Nina Ruscio would not even work with ”Pitten. “When the writer John Wells was enough for her, she had a previous commitment that prevented her from writing Max Medical series. But after working together on “Animal Kingdom” and “Shameless”, she agreed to contribute a Pittsburgh plan in the middle of the show, which takes place in almost real time during a 15-hour shift. That drawing became the bedrock for the sets of medical drama as well as Wells and the writing team began to develop the stories that would be pulse and the Careen over the untouched hospital floors.
Then, in a kind of happy time, a production delay meant that Ruscio could actually join the production after all. But that meant it was for her to solve the challenges with what is on the surface, a TV series with a place. 15 hours is a long time to spend in one place, even as large as the hospital complex of ‘Pitten‘And Ruscio and her team needed to make changes in space to help the audience follow the movements of history.
“The intention was to be able to create maximum transparency and see everything at once. The whole show is about continuous movement, so the physical set wanted to be about continuous movement, ”Ruscio told Indiewire. “Within (set) I have these curves so that wherever you are, you are never in a dead end.”
We may never be in a dead end, but Ruscio makes it possible by not only smart site design but through subtle visual variety. She talked to IndieWire about choosing between hundreds of shades of white for a more sterile hospital environment than we are used to looking at TVAdding “architectural kisses” that nods to the Pittsburgh history and keeps the sets “Pitt” from ever reaching a curse.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Indieview: How did you land on this color palette? It is strong than Persikan running after me when I think of hospitals.
Nina Ruscio: And blue, when you think of hospitals on TV. In many ways, it was really a choice for these choices. The fear of the choice was to make this palette of whites. It’s like 100 shades of white. Creating a really neutral palette is more linked to the realism of actual hospitals and people’s personal experiences. It is a very blanched and sterile experience. It was (our) very direct intention, to make the space not feel art targeted.
When you had conversations with other department heads, they said, “What have you done to us with all these whites?”
They are very carefully orchestrated, all these (shades of white), and all embraced it. The upper lighting and the white palette follow to isolate the actors, visually. And the (darker) palette of the wardrobe is designed to be foregone (the characters) because you are not distracted by something else, you can see several things at once. You can see the foreground measures and then you can see the background measures. The set is designed to be completely transparent, and in this way you can see all the way from edge to edge. Everyone on the set must either wear scrubs or a dark shade, because if you are caught through a window (on the camera) there is nowhere to hide. It is the experience of being in a medical situation, and that is also the intention of this design.
There are also marble pillars spread over you.
To give the visual power, I wanted these elements that suggested architectural details that I saw on the outside that we stopped choosing, allegheny general in Pittsburgh. There are some architectural materials and details that I have woven all the time, especially in the heirs in the waiting room and the Heritage corridors which are tributary from the emergency room. Marble and columns and all these things that I believe give hospital history.
I have to get back to this – when you look at so many shades of white, what were the conversations about choosing the last shades?
Well, we did a camera test, (Kinematographer) Jojo (Coelho) and myself, with a very, very restrained white selection, and know the quality of the light that we would use. For the human eye, they may not seem so great of a range, but we landed on this one because it was the most satisfactory for the widest range of skin tones and also the most satisfactory and free to the LED light system we thought of use. So it was a very trained guess, the special white. And there are tones of wood and there are tones of gray and yellow and black, which are Pittsburgh colors.
When the scripts were written, did John share any stories that your drawing affected? Or did it serve just like a guide on how to get characters from point A to point B?
I think it was more about how to move people from place to place. They were very linked to this idea that you could see through (a series of rooms) and that there was never a dead end. Since the show was intended to be handled from the beginning, there had to be freedom of movement and which has maintained all the way all the time. The energy in the continuous movement is never blocked by a dead end. So that part of it has felt successful, but there are so many, there are many very specific intentions with the design of a hospital emergency room.
In your research, what design rules remained Sanna regardless of emergency room?
There are many very specific intentions with the design of a hospital emergency room. For example, we have the behavior that is isolated immediately when you enter by ambulance because if there is someone unbalanced, they must be isolated immediately. Then the two full trauma rooms will be aimed at a center hub. And the idea that the middle hub has a vista that can see everywhere from that center area. That part of the research carried itself in several cases, regardless of the design of a hospital or (how) functionality for it has been developed. It has been further developed into new systems, into negative printing rooms and things like it after covid. But we chose to place the renovation of this traumecenter and this emergency department is about 15 years ago, and that is there (we are) locked in time.
Did it affect the medical equipment used?
Many hospitals are not renovated, so all this equipment is still relevant. There is outdated equipment that is still actively relevant to many plants. (Our) traumum is fully equipped. You can really do surgery here. The experience of being there is not at all like being on a set. You can open up each individual box and Matt Callahan, the Set decorator’s extraordinary that I had the pleasure of working with again, has filled each individual box. It’s all P-touch marked and everything is complete. I have been told by many of the medical staff who are part of the show or who came to visit the show that we passed the test. A personal intention with all ours was to have a Verisimilitude that was so correct that you would not be distracted by it and it would not be overly art rich. It would be genuine.
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