You know that you are up to something special when your job means replicating the type of chocolate that “The Shawshank Redemption” used to create the clay that Andy Dubrerne breaks through to freedom. But that’s exactly what production designer Carmen Navis needed to do to make Mo Najjars (Mo Amer) own escape from an immigration prison facility – in a dream sequence, at least – work as such a funny, increased, gripping part of “I” season 2.
The dream sequences during the last season of Netflix -comedy Use cinematic significant and genre performances to help tell the story of the great feelings that Mo’s feeling when he goes from being stranded in Mexico City to deported but is monitored in America to finally gain legal status and be able to visit their large family in West Bank. For every twist and turn of the story, Navis and her team examined the right details behind the environments they created; With that foundation, even high comedy has a reality for them.
“My art leader (Zedrick Hamblin Dimenno) would take my deck and basically dissect it and find the source material and go deeper into what we did. So for ‘Shawshank’, we were quite a method. He looked up the recipes for how the “Shawshank” -beautiful team designed (the escape sequence), which was basically chocolate, sawdust and some special ingredients, which we replicated, “Navis said. “This is that Mo finally reaches the United States, and (Amer) wanted to show that there would be some symbolism and this freedom, even if he is still stateless.”
The dream sequences enable design fluctuations with symbolism both subtle and open – an Indian tent that MO approaches in section 7 has the same Tatreez pattern as the olive oil bottles that his family tries to sell, for example. But Navis also had the challenge of producing some very different communities – including most of Mo’s stay in Mexico City – mostly on site in Houston.
The key to distinguishing different neighborhoods? “I think the palette is the most important (part) of the language in the world we create. Especially for Mexico City, it’s really about infusing it with these lively pink and green and more tertiary, muted, but still popping tones, ”Navis said.
Getting the right details for pop is what helps sell a space, whether it is the graphics on the products scattered around Mo’s Broom-Closet size in Mexico City or the little Nigerian touches over Nick (Tobe Nwigwe) and Toyas (Martica Nwigwe ) new new homes, or the smart furniture where Hamid (Moayad Alnefaie) hides weapons to protect his beloved Dallas (Shasta Brooke).
“You have to choose these moments – how can we get this right in a quick turn? How do you create this world and make it credible? What are the most important factors that will give us this sense of where Mo is, ”Navis said.
Sometimes that feeling can be fun and hyperbolic, as when Navis and her canceled decoration team decided for the day to take all the dolls spread around Hamid and Dalla’s house and stack them into the mother -in -law’s room Mo try to stay. “I think it’s the beauty of designing comedy, right? Not only is it the visual language for what we create, but can we make it more fun with what we do? The small moments were important, Navis said.
But the small moments can also pack an emotional punch, and it was on Navis and her team to get them equally right. The modular way that Sami (Omar Elba) has taken over Mo’s bedroom and driven him out of the comfort that his brother and his mother, Yusra (Farah Bsieso), have now built that they have refugee status echo one of the largest design challenges like Navis and her Team had: The detention center where MO is held after crossing back to the United States.
It required strict research to get the details about that facility correctly, given how difficult it is to find references in the public field. Navis, Dimenno, Set Decoration Lead Michelle Howe and Leadman Sam Howeth All worked together to investigate and clear the right materials and turn a layer into a hold center with hand -cut cleaned metal groove and fence to create pencants where MO ends up.
“Everything we came from Porta-Potties to the mailboxes on the walls, (they) was exactly as it was in the references,” Navis said. “We mounted the security monitors and surveillance cameras – (Howeth) had received 400 kilos of clothes from a salvation army that we would donate back with some money for the rent, but we must be really cunning. My props team got everything packed and zipper up how to get these stamped materials. ”
For Navis it was to create the CBP plant a top moment in season 2, the type of challenge where the production design team is under pressure to get it right and must move quickly – even for a TV comedy. “There was no time for reviews. We touched things before the camera because we knew that the work that our DP (Gevorg Gev Yuguryan) did and (director Slick Naim) and Mo would find out how they would play this, ”Navis said. “Everything was really increased – increased feelings and very specific.”
Navis and her team used specific characters and colors to achieve the right vibber for each part of Houston that we also see. “Alief’s energy, where Mo is from, has this real structure and easily accessible Mise-en-scene, which I really thought is attractive to a designer that I am often most interested in creating stylizations or printing the boundaries with color,” Navis said.
There is a heat and a patina to Alief that Navis wanted to emphasize as a home base, but also a certain genuine cowboy, southwest aesthetics that was part of the fun with other environments that Mo ends up. And for that, the production design team Roping ended up in some unexpected help .
For Rodeo Barbecue, Navis scouted Houston Rodeo and stopped joining some of the Pit Masters. The iconic Goody Girls Cooking Team ended up donating much of its signs to give food tents and dance floors a truly local taste; The team that actually won Rodeo Barbecue stopped performing on the camera as Guy’s (Simon Rex) cooking team.
“We built (rodeon) with a very small team and had the whole facade to create a world because we shot after the (real) rodeon was gone,” Navis said. “It was an intense way to start the show but that’s where we started and when I could see what my team could do in the very short time, I knew we could do anything.”
“Mo” is available to stream on Netflix.
