Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Severed the Ultimate Severance Podcast. Hello Refiner, so glad to
have you back on the Severed floor. This week. We've
got a real treat. It's not a rewatch episode. We
will be getting back into the rewatch next week. This
(00:24):
is another interview break, but it's very different than any
interview we've conducted so far. As much as we love
talking to Kat and Bob and Jacob, those guys had
all been interviewed by other podcasts and other media outlets.
This week, volunteer producer vinnp came through with a key
player in the world of Severance production who has never
been interviewed. You've never heard these stories because she's never
(00:48):
told them to anyone. We're going to be talking to
the lead graphic designer on Severance. Her name is Tanzy Mischow.
You may have heard me pronounce Tanzy's last name in
some of the rewatch episodes as Michaud. Huge apologies, Tansy.
We got together via zoom on Wednesday, September three to
discuss all of the many things Tansy has designed for Severance.
We had a great ninety minute discussion. We're going to
(01:10):
hear the whole thing today. As with past interviews. We're
going to do this with limited commercial interruptions. In order
to keep my podcast server happy, I do have to
take some breaks within the show. I am allowed to
limit the number of breaks. We'll take one right now,
We'll take one in the middle of the interview, and
then we'll take a final break when I'm saying goodbye
at the end. It's not as many as the podcast
(01:31):
server would like, but at least I'll have taken a
couple of breaks. We're going to take one right here,
and when we come back, you'll be into the interview.
So if you're ready, Refiner, here come the commercials. Hey,
this is Ben Stiller. Thanks for listening to Severed, the
Ultimate Severance Podcast. All right, Refiners, a huge Severed podcast.
(01:54):
Welcome to our guest today, Tansy Michow. Tansy is listed
in the Severns crew as graphic designer, but that's really
an understatement when you look at the impact Tansy's had
on the look and environment of lumen. She created the
lumen logo, all of them, we're going to talk about it.
If it has text, don a Lumen logo somewhere on it,
Tansy probably had something to do with it. Tansy, welcome
(02:17):
to the Severed Podcast. If you could say your name
and tell us your role on Severance.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Hi, guys, Yeah, it's so great to be here. My
name is Tanzy Micheau and I'm the lead graphic designer
on Severance.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
We've got a couple of personal fun facts about you
so we can get acquainted with the real person behind
the glamorous TV job. When season two prep started, you
told us you weren't a mom, but you have an
interesting time marker for season two. What happened there?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, so everyone always talks about how long
season two took to release and the weight between season
one and season two. I have a very interesting timeline
for that because when I started season two, I was
not a mom, and by the time season two aired,
I had a daughter who was one and a half
years old. That is how long it took for season
(03:07):
two to come out. So and I also season two
will be always very memorable in my mind because you know,
I started a carefree getting to work as much as
I absolutely wanted to work in late nights, and then
when my daughter was born right after the strikes, I
all of a sudden had a newborn, So that was
a very different experience working just as hard on the
(03:27):
show and also then doing double duty as mom.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
At the end of the day, you had a great
story to tell when everybody said, so what did you
do during the strikes? You had a good story to tell.
Another fun fact after COVID hit, and we're going to
talk a little bit about your timeline interacting with COVID,
But after COVID hit, you wound up working from home.
And you live in upstate New York, so you're quite
a ways from York studios, but you're close to like Ings.
(03:51):
Do you eat it Ings?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's very funny. It's so random. I mean,
my home is in Woodstock, New York, which is about
fifteen minutes away from Kingston, which is where much of
the filming happens. That's where Ings is, That's where a
lot of the street scenes take place. Irving's apartment exterior
is there. And then in the other opposite direction from
my house, about fifteen minutes the other way is Phoenicia Diner,
(04:14):
where of course Pips Bar and Grow is. So it's
very funny when they're shooting up here sometimes and if
I need a measurement for an exterior sign or something.
I can run and do it because I'm closer than
production is.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh that's cool. So do you ever demand VIP seating
when you go into the Phoenicia Diner.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
No, they don't even know who I am. I don't
think when I go.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Come on, you got to throw that weight around a
little bit there. All right, Well, well let's talk about
getting the job. I want to talk about how you
got your job on severance, but first I want to
talk a little bit about your career. This caught my attention.
Your first professional gig listed on IMDb was for a
twenty thirteen movie called We Are What We Are Now.
This sounds suspiciously like it could be the title of
(04:57):
a Ricken book. Please explain what's going on there? And
I read a little bit about it was a horror movie,
right it was.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, that was one of my really early graphic design jobs.
I was just getting started at the time doing graphics,
and I had been working as an art department PA
up until that point, and so I was starting to
dabble and doing graphics. Yeah, it was a horror movie.
They didn't even really have enough graphics to need somebody
full time, So I sort of got hired just on
a day by day basis when they needed something. Yeah,
(05:26):
that is that title of that movie. You're right does
sound like the U Are. That's very funny.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
It's going to be a new Ricken book. Yeah, we
are what we Are by rick and Hale. So how
did you get into graphic design and specifically graphic design
for film and television, which is kind of a non
traditional way to go. You should be at an ad
agency somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Well, it's funny. My parents ran a design firm for
basically they ran it for as long as I was
growing up. Like I remember sitting on my mom's lap
pressing the keys as she was in Correll draw like
learning when I was in diapers, Like that was.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I remember Correll Draw right.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Wow, I'm in Adobe now I'm in Adobe products all
the time. But Correl was like where I sort of
first learn everything. But yeah, and you know, as like
a angsty teenager, I'm like, I'm never going to be
a graphic designer, Like, I don't want to do what
you do, mom, I'm going to go to film school.
I did. I went to film school. I went to
Florida State University in Tallahassee, which kind of flies under
(06:24):
the radar since it is a state school, but they
have an awesome film program. Anyone interested in film definitely
check out Florida State. And I sort of gravitated toward
wanting to be in the art department. I think I
knew when I graduated that I wanted to sort of
like get my foot in the door somehow. So moved
to New York started working as an art PA. And
the first show I got on, well, who's sitting in
(06:44):
the office a graphic designer? And I'm like, okay, I
did not even know that this was a job that
you could have doing graphics for film. But then right
there I knew exactly what my trajectory was going to be.
So I worked more as an art PA, started meeting
people and then and for me, the way it kind
of happened was there was this period of time when
when New York was just teeming with production. There was
(07:06):
so much shooting. The Union didn't really have enough graphic
designers at the time who were in because it was
a fairly new category for the Union. Yeah, a production
designer who I knew was like, Hey, do you want
this job and got in that way on my first job,
and I was so scared to be working like as
the only graphic designer on this pilot. From there, you know,
it just kind of took off, and I really mostly
(07:29):
cut my teeth on cop shows, and like I worked
for five years on blind Spot, I worked on Unforgettable,
a lot of just the New York procedural type shows.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Do you prefer a serial like a TV kind of
thing or a movie you started out, you did a movie,
but the movies are one hit and then you're gone, right,
But the cereal you can be working for a while.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah. TV shows are nice because if they get picked
up again, you're gonna have a job. Hopefully, if you
do a good job and they ask you back, you'll
have a job for season two. So I mean for
that reason, Like blind Spot for me was awesome because
that was really like going to work with a family
who you know, where we've all the same people are
coming back every year. I was in the same office
with an awesome killer view of Manhattan for five years
(08:12):
Like that is really really great. Movies are fun too,
because you get to see your work up on a
big screen, whereas TV show it's a small screen and
you never really get to see or hear that audience
reaction from your work. Interestingly, for season two of Severance,
this is the only time I've heard an audience react
to my work on Severnce in real time. There's an
(08:33):
events base in Kingston called Assembly and for the season
finale of season two, they held a viewing party, a
watch party, and it was so awesome. It was packed.
People were dressed up as Mammalian's goat herders, and they
had a costume contest, and they had Season two like
up on the big screen, and it was so awesome
(08:54):
to hear people react to the props that we had
made in real time. So I never really get to
do that typically with TV.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Now. This kind of leads me into a question that
I've got here in my list. One of the things
you were interacting here that maybe you haven't run into
before are sci fi people. Sci Fi people love getting
into cause play and the cons and you know, and
all the gatherings and everything. Did you have any sci
Fi in your background prior to Severance? And when you
(09:22):
got into Severance, was there any hesitation because it was
sci fi?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
No? So I had never really worked on anything that
was sci fi related, and to me, you know, it's
funny like when I read when I first read the
pilot episode for this and was talking to Jeremy Hindle
about maybe coming on and working as the graphic designer,
it didn't really strike me as sci fi. I mean,
I guess you could, but not dramatically sci fi. It's
(09:49):
just kind of like the world is a little off,
kind of like Twin Peaks really reminded me of Twin Peaks,
which yeah, I love Twin Peaks, and so I was
very much like this is my j like I really
want to work on this show. It had that like
weird element.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
You know, but you hadn't seen anything at this point
you'd write a script. I'm curious you said you were
talking to Jeremy handle. How did that come about that
you were first approach or did you approach them? Was
this something your agent contacted you? And how did he
describe this before you'd seen a script or anything. How
did they describe the show to you.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I had just gotten off blind Spot, you know, we
had wrapped like the one hundredth episode of blind Spot.
We had a huge party, and like that was it?
That was the finish that was like prete and clear.
I had nothing on the books. We went to Mexico
on a dive trip, my husband and I did, and
I was in La Pause when I got a call
from the art director saying, Hey, we have this TV show.
(10:44):
We'd like you to talk to Jeremy about it. Ironically
at the time, I yeah, I didn't have a website
at the time because I had taken my old website
down and I still don't have a website now, so
I had nothing to show them. I was like, I
am very capable of doing this job, and I'm sure
you want to see.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Someone, but you're gonna have to trust me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
So I put together like a little pitch deck of
graphics you know that could be applicable to this script,
sent it to Jeremy and they wanted me to come
in to do an interview. And I was like, well,
I'm in Mexico right now.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Well, because you didn't have any kids at that time,
we can tell you you have kids at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yes, I was on a dive boat with no children.
So I was like, I can do a zoom call
if that's okay, which, in hindsight knowing what the show
is now and what it's become. That is crazy to me.
I should have flown back to New York to do
an interview for this job.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Now, who were you interviewing with on the zoom call?
Just Jeremy Jeremyoy.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
No, not yet. No. Mostly with when art departments are
crewed up, it's the art director and the production signer
who really staff up their art department. Unless there's a
particular talent that the director of producers really want to
bring on. Most of the sub people like myself and
the coordinator and people like that get staffed up by
(12:09):
the production designer.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Early on, there wasn't a lot of staffing up you
were it, right for graphic design?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
For graphics, Yeah, so I got hired as a graphic designer.
But they're staffing you know, when shows get staffed up,
they have to build out the whole entire department from
the ground up because the art director and the production
designer get hired and they're like, okay, now you guys
hire everyone else. Yeah, so I one of I was
one of those early hires to come in.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And when did you actually start working on the show.
Feb Of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, like late January, early February of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Okay, And just to remind everybody, in March of twenty twenty,
the world stopped and everyone went home. Severance production was
put on hold due to COVID, and that's when you
started working remotely from home and upstate New York. But
I want to talk about that first month. We did
a little pre interview the other day and you said
that first in the office was where so many of
(13:02):
these long standing elements of the show were developed. And
one of those is the Lumen logo. Was that one
of your very first projects?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, it was. That was the Lumen logo was the
first thing I started working on when I got to
the office.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Because describe that process, go through that How do you
create this for this company that you've never seen anything
about it? There's no video for you to look at.
They didn't take you on a tour of the company.
They just could tell you about this this fictional company.
And you started to have to come up with logos.
How does that happen?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, it's a big ass first off, because you know
this logo is going to be it everywhere. You know
it's going to be everywhere. I didn't know it was.
I knew it was going to be everywhere. I didn't
know it was going to be like as prevalent as
it ended up being. But yeah, I mean I knew
it was going to be. Big Cat was right down
the hall from me. She was already on and she
was like, I need this logo like yesterday. And I
(13:56):
was like, okay, well, I'm just moving into my office right.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Now, so I have a shirt with your work in
my dresser right now. You're everywhere.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
It's crazy. Yeah, I mean you kind of just read
the script, get an idea in my head of what
I think this could be, and then develop quite an
array of many different looking things just to sort of
take a first initial stab in the dark and get
a gut check from Ben and Jeremy on like what
(14:23):
direction is working, what's not working, what you like, what
don't you like. I must have made two hundred logo.
I made so many logos in that first month, many
many logos. And one thing I knew straight out of
the gate after reading this first script was that this company,
Luhmann has existed for over one hundred years and we're
(14:43):
you know, so I get there and they're like, well,
we need a logo, and I'm like, no, we don't
need one logo. We need a history of logos to
make it plausible that this company has existed for so long,
Because if you look at any corporation like that, Bristol Myers, Gamble, Yet, Proctorg, Gamble,
Coca Cola, Bell Atlantic, like any of these companies, not
(15:04):
just from pharmaceutical but from like any you know, Shell Gas.
Literally take any company that has existed for decades like
that and look at their logo history, and it's insane
how companies can change their logos over the course of time.
So I wanted to apply that same logic to Luman too.
So one thing that I thought was going to help
(15:24):
with that logo progression was to land on one element.
Ben ended up going for the tear drop. You liked
the tear drop, but I had like three or four
different elements, developed a few different progressions of how that
element could carry through from the eighteen hundreds to modern day.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
So it remains is the constant throughout the design.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Exactly, yep, exactly. So that is like the through line
through all the historical logos.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
You referred to that as the tear drop. I always
call it the water drop logo, and I've heard people
refer to it as the blood drop. What was it
intended to be when you first came up with it?
What was the idea behind that piece of liquid there?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
My initial idea for that was we already knew we
were going to be filming at Bell Labs, and at
Bell Labs there's a massive water.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Tower, yeah, the transistor tower.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
So that was where I first got the idea. But
in my head, I'm like, well, this also works because
I can apply it to being you know, medicine or
like the really old logo that we developed for it
is a spoon like with a medicine drop falling from it.
But yeah, I think the original spark for that for
me was the water tower. But I remember we got
(16:35):
to a point where, you know, I had these few
different options. One was a lighthouse, which was Dan's idea.
He wanted maybe a lighthouse to be the carry through
the sun, Like I had a sun option where we're
going through like there's a few different things.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
That's too happy. The sun would be too happy.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
So I remember like getting the point where I'm like, okay,
we need to pick one of these then and Adam
Adam Scott. I think Adam had just gotten there that
day for the first day, and Ben was like giving
him a tour around the entire office. So they stopped
into my office. Adam Scott was like petting my dog
because my dog was in the office with me.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Now, name your dog. Who is your dog?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
My dog's name is Fuji.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Fuji. We saw that in your bio and we were
gonna ask about Fuji. So your dog went to work
with you. That's cool.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, yeah, she was. Yeah, she was an office dog.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And Adam's a dog guy. I'm glad to hear that.
Adam's a dog guy. That makes me happy.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So they were both in my office and we were
talking about the logo, and right then and there, I
was like, you know, I have these options. He hadn't
seen them yet, those three progression those like final to
the point where I I don't think he'd I don't
think he had seen those logo progressions yet. And I
was like, we have these options to use, and he
and Adam were kind of like, well, let's go with
(17:46):
the droplet because it could be blood, it could be
better saying free water kind of mysterious, could be anything,
let's just do it that. I was like, okay, great,
So right then and there it was like gonna be
the droplet. And then after we landed on that, we
did another started another round of dozens of logo development
just utilizing that droplet logo, and Ben was the one
(18:06):
that really honed it into wanting it to be the globe,
so that was sort of his vision.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
It could also be the tear drops of your severed
employees exactly. That could be. There are really three different
logos that we kind of see regularly. You've got the world,
the one with the launchitude latitude lines around it, then
and you carry through the themes are there. Then you've
got the lumen, where the O is the water drop
(18:32):
or the blood drop or whatever it might be. And
then that with the rounded corners on the rectangle can
be its own standalone icon that droplet. Are there applications
for each of these logos? Do you actually set out
the specifics of how these should be used?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, and we were pretty strict about it when we
first got started in season one, and now it's sort
of shifted a little bit just because we've had There
are some gray areas, but what the principles of that
are the main or they're all main logos. But the
tear drop logo just standalone, tear drop by itself is
(19:06):
like I would equate that to sort of how Apple
uses just an Apple symbol. It can you know, if
you see the Apple symbol somewhere on the street, you're like, oh,
I know a company that is same with lumin. If
you just see the tear drop, you know it's lumin.
It doesn't have to say it. So that and the
wordmark Lumen without the globe are the modern, like clean,
most up to date consumer facing logos in the Audi world.
(19:30):
The reason why that the globe still exists and its
exists mainly on the severed floors because that was the
most up to date logo at the time that the
severed floor was invented, and so everything for the most
part on the severed floor uses that logo because they're
just in ease down there. They're not really they're not
(19:54):
up on the they don't need they don't know any different.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, Well, that logo for me had a very eighties
nineties feel to it, nineteen eighties nineteen nineties feel to it,
and I really wondered, Yeah, that's kind of the previous
iteration of the logo and then the one we see
on the building is the new one, but they haven't
updated down Okay, that makes sense, you keep the ENnies
with the old logo. Yeah, was that actually stated they
said that, Oh they don't need anything new, you can
(20:19):
just give them the old logo. Was that the attitude
or no?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I think that was just the way we reasoned threw
it okay in our heads because we knew we wanted
everything on the severed floor to be a little more dated,
like that's why cats computers are like the look the
way they do, and you know, everything just has a
little more dated feel down there.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
I just wondered how much any bias was going on
even that early. Guys are really still stand with that.
That month where you were in the office, you also
undertook the creation of the volume The You You Are
by Rick and leslow Hale. You designed that and unleash
(20:57):
that on the world. Tell us about that coming up
with that book.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, So that did kind of start in that first month,
but it also progressed during that COVID summer and we
really landed on the final when we came back. But yes,
when I approached something like that, I just try to
make as many options as possible. You know, I have
my own taste of what things should be, but you
never know what other people are gonna like, so I
(21:22):
just try to make a variety. I probably made for that,
I would say like ten to fifteen book covers in
the art department, like me and Jeremy honed it down
to maybe like eight, which we had printed and prepped
for a camera test that we had coming up. So
we had all those at the camera tests. I think
when I spoke with Ben at the camera test, he
(21:43):
wasn't actually he didn't gravitate toward that sunset the final
one initial.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Cover.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, he gravitated to it. There was another one I
think that he liked better, but in the camera test,
that pop of orange and yellow I think really stood out,
And so I think that was the point where he
was like, this, what has has to be All those
initial book covers I just was using like a temp
is stock model guy that in a turtleneck that I
had found one on Istock as a stand in placeholder
(22:12):
because we hadn't done the shoot with with Rick.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And yet had Michael Chern has been cast. At this time,
you knew who it was going to be.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I think I'm pretty sure he had been cast. I
think we just didn't you know that early on. There's
if they don't have to bring someone in there. It's
not like the cast is just around all the time.
So I think the first time he probably came in
was to do that photo shoot.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Were there?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
No, I wasn't there. No. I was remote at that point,
so I had been there for the camera test, but
then when they brought him in to do the photoshoot,
I wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
You just got the pictures afterwards, and exactly did they
give you a bunch of different options or was it
all just him doing the one post?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
What will happen on a photoshoot day like that? Usually
I can't imagine Ben wasn't there on that day because
usually the directors are there for that, so they'll the photographer,
the SOF photographer will download all those photos into the
computer and they'll get quick selects on set those come
to me. Well, usually it's just like a handful I
forget on that day. If it was more than that,
(23:13):
I mocked up the book with all of the quick
selects and then sent that out to Ben and I
think that face that he's making, and the one that
we ended up using was like the unanimous favorite.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah. Now, would you say mock up the book? You
were really at the time mocking up the cover, but
this would eventually become an actual release on Apple Books.
Were you involved in that? Did you lay that out
the interior?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah? I laid out the interior. Well, yeah, so the
way that we did that, you know, Dan wrote a
lot of text for that book.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I've read it. You've read and it's nuts. It's nuts.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, his I don't know, Dan's brain is amazing. Yeah,
so I had a lot of meat for that book.
It actually is not enough to fill out the entire
thickness of the book that we see in the show.
So Prop sourced I forget the name of the book
they sourced, but they got like thirty copies of the
same book. Those went to the bookbinder, who is He's
(24:12):
a guy named Marcus. He runs a book binding shop
called Raghouse in Newburg up here. He's amazing. He basically
kept the meat, but we put in our pages like
a exactly and then he rebound those. But yeah, so
I laid out the text on the custom pages to
try to I wanted to mimic what was already there,
so that you could if you're flipping through it, that
(24:34):
all the fonts and everything looked pretty much identical to
what was already in the book.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
That captured for so a lot of this stuff we
continue to see now even into season two. The logos
in the book. What other early items that you designed
in those first few weeks are still in use now
that you see pop up even in season two.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I mean the did you come up with, like the.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Door the labels? Was that during the passion?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, exactly, So that was during that time we start
we started working on that. There was a few different
fond options. I don't think those actually got fabricated and
until we came back. We're talking about a month literally
a month before we shut down.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
One of the other for the one of the early
things that I worked on was Mark's training manual that
he's he's like reading to Helle when she wakes up
on the table.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
We're going to talk about that in a little bit.
We're going to get into details.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Oh okay, that was like one of the that in
the lumin logo where the two big things that I
worked on.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But okay, are there any of those early design items that,
now that they've been out there for a while and
you've looked at them in a few episodes that you're thinking, Eh,
I could have done a better job on that. Are
there any of them like that? Or are you pretty
happy with everything you've turned out?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
You know, once you make something and then it becomes cannon,
it sort of just becomes it, Like I can't real
even really go back and think about what else it
would have been because it just seems like it should
be there now.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
It has to be there. Yeah, it has become that,
all right, that's okay. So those are my questions for that.
Talking about that first month, we're gonna we're gonna shift
up change topics here, but between topics, something that we
do in our interviews, volunteer producer Vinnie P likes to
craft some lighter questions. We call them palette cleansers to
get us from one section to another. So this is
(26:23):
a VINYP palette cleanser. If you had to hire one
of the characters from MDR to work for you as
a graphic design assistant, who would you hire.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I think I would. I think I would take Dylan.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And why is that?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think I would take Dylan because he you know,
he comes to work reliably every day. He gets his
work done on time. He doesn't really you know, there's
there's no worrying that like anything's not going to get done.
But he also likes to have a good time. He
likes to crack a good joke, and you gotta have
fun at work, right. Everyone else is a little too
(27:01):
serious down there, Like, I think I would take Dylan.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I got to tell you. Jacob Ribakoff and Bob she
follows from the sound department, they both answered Dylan as
well if they got assistant sound guy. So Dylan's the
popular MDR guy. He's our man. So all right, talking
about some of those early days on the show, how
did you get that lumin vibe? We talked a little bit.
You said you got the scripts. Were there any other
(27:25):
production materials that they had that they showed you that
they said? What were any of the hallways in place?
Any of that or that was all still to come.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
No, the sound stage was like empty, there was just
that's weird. Yeah, it was weird. I mean, there's nothing there.
We were building this from the ground up. Like by
the time I got there, Jeremy had some concept sketches,
a look a very extensive look book of what this
was going to look like. And I think that started
to inform my ideas about what to design because it
(27:57):
was so like mid century modern feeling, and so that
you sort of start working within those boundaries of.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Design now just kind of raises a question with me,
how much do you feel you're involved in the creative process.
Is it more they come to you and say we
need this specific thing and then you're trying to meet
that request or do they come to you and say,
can you work on something here? We need something that
does this, but don't give you any specifications on it,
(28:25):
and then you're kind of open to creatively create something.
Do you feel that you're more involved in the creative
or you're just fulfilling work orders?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I would say half and half. I think a lot
of times some of just like the mundane things that
we have to do. For example, we're shooting at a
on the street in Kingston and they need to cover
a sign and it's got to be this many inches
by this many inches and it needs to just go away.
We don't want to see it, but there has to
be something there to cover an existing sign. That's very
(28:52):
much like I'm fulfilling a work order, and that's just
like a duty. But when it comes to a lot
of like the props stuff for Cat, a lot of
the bigger key things, I'm given a very long leash.
I love working on this show because they, thank God,
they trust me to sort of come up with stuff.
But I mean it is extremely fun, like, for example,
(29:15):
things like the waffle card at the end of season
two that was scripted as just a note from Melcheck and.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
We're gonna we're gonna talk about that too minute. We're
gonna zip in on that a little closer. But when
you get those requests for graphics work, who do those
come from? Do they come from just Jeremy or are
they coming from the director, the writer?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
They come from the script mostly, So when I get
a script, I'll do what's called graphics breakdown, So I
go through meticulously. I make notes of things that are
actually listed or things that are just between the lines
that like this probably will show up, so I'm gonna
make a note of it. I keep an air table
that's many many line items along. I think the one
(30:00):
for season two is probably over one thousand line items
by the time everything was said and done. And so
in the airtable, you know, I'll have a line item
for each individual graphic that I'm going to have to
make when the shooting order comes out the schedule of
what we're going to shoot on which day, then I
can put dates in, so I know my airtable will
resort it based on like what's priority and what's not
(30:22):
or what's going to come later. But yeah, so mostly
you know, I know what's going to be asked of me.
The crazy thing about Severance is that not only were
the scripts constantly getting revised, so sometimes new graphics would
pop in that were not on my original list. And
the other crazy thing is that we were shooting all
of the episodes at the same time, so like it's
(30:43):
different than a procedural cop show, where like you're doing
one episode at a time and then the next week
you're doing a new episode with a new script. On Severance,
you have all the scripts, well all the ones that
are written, because they were still writing the last few
of the season during production, so you have all the
all the scripts is a whole show, and you know,
you might on one day be shooting something from episode eight.
(31:04):
On the next day you're shooting something from episode two,
and it's.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Like and you have to have all those elements.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Ready to go, coming went exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
You mentioned Kat a couple of times. Who on the
production team do you work most closely with and describe
what you're doing when you work with them?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, So on season two, actually I have there was
another graphic designer. Luckily there was two of us on
season two. Season one, for the most part, it was
just me, and then by the end I was able
to hire on my good friend Sarah Ray Davidson to
help me towards the end. But on season two, I
mostly every on a day to day basis was working
with Christina Perez, the second graphic designer. And then outside
(31:43):
of Christina, I would say most closely working with props.
So whether that's Kat or Travis or you know, the
prop shoppers or the art directors in the our department
who are drafting sets and they, you know, I'm just
like working back and forth with them. They're going to locations,
measuring things at requesting signage stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
We've got a couple of things we're going to talk
about here in just a few minutes that you made
what we never saw in season two? Is there anything
from season one that you produced? It was kind of
a big deal that you were really proud of that.
Then it never made it to air.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Gosh, that was so long ago, a while ago.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
But we've got a couple of items. You did a
cookbook for Gemma, and we're going to talk about those
in a fumus for season two that we never saw.
I was just curious if there was anything like that
that happened with season one.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
No, you know, season one was the opposite for me
because I'm up until Severans, I'm very much used to
producing a multitude of graphics for a TV show and
not really getting to see any of them in the
finished product, And in Severns they inserted on absolutely everything,
and so I it was kind of the opposite, Like,
(32:51):
I think, I can't think of something that I wish
they would have been really focused on instead, I'm like,
oh my god, they focused on so much.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Up showing all of it. So now you told Vinny
after season one aired, you were kind of surprised at
the level of fan scrutiny looking at all of that stuff,
what what kinds of things? What kind of feedback were
you getting?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
First of all, it was awesome to see people react
to the show in that way, like that was crazy
and so so.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Cool, and you'd never run into this before on any
other job.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
This is nothing happened, No, I mean people the shows
I worked on, people Watch, but not there was not
a fan following like the way that Severn's gathered. You know,
as someone who I kind of am a perfectionist, and
so when I see people on Reddit like zooming in
on the screen to find typos, it is mortifying for me.
(33:49):
You have no idea I hate I hate a typo.
So there was definitely instances of that where it was
just like embarrassing kind of but also I think, yeah,
to remind yourself that people don't zoom in on stuff
like that unless they really love the show. So that's cool.
But I also I kind of would just tell people, like,
we're working at such a breakneck pace that mistakes happen,
(34:11):
so like time be kind to well.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
There's also this kind of puzzle box escape room feel
to it. We're trying to get as many clues as
we can to figure out what the heck's going on?
So anytime were tantalized with something like that, you got
to freeze the screen and figure out what's there. The
text from the handbook that we see, you know before
(34:36):
IRV smashes the egg in there has fueled, you know,
the tons of stories in there about kir that has
been transcribed. It's on the Severance wiki. So all of
that stuff, yeah, is being picked through very very closely.
What was it like not having you know, not even
really senior work in productions to now see your work
on all the items that are out there being marketed
(34:59):
for Severance. The Lumen logo is all over Etsy, it's
in Apple promotion for the show. That had to be
cool seeing your work everywhere. What is that like running
into your logo just randomly, like on a bus sign
or something.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, it's wild. It is wild, like just seeing it
out in the world. I actually work a lot with
like you're talking about how Fifth Season and Apple do
a lot of March with Severn, so like I helped
them out earlier this year with a YouTube's packaging ass
so they are still like calling me to help kind
(35:33):
of with the vibe of like packaging materials for things
like that, So I do. I am aware of some
of the stuff that's out there before I run across
it in real life, just because I've helped with it
a little bit. But it's very cool. I've never had
that experience before. I don't know that I will. I mean,
hopefully I work on another show like that, but Severance
is a pretty cool thing to have my fingers in,
(35:53):
for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
You say they are still contacting you to work on
some things even post season two, but you haven't technically
been contacted for season three, right, No, not yet.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, we're still still they're writing it still, is what
I've heard.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah, yeah, we're trying to keep up on that, but
they're kind of closed about it. I got another vinyp
pallet cleanser here. If you were stuck on the severed
floor over lunch, which would you want to eat? Something
from the vending machine, a big plate of waffles, a
Gemma food pellet, or one of those brown bag lunches
Lumen provides in the fridge.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
You know, I think I would probably just go for
the vending machine. Something in the vending machine, hopefully nothing
too weird in there. I'd probably just go for the popcorn,
salt it and butter.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
But let's talk Okay, that is my next area of discussion.
I want to talk about props and specific items, and
let's talk items in the vending machine. Ever since they
first gave us a glimpse inside the vending machine, everybody
has been cataloging and writing down those names and keeping
track of what's there. What did you do in regards
to creating all those vending machine items?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, so first we had to decid what the packages
were going to look like. So I actually I designed
all the packages of everything that's in the vending machine.
And then we have this amazingly talented guy, Bob Ludeman,
who runs the shop out of Pinewood, Atlanta. He makes
all the packages for us. So we started with box design,
which is if I had to do another career after Severance,
it might be packaging design because I made so many
(37:20):
boxes on Severn it was crazy. So the food packages
in the vending machine, we designed the look of those
and what colors they were going to be. Many iterations
of that. Then, you know, before we could decide what
was going to be in there, props had to figure
out what they could reasonably source in terms of food,
because the characters were actually going to be eating things
out of these, So we didn't want to print the
name of something on there if PROPS wasn't going to
(37:42):
be able to source.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
That condor or something like that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, exactly, something we had like that. So once PROPS
gave me a list of items, then we knew what
was going to be on everything. But I did get
to add the little like subhead under it, so like shriveled.
So I just was making I was just making things up.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
You were given the name of the item that was there,
but then you described it. Yeah, exactly, Okay, I see.
So then then and then you say, Bob Ludeman to
the actual packaging. Now we know from talk. We talked
to Cat Miller, the property master. Cat does a lot
with Tetra pack, but that's all just for liquids right
when she does the tetrapack.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
We did use Tetra pack. I don't know if those
ever actually made it into the vending. I know we
had like stacks of the there's like a cube shaped
one that we did. Those might be on the counter.
I can't really remember, but yeah, we did work with
Tetra pac. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Well, they do the water. The tetrapac does all the
liquid contains.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's right, Yeah, yeah, because they're like heat sealed.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Is there actually anything inside those envelopes? You said you
had to use things that they could actually eat, But
there's nothing really in those, is there?
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Not when they're just sitting in there, But you know,
for a scene where one of the characters gets it
out and then starts eating it.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Okay. Now, one of the big upgrades to the Severed
Floor for season two was an improved selection of vending
machine items. Were you involved in the in the makeover?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yes, namely the tear drop shaped can boxes, which turned
out to be I don't want to say nightmare for
Bob Ludeman, but he definitely was. We challenged with those.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now are you talking about the food, the food pellant?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
The so in the updated vending machine packaging, we did
a wonder if I have one here? There's a tear
drop candy boxes that are just shaped like a tearbox,
tear drop.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I'm gonna have to go back and look in the vendor.
You haven't caught no, I missed those. Okay, Well, we're
gonna have to go back and look at that, but
this is not We also had those tear drop packages
for Gemma's food, but you're talking in the vending machine.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, the testing floor food for Gemma. That was a
completely separate Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, yeah, and we're gonna talk about that too. But
but you're you're saying that there was something in the
vending machine that messed Bob up.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah. Snack the snack boxes shaped like tear drops. Yeah,
you got a little challenge from.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Did you do the descriptions on those as well? The
fruitless Yeah? Yeah, cracked me up.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, And so well two of those were scripted, I
can't can't Christmas mints and something else was scripted, actually scripted,
and then we came up with everything else.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
They did the Christmas mins in the video, so I
bet that's why they had to be there, because they'd
already were working on the video with the Christmas min's
being eaten in that So interesting. All right, well let's
move on to that season finale, that is two finale
waffle card. Now, just to remind everybody, when Mark and
Helly arrived mdr on, this is Mark's last day when
he's going to get to one hundred percent of Cold Harbor.
(40:25):
And by the way, spoiler warning, we spoil everything on
this podcast, but everybody already knows that they are given
Helly and Mark are given a green card that comes
from mister Miltchik and it's on the front of it,
it's very nicely typeset and is a message from mister Miltchick.
But then when you open it up, it's a three
D pop up of a waffle And that was your creation, right.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, So I knew, like in my airtable, I had
a line item because I'd read the script of been like,
we're going to need a note from Miltchick to Mark. Literally,
that's all it said, a note. We got the text
from Dan about what it was supposed to be, but
I was still like, this has to be special. There
has to be something special about this. And then, because
I'm crazy and I like to come up with really
hard problems, texted Cat and Travis one day at Props
(41:12):
and was like, what if it's a pop up card?
Didn't know what the pop up was going to be yet,
but I was like, wouldn't it be cool if you
opened a pop up card? I was thinking originally it
was going to be like a pop up card with
the try desk. So at that point there was no
more quad desk. It was a try desk. So I
wanted it to pop open with the desk. But I
worked for about a week on that. I could not
make that pop up correctly. It turns out pop up
(41:32):
cards are extremely hard.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
They're nuts. That's yes, it's crazy to make a pupun.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
And so then yeah, really late one night I had that,
I was like, well, what if it could be a
waffle And so at my kitchen table here, I just
with scrap paper like thust it together and try to
see if it could work. And I have a video
of me just like putting just like a blank white
paper waffle pop up card. And I sent that to
them the next day and that was the one we
ended up going with. From there, Yeah, I had the fat.
(41:58):
We sabricated probably ten of those, maybe just for doubles
in case some didn't work. My assistant graphic designer who
works out of the office, had a lot of waffle
assembly to do that.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Week, and you happened to create it as a five
by five grid, which caused guys like me to go, oh,
check it out. This is subliminally telling us their twenty
five rooms down on the testing floor. That was not
the case, was it.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
No? And I hate to ruin some of the magic
for people, but sometimes things like that just happened. I
love that people draw can connect the dots between things
like that. But really that was just a happy accident.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Just happened. Now, this actually is a three D item?
Are you kind of crossing into Cat's territory? You're dipping
your toes and props with a three D items?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Well, I mean everything I make for a props is
a prop, so I don't know. This one's made out
of paper and it's printed, so it's still a graphic.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Well I think about graphic design being flat. I guess
I don't know. That might be my interpretation of it.
All right, let's move on to another item. This one
blew me away when I saw it, and I've mentioned
it in other places, but the pizza box on the
credenza behind Dylan's head in their house, it has blown
me away ever since I saw it. It's just one
of those one of those little items that just happens
(43:14):
in life. It's around you, but it is custom. It
says Cure's favorite slice on the side of it, and
I was just curious, do you have any idea who
created that design for that pizza box? You know who
did that?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I made that box.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Yeah, I wondered if that might be you.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
So I that you noticed that. I can't believe you
noticed that it wasn't even featured in the show.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
No, it's hidden behind his head, and it blew me
away that you took the time to make that thing
and it's put there in that scene and then no
attention is drawn to it whatsoever. They actually try to
hide it. So how did that come about? How did
you get to that scene and go, oh, we obviously
need a custom cure pizza box. Was it in the script?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
No, so that wasn't scripted. That particular request came from
props because props always if there's food in the set,
props handles the food. So when they decided that the
family was going to be eating pizza in that scene,
Kat asked for a pizza box, you know, there for something.
She gets it.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
There are I've directed plays before. There are generic pizza
boxes out there that you can go into any independent
pizza joint and say, hey, can I get like ten
of those and I'll hand them right to you. They'll
just give them to you. You had to make your own.
How do you go about printing a pizza box? Did
you have blanks?
Speaker 2 (44:26):
No? So for one not, I mean yeah again, I
am now a box designer in my free time.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
No.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
So you make the die line for it, you know
the way that the cardboard is going to get cut out,
and you mark where the purf lines are going to
be where it gets scored. I send my production file
to the printer. They cut it out of cardboard for it,
print it, and then we have a pizza box.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
You've got a good printer. I've never worked with a printer.
Little duel that stuff for me. Yeah, so well that
I just I loved the pizza box. The pizza box
was one of those things, and it's one of those
things that it speaks to the incredible detail and craftsmanship
that goes into this show. And it's just at every level.
It's from the directing and the writing and the acting
(45:08):
and the sets and the props and just every part
of it is just top level. And this pizza box
is kind of emblematic of that. Hey, grab a cup
of coffee. Refiners severed will be right back. Hi. I'm
Adam Scott.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
I play Mark s on Severance, which you likely already
know since you're listening to sever The Ultimate Severance Podcast.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
All right, moving on Mark's new floor manager checklist. This
is the list of duties. When Mark's first day is
the new floor manager, he comes downstairs and it's waiting
there for him the first morning of his new position.
How was it determined this list was needed? Was this scripted?
Speaker 2 (45:53):
This was scripted, yes, And this was so early on
in the show that this was completely written by Dan,
that entire list. So like the checklist, it's scripted that
he pulls it out, he reads the checklist, whatnot. But
when I went to make that prop, what I need
to type to fill the page out is much longer
than what's actually scripted. So then I go to Dan, Dan,
(46:15):
I need copy for this. Can you provide? It's funny
because that kind of thing I feel like now or
even on season two, I would probably take a stab
at that myself and then send it to Dan and
he would make changes. Back then, that was very early on,
and so I did not feel comfortable at the time
having just started to make those decisions. So all of
(46:36):
that incidental stuff came from Dan in those early days. Yeah,
and for most of season one.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
I would say there are a lot of small pieces
like that that get handed back and forth between characters
or get just referenced very quickly. Is there a lot
of proofing on something simple like the like Mark's list?
Did it have to go through a lot of reviews?
Or is that a pretty quick just dand this looks good,
let's go with it.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
You mean, in terms in terms of revisions of the.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Graph, how many people have to look at it and
sign off on it, and you know how much of
it is is being red Yeah, for something.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Like that, I made a few that wasn't the only
one that I made. I usually make like at least three,
but in some cases, you know, five or six options.
That's a prop. So that goes to Kat and then
in her prop show and Tell, she would have all
those options on hand for Ben to look at in
their prop show in Tell. Hopefully right there we just
(47:26):
get one that he he's like, oh, I like this one.
Sometimes he'll land on something but want revisions of it,
and so then we rework it. It's it's always kind
of like a we go back and forth and then yeah.
In terms of proof reading, we try very hard to
proofread everything. Sometimes you know something needs to be revised
and then sent out immediately. Like it's so hard to cat.
(47:47):
There's so much text and type in this show that
it's just really hard to catch everything, which is why
sometimes typos end up getting printed, which is always an accident.
But we try to catch everything before it gets printed.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
There are not that many typos. You keep bringing up
the typos. There aren't that many. You did a good
job there, There really aren't that many. The Botzeman Fertility
Clinic in take form. This is the form they hand
to Jemma on the clipboard at the clinic in the
flashback in Cheicai Barto, did you do the layout and
(48:19):
design on this as is yours as well?
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah? And that the name of that clinic, Dan, I think.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Came from Okay, we looked it up. That Buttsman is
German for Boogeyman. You said there were three options. Do
you remember the others?
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I'd have to look at my email. I'm not sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
They were all some kind of a joke though, right,
there were some kind of an implying something.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Implying something I don't know like joke is like for
that one boogieyman I think is a loose term, but
I remember Dan described it to me as like there's
a there's a German myth about, yes, a boogieyman stealing children.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Though kind of like the Crampus. It's kind of along
the lines of the campus.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yeah, something to do with like stealing children. So that's
why that ended up on there. For what the other options.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Were, Now, did you come up with the different specific
items that people were supposed to fill in or was
that scripted?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
That wasn't scripted. No, they just needed some prop paperwork,
all right.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
All right, well, okay, you maybe then have inadvertently put
a couple of clues on this page that have made
people made people insane.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Oh God.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Instead of asking for a state, you ask for a
prov prov with a line and we've all interpreted that
to mean a province which is Canadian or other than
the United States. And then you also ask for a
postal code instead of a zip code, which is zip
code is unique to the US postal codes or other
(49:44):
places in the world. This has made the people who
are tracking where cure is in the world crazy. Where
did those come from.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Well, first of all, here exists nowhere in the world.
This is its own place. So I'm glad to have
added a little more mystery to this. You know, we
when I if someone says I need an IVF clinic
intake form, I've never been to an IVF clinic. I
have to look up, you know. I had to do
a lot of research on what would even be on
that page. And then we are, you know, paraphrasing things
(50:14):
from one document or the other and like taking to
create our own new thing. A lot of times I'm
just typing things that I'm getting from here and there.
And so that just was not intentional.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
So that may you just pulled sminto from another form
that maybe you found you were kind of cribbing from
it to get an idea to fill out that Ah,
not intentional at all, not trying to make us all insane.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, And that was not even really supposed to be
a featured prop. That was just something for her to
be doing in the scene. So like, I didn't know
that that was even going to end up on camera.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
The night that episode dropped, you know, ten thousand people
all went freeze right when that thing came on the screen.
You know it happened, and I was one of them. Yeah,
so yeah, it really messed with the where is cure located? Theories?
And that's interesting now to find out that that wasn't
really intention You weren't trying to mess with us. There
you want another Vinie palette cleanser?
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, Kitney.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
What's your favorite episode of severnth so far and why?
And just to give you a little prelim here, my
favorite is cheek I Barto. Vinnie is still hung up
on that season finale from the finale from season one,
So what's your favorite?
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Your favorite is also my favorite.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
I love that episode.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
I think she just absolutely crushed it. I think she
did an incredible job, not only the way it's filmed,
but the way it's edited. I just everything about that Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
And as I was watching it, I was thinking, oh, wow,
this is incredible that they've discovered this new talent that
we're going to get to enjoy for years and years now.
But at the same time, I was thinking, Oh, we've
lost her. She's not going to be back on the show,
she's not going to DP, she's not going to direct,
She's off to her own movie now. I think she's
got a movie lined up, so yeah, that was just
I mean, I.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Don't blame her. She's got an incredible for that, and
she and Ben are both up for directing Emmys.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
Against each other.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yeah, the head yep, we'll see it takes the cake.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Protege is now taking you on. It's like the teacher
has become the master. So all right, let's talk about
Mark's Intake Manual. This is something you mentioned this early,
and this is one of those early on creations. In
season one, Episode one, Mark gets promoted to a floor
manager there on the severed Floor, and his first task
(52:20):
is welcoming new refiner Helly r onto the severed floor.
We see a lot of this very well worn book
which takes her through the interview questions. You laid that
all out, You created like fifty pages of this thing.
What was the inspiration for this very involved book.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
There was a lot of discussion early on about what
that should look like, and Kat had an actual IBM
manual from I don't know.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Well, they made them for customer service. They used to
use them for customer service where somebody called in and
said I have a problem with X. Well, then you
turn to that and then depending on what they tell
you the problem is, and it tells you what page
to go to. So one of those.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Yeah, it was one of those, and it was so cool.
It had really we just we mimicked it because it
was per like the IBM manual was perfect. We I
did a little bit more with the size and scale
of the text, playing around with that in the lumin
version of it, but we knew we wanted this very
ridiculously complicated manual where it's all yes, no based and
(53:21):
it tells you flip here, flip there, go back if
they say this, go here, And so I laid out
forty to fifty pages of If I were to hand
you this book right now, you would actually be able
to use it as an actual manual. So nothing about it.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Is fake, but all Lumen. It's all specific to Lumen
and specific to the Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
So someone waking up on a table there and getting
going through orientation.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Wow, oh man, is there any chance and some of
these things that we're going to talk about here of
coming are significant documents that you have created. Is there
any chance we're going to get to see more of these?
Speaker 2 (53:57):
Like I'm not in charge of that.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Well, we've had some things published on Apple Books, and
it's like that Miltchik's Performance Review, which is the next
thing that I want to talk about. It's this very
stylized booklet that Miltchick is handed by Drummond during his
performance review. This is really work you made for yourself. Right.
How did Miltchik's Performance Review come about?
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Yeah? I mean that scene was scripted, but the document
itself was not given much description at all by Dan, which,
like blessed Dan for not for On one hand, I'm like,
you could give me a little bit more something to
go on here, Dan, But on the other hand, I'm
like him not describing things like that gives me such
a long leash and it's up for interpretation as to
(54:41):
what that could be. So I was kind of just like, well,
this is what I think it should be. So I
started designing this document.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
We saw like four pages of it on the episode.
What did you actually make?
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah, so we I think the finished book was about
twenty pages long or twenty one Oh.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
No, no, no, it was thirty six. I've got it
in front of you right here. It was thirty six pages.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Yeah, and it's fully camera ready, like we wanted to
make it so that they could flip to any of
those pages and insert on it and have it make
sense for milchick in a performance review. So yeah, it's
very dense and wordy, and.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
It all is crazy how much information is here. I've
been going through this thing. You sent this over to
us and said, you know, we're going to kind of
keep this quiet. We can't say anything about it. But
Kat just put a copy of this on the display
that is happening at the Academy Museum on Wiltshire in Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Okay, so then you're great to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
This book is out there now and it is available
for people to look at. It's very limited who can
get to see it, but it is out there now,
so we can talk about everything that's going on in here.
But one of the things that drew us in as
reviewers and critiquers was that word cloud. We wanted to
see that word cloud. You created this full word cloud
(55:58):
that I just I've been eating up. Now, tell me
tell me about this. We saw just like the top
two words from the word cloud, solacenseu plant. We went,
oh yeah, yeah, we know where he said those. And
we found those words where he had actually said those
in the script where Milchik had said them. But you've
got forty words on here. Where did all this come from?
Speaker 2 (56:15):
So I love that people love this word cloud because
in the script, you know, it says, you know, Miltchik
is getting these things like why he's not a good
employee uses too many big words as one of them.
Word cloud was not scripted. We just I came up
with that because I thought it would be funny if
Luman had made a word cloud of somehow they heard
all the words that Miltchik has said over the course
(56:35):
of this past month. And so yeah, I love that
people noticed that and thought it was funny because it
was fun to me, it was really fun to make.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Well, that is the thing that immediately the hair, the
short hairs on the back of my neck went up
when I heard there was a word cloud of everything
Miltchik had said in the last month. That means Luman
is listening to everything he has said in the last month,
which is a little scary. Now there are quotes from
Kure scattered throughout this review. This review you looks like
one of those pre rolled word documents that would come
(57:05):
with Microsoft Word in like nineteen ninety three. It's got
the you know, the different gradations to the font over
other you know, darker areas and then you're reversing out
dark from light. And so it's got that very much
that feel of that late eighties, early nineties. And some
of the pages are just these big quotes over you know,
(57:26):
a graphic frame of color or whatever, and they're from here.
And one of my faves is those who cannot improve
themselves cannot improve anything, cure Egan. Now, I'm curious, where
did all of these quotes and all this stuff come from?
Is this Dan? Is this You're.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
I mean, someone's got to put words in CRE's mouth, right,
like he doesn't actually exist, so someone's got to make
up stuff. And he said, no, those all came from me.
I would say, normally here, quotes all come from Dan,
like always come from Dan. In this case, I just
made some stuff up thinking that they would Dan would
make new ones to replace them with. But I don't
think any changes were asked for this book. After we
(58:07):
get it.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
Yeah, I've got another one here. Only by examining our
greatest failures can we begin again more intelligently? Ceriod.
Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yeah, those are fun to write.
Speaker 1 (58:17):
There's so much really funny stuff in this book. I
want this published. I think they could put this up
the same way they did with You Are, and it
would be a huge hit. You get to Ms Wong's contentions,
which we find out were anonymous, but she very specifically
she has dictated this and says she's dictated this to
the complainant that's taking her complaint. And she talks about
(58:39):
the fact that he insulted her game and she learned
how to play the thereman, but he won't let her
play the thereman, So we kind of know who's talking here.
I don't think it'd be too hard for Seth, And
this is the book they hands Seth, so I don't
think it's too hard for him to figure out who
was complaining. I laughed throughout this book. I mean, there's
a lot of really funny stuff in here. But you
actually have an icon graph of a theremon on this page?
(59:03):
Where did you find an icon of a theremon?
Speaker 2 (59:07):
Well, some things we I mean a lot of things
we just create. Yeah. I cannot take credit, however, for
Miss Wong's texts there because that, you know, I think
this book we were making during a very busy time
in the in the show, and so I wrote a
lot of this book. That particular page my assistant graphic designer,
(59:28):
Christina Perez worked her genius on because it is absolutely hilarious.
I think that page is my favorite. And the whole
entire book is miss Wong's complain.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
You can plain. There is an entire page on Miltchick's
your analysis results with graphics, and then you've got this
really official grid with a lot of really technical terms.
Where did that come from? Wait?
Speaker 2 (59:50):
Which one are you talking about? Now?
Speaker 1 (59:51):
Milchis Miltchik's your analysis. You've got to show specific weight
of different densities of things.
Speaker 2 (59:59):
Well, that's another thing, you know, if you need to.
Your analysis was scripted as something that was going to
be in the book. Then we got to show what
it is. So I had to do some research.
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
But it was just in passing. Drummond said, you passed.
Your analysis was great, That's all he said. And you've
got this entire page of the breakdown of his euur analysis.
Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Let's very thorough, all right now, And.
Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
I also I'm also going to call you out here.
There is a double page spread with Seth Miltchik's Personalized
Action Plan. It's a twelve step plan that looks suspiciously
like these twelve step program that many addiction groups use.
Number nine is to make amends. We know that one
from every sitcom where every drunk has gone around to
(01:00:40):
make amends. They're doing number nine. And the belief in
the higher power is putting your belief in here. So
I ask you, Ms Michaud, did you crib the twelve
steps for this page?
Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
We definitely used it a little bit as inspiration. He
needed to have some sort of plans, so.
Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
We said that I got through that, I thought, hold it.
I recognize I'm not an addict. I haven't never been
to alcoholics, anonos or anything, but I recognize those just
from enough sitcoms that have addressed those. So that was fun.
But this book that I would just love to see
this booklet hit Apple Books. It's got to get out
there where people can see that there's so much funny
stuff in it. Another booklet that also I'm blown away by,
(01:01:19):
and I actually have a physical copy of it. Helli's
Orientation booklet, very stylized, very dated. It's to give all
the new macrodata refiners a quick start guide on what
they're doing, and it kind of has that you get
that sense of time with the graphics kind of what
you were saying with the world logo being that, you know,
late eighties or nineties kind of Look, that's what this
(01:01:41):
entire booklet really feels like. And this is the one
that was included with the Lexington letter. Like Miltchik's performance review,
this was not scripted. So how did it wind up
in the show.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
This was very early on in that first month of
pre COVID work at York Studios. The design for that book,
just like the graphics style of it, not necessarily the
content of it, was actually an option I had made,
one of like four or five options I had made
for Mark's training manual, like the IBM book that we
were talking about just a few minutes ago. That was
(01:02:15):
one option that we should have Ben, And this, the
style of this little like fun size to like booklet
was another option that we pitched that would have like
taken Mark like hey you on the table, like blah
blah blah talking to Helly. We showed all of these
options to Ben. Everyone agreed that the IBM booklet was
(01:02:36):
right for the training manual, and so we were just
going to scrap this other one, but Ben loved it
so much that he was like, well, let's give it,
let's repurpose it and make it. And he was like, Dan,
can you write a new can you add something in that?
Helly has an orientation book? But and then it just
got adapted into that, So it was never originally scripted,
but that design Ben really liked, and so we used it.
Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
That copy in the orientation booklet that was all Dan ericson. Yeah,
so that was yeah, okay, whose idea was Sevy mimicking
Clippy the assistant from Microsoft. I laughed so hard at that.
Seve's telling you all about and he's running around it
looks like you're trying to write a resume? Can I help?
That just reminds me of Clippy? Going back down to
the word from the nineties. Who did that? Who did
(01:03:18):
that illustration? Who came up with that idea? I love it.
It's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Yeah. So in original like Mark Training manual version, I
had like a little man cartoon in a suit who
was sort of on every page. We didn't like that
idea whenever it turned into Helly's Orientation booklet, and so
people were just throwing out ideas for what could it be,
and I think Dan had the idea for it to
be a severed chip. And then Danny, who I don't know.
(01:03:45):
Have you interviewed Danny before on there?
Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Danny? Yeah, say it again? How do you say his
last name?
Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
I'm actually not sure how to say.
Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
I've been I've been saying on els, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Right, I'm not sure. That's terrible that I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
He's done a million of the paintings. He's he's a
big guy that on the painting show yep.
Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
And he also does storyboards too. He was a storyboard
artist on season two as well. So yeah, he's an
amazing illustrator. Yeah, he illustrated seb and all those different
iterations and it went. He went back and forth with
Ben number of weeks on getting the look of Seve
exactly right. Originally, I the plan was for me to
take his illustrations and sort of like turn them into
(01:04:24):
like a more graphic version, but his illustrations were so great,
I just scanned them, cleaned them up a little bit,
and used them just as he had drawn them in
the book.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Did you have any idea this was going to be
published as part of the list to the letter when
you first laid it out, And when did they tell you, hey,
we're going to distribute this.
Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
No, because at that time, that was the first month
we didn't know if we were We knew we were
working on this really special gem of a script that
Dan had written, but we didn't know if it was
We didn't know it was going to be a hit.
We didn't know if it was going to be a flop.
We didn't know what it was going to be. We
were just having like a great time all connecting on this,
this a unique project. So No, I didn't know. I
(01:05:02):
didn't know it was going to be featured so heavily.
I didn't know it was going to be released to
the worldwide fan base. Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Hey, Peggy Kay does say in the Lexington Letter that
all the answers are in there in that booklet. Do
you know what any of those answers are? Because we're
all trying to find them and have not found any. No,
you don't have You don't have any idea either. Okay,
well I don't feel so bad, but that that is
just a fantastic piece, and I love the fact, you know,
they did distribute that one. That's why I would love
to see like the Miltchick Review getting the same distribution.
(01:05:31):
It would be so much fun for fans to be
able to see this stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Maybe they will, they have it.
Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
I've said to them it would be great. You know,
we're gonna let them know that we want to see this. Okay,
another another item, The Mark face balloons have become this
incredibly iconic image for season two. They've even got this
display that they're taking around the world with the balloons
in Whose idea were the balloons? Were they scripted? Where
did all that come from? And then how do you
(01:05:55):
go about getting Mark's face on a balloon?
Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Yeah, the balloons were scripted. We tried a few different
things with props. We didn't know if the face was
gonna if his face was actually gonna look good on
a balloon, so some of them we tried some that
just said Mark s and a few different iterations of
that the face is. That's not actually a photo of him,
so it's a half tone image. We had a photo
of Mark and there's this really awesome company called Astute Graphics.
(01:06:22):
They make really a bunch of really cool, handy plugins
for Adobe. There's one that you can feed an image
into and it'll create half tone images like futs it
around and make the dots bigger or smaller and make
it look just right. I made quite a few different
variations of half tone images of Mark's face and then
we picked a winner, and I you know, that's a
(01:06:44):
cat Miller. Question is how she got that on the balloon.
I'm not sure. I think you can order balloons with
printed images on them.
Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
It was to scale that image to get it right
so when you blow it up it's it's not a
little tiny thing in the side of the balloon, or
it's not completely covering, you know, all the way around
the balloon. It seems like getting the scale of it
when you then stretch it would be difficult.
Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Yeah. I mean, I think they use just a balloon
vendor that can print on things like that, and there
probably were a few different They probably ordered a few
different versions of size space on the balloon and then
went with the props. Is never short on getting options,
so they probably had many, many options.
Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
It cracks me up how many unique and bizarre vendors
are out there that will do some of these things
that you guys come up with and then they're like, oh, yeah,
sure we can produce that for you. Noron them. Oh
yeah yeah, yeah. See you got a balloon guy. We
got a balloon guy. Another Poul cleanser for you. Were
you ever able to interact with the goats either season?
Did you get to the goats?
Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
No? I was so sad because I work remotely. I'm
never there on set. You know my the other graphic designer,
Christina on goat days, she would send me pictures of
the cute coats, but yeah, I never actually got to
pet the coats.
Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
Okay, well this leads me right into my next props
specific question. The goat sacrifice chamber that we see in
the finale that Drummond has. We don't get a clear
look at it on screen, but we can see that
this thing is surrounded by graphics. Where did all those
come from? Who wrote the text for the chamber?
Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Like?
Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
On one frame? Okay, Vinnie zoomed in and he said
he can see humility he has in spades, and verve
abounds in. He let wit envision guide him, so his
purpose he may see. So it's a couplet. It rhymes.
It's on one side. Is that like that all the
way around the chamber? We don't get to see all
of it.
Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Yeah, there's a poem about the goat on the whole
way around.
Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
The epic poem about a meal allan about.
Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
This goat who's supposed to guide Gemma to meet here
in the afterlife. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
So that is the background or the history you were
given about the goat chamber. They told you, Okay, this
is this chamber, now make it look mystical.
Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, we knew what the chamber was.
They were working arts Prime and it was working on
fabricating it, and Jeremy wanted something on the side, so
they were like, hey, can you come up with something
for this? So yeah, so I wrote the poem and
you wrote the poem son Yeah, and sent it to Dan,
who I think he made just like a couple of
(01:09:16):
word changes, but other than that, it's pretty much word
for word the way that I originally wrote it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Yeah, it's stuff like that that's so fun. It's like
to put your head sort of in the world face
and come up with graphics that are like look like
they should be there. That's one of those things that
they just give me a really long leash on this
show to create things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
That is cool. That is cool. The fourth appendix to
the handbook that they found during the ortbow, this is
another very stylized book when we see both the insides
and the outside. Now, Jeremy Hindle has said this book
required multiple sizes so that they could be shooting in
it and also have people carrying it. What did you
do on that fourth appendix? Was how big a presence that?
Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Yeah, yeah, assistant and I laid out the entire thing.
We didn't do the illustrations, So anything that's where sort
of graphic differs from anything that's like illustrated like that
would either be Danny or the scenics. And then we
get those files and we printed them out in the pages.
But I think for that one too, yeah, there were
(01:10:19):
multiple sizes because they did inserts on that later as well.
So for those type of things. We did this with
Brickens book too. When they're going to do close ups
on the text, we have to blow those pages up
so that it's easier for the camera to shoot that
text close up like that.
Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
Who wrote all that verbiage in the fourth was that Dan.
Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
Dan wrote chunks of it, and then to fill out
the filler, Christina and I took it from there and
just filled out everything that we knew. We were never
really going to focus on anything other than the what
was scripted that Dan had written.
Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
So Kat was telling us that there are a lot
more pages that he went deeper into that than that
first chapter that we find out about Peter and everything.
Did you lay any of those additional pages out?
Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
It's very I forget how long it is, but it's
it is many, many, many pages of text.
Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
So I wrote and there you might get back to
another chapter from that, possibly, Yeah, maybe that would be cool.
I want to talk about another part of the handbook
and Irv's egg smash, that book that he smashed it in,
and we talked to Kat. She was involved with a
little bit of this. She was talking about razoring some
(01:11:23):
of those pages out and then you had to actually
print on those pages. Give us a little baseline here.
Talk about Bible paper and how you print on it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
So you cannot run Bible paper through your printer, it's
too thin. It's a special paper called scrit a paper.
Your normal inkjet paper will absolutely character shreds.
Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
You cannot Its almost like tissue paper. It's just practically tissue.
Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Paper, yeah, exactly. And also like even if you could
print on it with inkjet, the ink would just kind
of flow straight through the paper. There's just no way.
But we knew we had to use that exact paper
that was in the Bible because we've already seen the
texture of the paper and the rest of the book,
so it can't just be any other paper. It has
to match. Luckily, that book, like you were saying, had
(01:12:10):
blank pages in the front and back, so Kat was
able to cut out those blanks. I think there were
only like a handful or maybe ten, so these were
like precious pieces of paper. We did not want to
mess these up. I didn't want to risk running them
through a printer at all. We thought about dry transferring
the text on, but even just the rubbing motion of
trying to get a transfer to stick would would have
(01:12:31):
destroyed the paper. So the only way that we could
do it was just screenprint the tech just like you
can screenprint on a T shirt.
Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
You're like cutting a lift, cutting almost a stencil when
you screenprint, and then gently applying the ink through that
stencil to get that.
Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
So screen printing, they use an emulsion on an actual
screen and then they heat set it with a lamp
and so that you can squeegee ink through it. So
we use a screen printer in Brooklyn called Crown Print.
He's amazing. We can call them up and say, hey,
can you print on this random I like a piece
of Bible.
Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Paper, any Bible paper?
Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
Yeah, like, I don't know, but let's find out if
we can do it or not, and then we pick
it up the next days. He's awesome. Yeah, so that
is the first time I've ever screen printed on a
piece of Bible paper. But now I know it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
You know it for next time. You're ready to know
exactly Now, Kat had no insight at all into mister
Tuturo's technique when it came to smashing an egg inside
the book. How did he hide that egg completely in
the book? Do you have any idea?
Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
I don't know. When I watched that too, I was like, wait,
why didn't it push.
Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
Out the side?
Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Yeah? Well, when I originally did the rewatch back two
years ago, when we first did this, I asked and
I said, listeners, I want to know if this really works.
Could you guys maybe get a book and try this.
No one has yet done it. I wanted him to
post a video to the Facebook page and see somebody
try this on their own. But I really thought you
guys cheated right at the last second before the book closed,
that we saw just a picture of the instead of
(01:14:00):
the actual egg. But Kat said no, no, he really
crushed an egg in that book.
Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
That's a prop question. I don't know. I wasn't on
set for that. I can't speak to what happened on set.
Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
All right. Now, we've whipped through a ton of things
that we saw or that actually made it on screen.
There are a couple of very intricate, very involved props
that you made that did not make it on screen
that I want to talk about. And one of them
I'm very curious interested in seeing is Miss Wong's management manual.
(01:14:32):
Talk about that. What did you make for Mis Wong
and how did it vary from like the orientation manual
for a new Refiner.
Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
I'm not gonna lie. That's probably the biggest bummer I
think of something that hasn't made it on screen because
we worked so hard on that prop. So Miss Wong
has the small size, it's like a half scale binder
with basically what is we did about forty maybe fifty
pages of fully illustrated lumen team building game that she
(01:15:00):
uses to, for example, orchestrate the red Ball Hello game
with the team. And so during that scene she was
supposed to be referencing because it's her first running okay,
she was supposed to be referencing the team building manual
and flipping to see how to run that game with
the refiners. But there was I think there was like
ten or twelve team building games in there that we
(01:15:23):
fully illustrated a manual about how you would lead refiners
through that team building exercise. Yeah, and we never saw
that manual on screen, which.
Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
Is a bummer, But it was scripted. This manual was
something that they mentioned in the script and it was
something they were planning to show but then for some
reason did not.
Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Yeah, it just got cut.
Speaker 1 (01:15:39):
Yeah, Okay, a quick note, Refiners, Pansy is under selling things.
I've seen this manual. It's not for public display, but
Pansy did allow us to view it under thread of
really bad things happening to us if it ever gets out.
It includes eight incredibly detailed and beautifully illustrated management team
building exercises over fifty eight pages. Any HR director in
(01:16:02):
the real world would use this manual constantly and the
other one. And Kat was talking about this, she said,
you did such a fantastic job on it. She was
talking about it. There is a recipe book for Gemma
to be using that talks about how to cook her
teardrop food. And I'm just curious. Aren't all the recipes
(01:16:24):
just boil it?
Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
I think somewhere pan fry?
Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
Oh okay, No.
Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Yeah, it was great, and it's one of those things
that is so funny because illustfully illustrated, but they're all
just the same shape. It's like tear drop shaped food,
just with a different garnish on the top, and they're
just different colors. Yeah, but it was fun going through
and imagining what all the food options are that Gemma
has available to her to cook. But yeah, that prop
(01:16:51):
turned out amazing. But yeah, we never saw it in
the scene.
Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
And it was scripted as well. It was something they
talked about having it.
Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
I can't remember if it was scripted. I think it
was scripted in there was like a montage scene. Some
things like that, even if they're not scripted. We talk
about them so much that they seem as if they
are in the script anyway. But it's just because Ben
and Dan and Kat and Jeremy, we're all just know
that they're going to be there, even if they weren't
originally written on the page. So that might have been
(01:17:18):
one of those instances, although I think that one was
scripted now that I think about it.
Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
What good news, Tansy. According to volunteer producer vinnp the
Food Pellett Cookbook did make it on screen for a
brief moment. What's weird is it doesn't happen around the
food prep scene. Then he was doing a freeze frame
note taking session and happened to catch it. If you
look on the counter above the small oven when Jemma
is leaving for her dental torture visit, you can see
(01:17:43):
the cookbook propped up to the far left of frames.
Once you start kind of visualizing the scene, you start
to understand, Oh, they're going to need this, and they're
going to need it.
Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
Of all the things we've just discussed, we've whipped through
a ton of design projects. I got to say, you've
very casually throw out there. Oh, we made forty or
fifty pages. When I think about how difficult it is
to generate two or three pages of content, to say
you just created forty or fifty that's an amazing feat.
Do you have a favorite project or design that really
(01:18:14):
stands out in your mind from the nineteen episodes of Severnce,
Is there something that you're like, Wow, I killed that,
or it looked way better on screen than you even
thought it would. It just really popped, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
I think Mark's training manual from season one really looked
really good. That one probably isn't wasn't my favorite one
to make, just because it is a little mundane. It's
just text layout, But I think that prop looks really
good on screen. There are some other things, like in
episode seven of season two, Gemma is looking through Us.
(01:18:48):
It's a sweep stakes mailer based.
Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Around the cards.
Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
The cards Yeah, yeah, which that didn't get featured as
much as I wanted, But that was really fun to make, too,
that Sweet Snakes mailer. I really have fun diving into
these things that I know are going to be hero
because it's so fun to build out the world. So
it's hard to pick a favorite.
Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
And just drop a lumin logo on it, and you'll
make every viewer go crazy. That the lumin logo at
the top of the bootsmen thing. Everybody. I saw screen
grabs of that where people had circled it, and so, yeah,
you throw a lumin logo in something and you make
all the viewers crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
Well in that one too, at the IVF clinic that
we made a few different versions of that intake form
and some did not have the tear drop logo because
that was a big discussion among the writers and Jess
whether or not we how much we wanted to let
on that that was a little tin somehow. Yeah, and
so they ended up using the one the lumin logos,
(01:19:42):
So I guess they decided to let on.
Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
I have a quick side question about Mark's intake book.
There are a lot of handwritten notes throughout that, like
as people have used it, they've kind of fine tuned
and they've made a little note about how something where
Who added all those? That's all problem? Can't said? She
wrote in she I was talking about the things in
irv's foot locker that she wrote a bunch of those
notes in there. Now, did you lay out that list
(01:20:06):
of the names in the foot locker that was something
you did.
Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
Yeah, so anything like that, that's a printed prop, Like,
we'll do all the graphic design for it, and then
if it has handwritten thing elements to it, that's all prop.
Uh okay, cop that they just add in later. Yeah,
they're really great.
Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
So you hand it off pristine and they mess it up,
that's right. Yeah, okay, all right. We have in I
know we have some listeners who are heavily into marketing
and graphic design, and there was an interest among some
of the patron refiners. What are your design tools? What
do you use for layout? Design software? I'm imagining you're
(01:20:40):
living in Photoshop and you've mentioned Adobe products.
Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
What are your I The one I use the most,
I would say, is Illustrator. I use Illustrator, Photoshop, and
in design all that they're always open on my comput like,
I have many many tabs open in all of those,
especially for some of the longer documents marks, training manual
was laid out and in design, those type of really
(01:21:04):
long manual type things in designs great for that. Illustrator
I use a lot because it's so easy to manipulate
vector elements in there. First laying out single page documents,
I use illustrator a lot, and then yeah, photoshop, gotta
have photoshop to adjust stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
Yeah, those three of the clean up photos and things
like that. This might be tough to do off the
top of your head. But I'm also curious what fonts
are primary? What is the lumen logo font, the labels
for the doors? What are your fonts?
Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
Forma is the main lumen font that you see. Like,
when you see that font, I feel like that you
really know that you're looking at something lumen. We also
pepper and Helvetica occasionally, but mostly we're doing for headlines
and stuff, We're doing Forma. And the way that I
arrived at that font was in the early pre COVID
days when we were referencing a lot of IBM documents.
(01:22:01):
IBM is strictly like a helvetica, like they only ever
used helvetica, which we were basing a lot of stuff on.
But I knew I wanted Liman to have like a
little more quirky element to it, but something that set
it apart from just like a normal IBM feel. Because
of legal on Apple TV, we're only allowed to use
(01:22:21):
fonts that are in Adobe type Kit or Adobe Kong,
so I'm like going through trying to see what's what
is in like this catalog that I can use, and
I saw that Forma was in there and Forma. The
interesting thing about Forma is that originally back in the sixties,
it was actually designed by a team of like eight
Italian type designers at the Boundary exactly Italian, eight Italians,
(01:22:46):
and it was developed originally as a response to Helvetica.
So I'm like, well, this is perfect because it feels
a little bouncier than Helvetica. It feels a little something's
a little off of it. The letters are a little
bit too close together. It's a little happier, but it's
like a faux happy, if you could say that. So
it kind of is a perfect font because it's like corporate, but.
Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
You're getting personalities out of fonts that really Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
So I don't know, I just started rolling with Forma
and no one said anything different. I guess everyone liked it. Yeah,
we just went with that.
Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
It's very definitely become the signature for Luminate. It definitely
makes a statement about lumen I have a Patreon page
and I have a very active and fun group of
podcast supporters. They are giving me money every month, which
I really appreciate. And they're also very vocal. They are
really into the show. They're huge fans. I refer to
(01:23:42):
them as my patron refiners, and I share a lot
of things with them. One of the perks of being
a patron refiner is if I've got an interview coming up,
I let them know and say, Hey, what do you
want to ask? So I've got a couple of patron
refiner questions for you.
Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
Incomplete Sentience described themselves as a marketing geek, so this
is a marketing question. In the real world, a big
company like Lumen would have a style book or a
brand identity kit, and for those that are not marketing geeks,
a style book describes the pantone colors, the fonts, how
logos can be used, can you reverse them out? Can
(01:24:17):
you do them in black and white? Where can they
be displayed? That those kinds of things are in a
style book? Is there a Lumen style book? Have you
created something? And if so, who is using it?
Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
There is a loose style guide I made, but making
a style guide to the depth that a lot of
these companies make their style guide takes time, which when
we're working on a show. You know, we only really
have time to be working on the graphics in the show.
So since no one else is making the graphics except
for me on the show, I don't really need a
(01:24:48):
style guide for Lumen. I already know what it is
in my head. I made a loose version of a
style guide to hand off to Apple Marketing and fifth
season whenever the series or when the show and when
season one ended, so that their marketing teams could like
roll with it. And now they've gotten really good at
sort of mimicking the style of women. But there is
not really an official document.
Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
No, Yeah, within the show a style guide. Usually a
large company creates one because they're going to distribute it
all over the world to offices everywhere where. They can't
oversee everything that's being made. You get to kind of
review everything that's being made out there using the logo,
so you know if they're doing it right. So yeah,
that kind of agates the need for a style guide.
Patron refiner Phil p also had a marketing related question.
(01:25:30):
There really are a few companies in the world named Lumen.
Some of them are Lumo N and some of them
are ELM N. Did you have to do any legal
clearance on the name or logos you created at Apple,
make you check them against real world entities, And did
you have to check for copyright infringement before you put
the logos in the show?
Speaker 2 (01:25:50):
Yes? So actually, when I first started in February or
January February of twenty twenty, in the script, the company
was called Lumen lum.
Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
E en Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
Yes, And so when I started making logos, you know,
I have to submit everything, every single piece of graphics
that I make on a show. Even at the beginning
there the Lumin logo, which is like the main one,
has to go through clear our clearance process, which is
like through legal The logos I were making with I
was making with l U M E N immediately bounced back.
(01:26:22):
Those did not pass clearance.
Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
That sparked an entire huge discussion about do we change
the whole name of the company, like do we just
change the lettering of it? And eventually they resigned to
just changing the E to an O, and so that's
how it became Lumin with an O.
Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
But no allowed it to pass that pass.
Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
Yeah, that allowed it to pass through clearance. Yeah, but
it originally was an E, which is interesting. I don't
know if that's ever been talked about.
Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Yeah, that is interesting that it started out as an
E and a lot of people still misspell it with
an E. That's still out there a lot of places
when people are talking about it. Now, we are just
about finish, but before we wrap up, I do want
to talk a little bit about season three. During our
pre interview, you said we contacted yet, do you expect
to be and if you are, are you ready to
head back to Luman for a third season.
Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
Yeah, I hope I'm contacted again for for sure. In
our pre interview, you know, we were talking a lot
about the fact that I'm now a mom. I have
my daughter's about to be two years old, so I
have a little one, and my husband also works in
the industry. He's a cinematographer, so it's very difficult when
we are both working to also be a parents as well.
So yeah, I would love to come back and do
(01:27:32):
a third season. You know, we're we just have to
figure out how to work that into daily life, but yeah,
it would be great to step back into the world.
Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
Of Lumen and mentioning that you are a mom. We
are just about needing to finish up here because you
have daycare to get to to pick up your daughter.
So well it's a daughter, right, daughter?
Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
Yeah? Daughter?
Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
Before we wrap up, where can our Severed podcast listeners
find you or your work online? You said you didn't
have your website up. Do you have a Facebook page,
Instagram or anything like that you want to share?
Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
No, I'm not really online. I do have socials, but
they're all private and I don't belivey. Yeah, I am
very usually a private person. Maybe that's why I haven't
really done a public discussion about this yet. You guys, first,
I have had people are still finding me on Instagram.
I have a lot of people contact me on Instagram.
Somehow they find me. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
You don't have your work, You don't have your work
displayed on your Instagram?
Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
Really no, it would be very boring for people to
follow me on Instagram anyway, because pictures of my dog
and my kids.
Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
Aside from hopefully a quick call coming about season three,
ob Severns, what else are you working on right now?
You got anything in the hopper?
Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
Yeah, so I haven't been full time on a show,
but it's easier for me with my daughter to We
call it day playing, but I'll just pick up a
couple of days here or there. When my friends, who
also are graphic designers, if they get swamped on a
show and they need some extra help one or two days,
they'll call me. Actually, it's really funny right now. My
good friend Sarah Ray Davidson, who helped me out on
(01:29:04):
season one. She is the graphic designing for the movie
my husband is shooting right now and she needed some help.
So I've been working on that movie nice for Netflix.
I just have been picking up work here and there.
It'd be great to get back on a full show though,
So hopefully SEVENS calls me for a season.
Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
The little side gigs here and there. That's pretty cool.
Don't bail early, Refiner, this is a false ending. It's
going to sound like the show is over, but it
really isn't stay with it for a bonus story. Well,
thanks again, Tansy, and thanks for talking to us. To
us here at Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast, I'm Alan
(01:29:41):
s for Vinnie P. Saying thank you Refiners for being here,
and now you can close this file and head for
the elevator. At this point, I had shut off the
recording and we were saying our goodbyes. I mentioned that
I didn't ask a favorite interview question I usually use
when wrapping up. What didn't we ask about that we
should have? When Tansy mentioned her involvement in the MDR
(01:30:02):
computer interface used by the macrodads to refine numbers, it
was so interesting, I turned the recording back on to
ask Tansy about it on the record. So you designed
the MDR interface, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
So, I know. So I can't. I cannot take credit
for actually programming it because Martin, the only genius, Martin Eisler,
programmed it in Unity. Yeah, so I was very involved. Yeah,
designed the look of the binning program and everything, and
worked through that whole thing with Ben to get it
to a point that he liked the look of the screen.
(01:30:39):
And then once we arrived at the layout of how
everything was going to be, then yeah, So then I
handed that off it off to Martin Eisler, who programmed
the whole thing in Unity to be an actual usable program,
which is bonkers that our program can actually that the
actors can actually use it, because normally that is totally
(01:31:00):
not the case on a film set. It's just like
totally fake and they're pretending.
Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
I'm usually looking at a blank screen normally, and then
what's on the screen's added later with digitally.
Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
Yeah, exactly. But Martin made this program that the actors
can actually use, which is totally bananas.
Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
So have you ever used it? Have you ever refined
numbers in the really.
Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
Early days when we were honing in what the look
of it was. I did get to poke around on
the computer at one of the camera test days. I yeah,
I can't. I don't have a hand on that yet.
The actors are really good, They've really actually gotten pretty
good at it, using the track ball and like hitting
the numbers and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
Adam Scott has said that the track ball is the
least ergonomic device he's ever used around a computer. He said,
it hurts your hand, it hurts your wrist. It's nothing
about it as good.
Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
There's a reason why they got rid of it so
many years ago, moved to a mouse.
Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Yes, well, the track ball was not a good idea. Yeah,
all right, Well that's a little add on there, A
little bit of additional info from Layout in Design. Thank
you so much again, Tansy. Seriously, wasn't that cool? A
huge thanks to tanzy Michaw for taking the time to
talk to Severed the Ultimate Severance Podcast. Stay subscribed. Volunteer
producer vintp is tracking down even more Severance crew interviews.
(01:32:14):
We'll keep mixing them into the feed as we complete
the season to rewatch. We've got one more commercial break
right here, then we'll run the clothes. If you're heading
for the elevator now, Refiner remembered to please stagger your
exits and here come more commercials.
Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
You've been listening to Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast. Severed
is written, produced, and hosted by Alan Stair.
Speaker 4 (01:32:41):
Severed is not endorsed by Red Hour Productions, in Never Content,
or Apple TV Plus. This podcast is intended for entertainment
and informational purposes only.
Speaker 3 (01:32:51):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:33:03):
Please make sure to leave a five star rating and
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