that we thickened
a little bit more to kind of match match the texture.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Pilot up on the on the canvas. Yeah, how many
of them were made? Do you know?

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):
You know? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
We just kept saying we had that set for a
while and we kept filling in the set, and the
designer at the time was like, I think we need more.
I think we need more. So we just kept being like,
all right, give us ten more and they would just
be constantly painting it. And I will say that John
tatura again amazing actor. He took he took lessons from
the scenic that painted it to really know and try

(01:00:42):
and look authentic when he was actually painting it, because
him painting it in the scene was really important to
kind of show that that he was he was trying
to cross that severance boundary with through.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
A dream does not surprise me at all hearing that
about John. The employee handbook that's in the wall, uh original, Yeah,
the original plus the three appendices that we see down
downstairs are those repurposed old books? Where did those come from?
The old Bibles? Had did you recover something?

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
So we we this is a little known fact.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
We are indeed what those would be because we knew
they were going to be the anchor of that room.
There's so few objects in the MDR room that whatever
objects in there are going to be very important and
very highlighted. And so we did a lot of R
and D about what the Compliance Handbook was going to
look like. I made a concept version of the Compliance
Handbook that was made out of the same color carpet

(01:01:40):
and actually out of swatches of carpet that was the
same carpet in MDR, and so it was like bounding carpets.
And I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was brilliant.

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):
I showed it to Ben and he was like hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
I was like, this has never been seen before on
camera and Ben was like hm and I don't think
it ever will be. I was like, Okay, we'll just
go with the normal linen binding, and we did. We
concepted a bunch. We had a base book of a Bible,
and we got a bunch of them, and then we
edged it with the edging and then basically we have

(01:02:15):
a bespoke bookbinder Hudson River Bindery Bindery. We have Alice
up there, who did who bound also the u u
R all of the uu rs and the Compliance Hamnbook.
And whenever we had insert pages, there was a few
pages in the front and back of the Bible that
are empty and that those are meant for I believe,
notes or whatever. So they were completely blank pages. And

(01:02:38):
so I would slice out those pages, scotch tape them
on to an eight and a half by eleven sheet,
figure out how to place it so that when I
printed out a Bible page running it through a printer,
a compliance hamdbook page because in season one, Irving had
to make a copy of how the photo was supposed

(01:02:59):
to be changed out, and so those pages were really
the same paper, because that was a really hard paper
to match.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
The pages that we see in there. There's a lot
of text on them that is truly cure story. That's
all Dan. Yeah, because it's almost seemed like they very
intentionally made big chunks of that visible because it's been transcribed.
It's on the severnce wiki. Everybody knows those stories that
were on those pages. Any more pages he's generated that

(01:03:26):
we might get to see at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
He generated a lot of pages for the fourth Appendix,
a lot more than what we saw. So the one
in Woe's Hollow talking about the story of the lore
of deed Er, Yeah, he did a bunch of chapters
for those. We only read the first of those chapters,
but the second chapter here confronts the nanny Nanny, Yeah,
that was there's more to that. I don't know if

(01:03:49):
we'll ever see that, but he really enjoys writing this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Well, hopefully the way they released the few chapters of
the u R that we've gotten, yeah, that would have
been out. Yeah, that's hopefully we'll get something like this.
So I got one more for you, Okay, I think that, No,
I got two more for you. Helly R had a question.
She's about irv's notes, the physical notes that Audi IRV
has compiled. Can you comment on the handwritten notes in

(01:04:16):
the margins? Who added those who came up with the
messages that are there, and are there actually really hints
about future plot points in those notes?

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Yes? So, yes, sir, Yes, I can answer that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Oh, okay, all right, I wrote all.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Those notes myself. That was just one of those types
of props where I was I wanted to make sure
not giving it to the scene, because I wanted to
make sure that everything that was written in there was
coming from me and coming from from Dan's thoughts and
Ben's thoughts. So I just took a pencil and I
started marking it up and showed there's only one copy

(01:04:57):
of that in the world, because I really, wow, fun
copy of it was probably that was probably a dumb idea,
especially the map. I just started marking up the map,
not knowing that the Bert Goodman X marks the spot
of where he lives was going to become such a
blot point.

Speaker 4 (01:05:13):
I had no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
I was just making this trunk and really trying to
put really tangible things into it and make it authentic
and make it kind of handwritten and not neat and
like beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
And perfect, like you know Irving's.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Irving's handwriting is very scratchy and very fast, fast out
out of Irving.

Speaker 4 (01:05:31):
And you know he's making these notes as are coming
to him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Yeah, those were all for me, and I spent a
good amount of time really making notes on everything that's
in that trunk, and everything that's in that trunk are
pieces of graphics that Tanzy has made, so everything in
there is authentic, and that trunk still is intact in
storage because we had to.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
It was great because we had to come back to it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
In season two Drummond drumming to take a look at
it and look through it, and also Bert was was
in it to a little bit looking through the notebook.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
I can't speak to any further plot points.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Oh, all right, you're.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Gonna make me sweat, Alan, I can't do this. You
can't do this anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
All right, I got one more for you for real,
and thank you so much for the time you have taken.
This has been fantastic talking with you, and we've gotten
some amazing information from you. Winna Tea is curious, as
we all are, about the snacks in the vending machine.
How were those chosen, who selected the actual items, and
who came up with those goofy names for them.

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):
That was a group effort, I will say so the
vending machine snacks. You know, at first it was like, oh,
we're just gonna put a lumen sticker on a coke can.

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
But no, that went out the window very quickly. It
had to be bespoke.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
It had to be a little weird. It had could
be a little sad, the lumen, double edge of everything,
the rose, but the thorn too. We had some kind
of brainstorming sessions. Dan definitely came up with a long list.
Some of the other writers came up with a list,
Tansy came up with a big list, and we kind
of I came up with some ideas of you know,

(01:07:05):
double edged foods and Basically we kind of just rolled
with by consensus what we thought the best ones of
those were. We made a lot of actual packaging that
didn't make it into the vending machine, but we do
have a lot of extra packaging as well with different foods.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Was that same crew kind of involved with the upgraded
offerings in the vending machine with the fruit leather?

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Yes, I think the fruit leather was Tansy's invention.

Speaker 4 (01:07:33):
I think that was really her. Yeah, it was the
same deal.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
I was, you know, new and improved, different colors, different shapes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Thoughts about changing the vending machine out to being a
new vending machine. David made a new vending machine. It
ended up being a little too big for the specs
of the kitchen, and so we ended up using that
vending machine in Mammalians, which actually worked out really well.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Okay, so that was the repurpose vending machine and Mammalians. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool.
Well I think that's about it. Is there anything that
we haven't asked you that you're in the back of
your head thinking, I'm I can't believe they didn't bring
this up.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
No, No, there's so much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
There's so much in this show that is made bespoke,
and so much that is from like the mind, the
collective mind, and the creativity that starts with Dan and
Ben and Jeremy's like set design, and us being able
to add to to all of it. It just it's
such are We could talk for days about every little

(01:08:35):
detail because we put so much work in heart and
soul and into everything. A credit to all the fans
that we have that actually notice it, you know, Alan
and Vinnie and everyone out there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
That oh they're into it there and to it. Oh well, Catherine,
thank you so much for being on Severed and for
taking this huge amount of time to talk with this.
I'm sure there are going to be a lot of
fans out there that are going to eat this up.
This is a lot of there's a lot of good info.
So thank you so much for being Is there anything
you want to promote? You're working on right now?

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
Yes, I'm working on a new Meet the Parents movie,
the fourth and the franchise.

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
We just started to.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
Prep on that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
And so that's that Ben Stiller guys usually involved with those,
isn't he. Yeah, you never know? Yeah cool? All right,
So you got that going? And what about season three
of Severns.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
How's that coming. It's definitely coming. Everyone's very positive and
excited about the script and the story. Alan, you will
not get me to say anything about it. I promise myself.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
I was going to be strong, all right, all right,
I won't twist your arm on it. I'm looking forward
to it. I'm not one that wants to know in advance. Really,
I'd like to be surprised when I watched the episode.
I want to see the show. Thank you again very much,
and we're going to call this done.

Speaker 4 (01:09:53):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Oh thank you for being here, and thanks everyone for
tuning in Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast. Hopefully you found
out as cool and as amazing as we did. You've
been listening to the Severed interview with Property Master Katherine Miller. Again,
a big thanks to Catherine for taking the time to
talk and for volunteer producer Vinip who coordinated the interview

(01:10:15):
and supplied questions. Next time, we'll be back into the
rewatch with part two of our breakdown of the episode.
Cheek I Bardow. We've got one more commercial break right here.
Then we'll run the clothes. If you're heading for the
elevator now, Refiner, remember to please stagger your exits and
here come more commercials. Hi. I'm Adam Scott. I play

(01:10:37):
mark s on Severance, which you likely already know since
you're listening to sever did the Ultimate Severance podcast?

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
You've been listening to Severed, The Ultimate Severns Podcast. Severed
is written, produced, and hosted by Alan Stair.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Severed is not endorsed by Red Hour Productions, endever Content,
or Apple TV Plus. This podcast is intended for entertainment
and informational purposes only.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Severance, the Severance logo, and all video and audio of
Severance and Severance characters are registered trademarks of Red Hour,
Endeavor Content, Apple TV Plus, or their respective copyright holders.
Please make sure to leave a five star rating and
review for Severed at Apple Podcasts

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