Deborah Riley (‘3 Body Problem’ production designer): ‘You never want anything to feel or look like a prop or dressing’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“It is something that haunts all production designers; it’s something that requires a lot of hard work,” admits four-time Emmy-winning production designer Deborah Riley (“Game of Thrones”) about striving for authenticity and realism, ensuring the look and feel of a series never comes across as too staged or artificial. “It’s layers and layers and layers, and oftentimes it comes down to [for example] a set painter, who will just touch all of those props and touch up all of the walls, and just make sure they feel a little bit lived-in. You know, a bit of a layer of dust over everything helps,” Riley laughs during our recent webchat, adding that, “you’ve got to look at everything and squint slightly and add yourself. You never want anything to feel or look like a prop or dressing. It’s got to feel like someone to put it there for a reason.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEE Exclusive Video Interview: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo (‘3 Body Problem’ creators)
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“3 Body Problem” was co-created by multiple Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” duo David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who serve as co-creators and producers with writer/producer Alexander Woo (“True Blood”), based on the Hugo Award-winning novel “The Three-Body Problem” by Chinese author Liu Cixin, the first in Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy. Benioff, Weiss and Woo co-wrote the pilot episode together, titled “Countdown,” which takes place in both 1960s China and modern-day England, where astrophysicists try to uncover and expose what is ultimately revealed as an existential threat to humanity from a distant and more advanced alien civilization known as the San-ti. The sci-fi drama’s international cast includes Rosalind Chao, Jess Hong, Benedict Wong, Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzalez, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Marlo Kelly and “Game of Thrones” alums Jonathan Pryce, John Bradley and Liam Cunningham.
Realizing the varied locations and time periods for the sci-drama came with its fair share of challenges. The series is set primarily in 1960s China and present-day England, and also features a spectacular sequence set in a recreated Panama Canal where a cruise ship is horrifically sliced horizontally by scores of futuristic nanofiber strings (you have to see it to believe it). The art department also really shines when characters in the story enter a futuristic virtual reality environment when wearing a shiny chrome VR headset (also designed by Riley and her team), transporting them virtually to disparate places in space and time, such as a barren alien desert, a medieval cathedral, a volcanic landscape, and a temple surrounded by 30 million soldiers. “It really began with a lot of concept art, just trying to take stabs in the dark; is it like this? Is it like this? Do we push it in terms of color? Do we treat it really realistically?” Riley says when asked how the team tackled the huge task of creating all of the show’s mind-bending visuals. “As we came to define it, I actually went back to basics, which is where I started with David and Dan on ‘Game of Thrones,’ which was making it actually a very grounded environment, which is really the point of the VR anyway. The players in the game experience it like they experience real life; they can feel it, they can touch it.”
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