| INFLUENCES 07.27.09 9:00 AM |
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| Talking Gossip |
| How the production team for the CW's escapist teen soap creates its elaborate party sets. |
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For fans of Gossip Girl, what the show’s characters are wearing and where they’re going can be as important as whom they’re sleeping with or scheming against. That focus on the visual creates the challenge and the charm of the job for Loren Weeks, production designer for the CW’s ratings-challenged but much-obsessed-over chronicle of pretty private-school kids on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
It seems like every other episode has a reference to “the social event of the season,” so some of the show’s most lavish and labor-intensive sets are for events: school dances that likely don’t look anything like your prom or uptown benefits that could pass for the real thing. “They’re important to the show because we’re portraying a group of people who live in high society, in which there are lots of events,” Weeks says. These gatherings also spark pivotal scenes, when characters fight, kiss, or get caught doing one or the other. “Everyone needs a reason to get dressed up and come to one place,” says art director Malchus Janocko. |
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PHOTO GALLERY |
 | Gossip Girl production designer Loren Weeks (left) and art director Malchus Janocko in the penthouse at the Palace Hotel, one of the show's frequent locations.
Photo: Vincent Dilio for BizBash |
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 | For the Snowflake Ball, Weeks filled the alcoves at the Foundry in Long Island City, Queens, with parachute fabric and backlit them, then bathed the space—and actors Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick—in blue light.
Photo: Warner Bros. Television Entertainment/Giovanni Rufino |
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 | The Kiss on the Lips Dance during the first season had a Marie Antoinette theme, and Weeks used pink and blue touches, including acrylic candelabra, to decorate the Foundry. Floral designer Sung Jung of Doro's Annex filled one of the venue's alcoves with strung crystals and orchids lit by LEDs.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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 | The '50s-inspired looks of the Eleanor Waldorf fashion collection led Weeks to Shop America, a picture book about midcentury retail design, for ideas for the set at Capitale.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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 | Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) modeled in the Eleanor Waldorf fashion show.
Photo: Warner Bros. Television Entertainment/Giovanni Rufino |
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 | Weeks' 1940s Hollywood design for the show's senior prom originally called for fake fur on the lamp shades, but the team didn't like the finished look. The fix: boas ordered for overnight delivery.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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 | For the prom set, floral designer Sung Jung used $10,000 worth of flowers.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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 | Executive producer Stephanie Savage requested an outdoor ceremony for Lily and Bart Bass's wedding in the style of The Great Gatsby—and then it rained the morning of the shoot. The weather cleared in time for dry nuptials at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, with a trellis covered with wisteria.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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 | When the director saw the vinyl dance floor printed with a rug pattern at the wedding reception in the Madison Room at the Palace Hotel, he decided to end the episode—and the first season—with an overhead shot of several characters dancing.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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 | The rehearsal dinner at the Palace used Vera Wang plates, but set decorator Christina Tonkin often pulls inventory from event rental houses.
Photo: Courtesy of Malchus Janocko |
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To keep the show looking somewhat authentic to its milieu, Weeks draws on Janocko’s stint working for event designer Matthew David Hopkins between TV and movie jobs, and the team looks at what event pros are doing, often via BizBash. “We do try to keep it realistic—heightened, but realistic,” Weeks says. “It’s a little more lush and rich.”
Weeks began his career as an architect, then moved into television and film production. His last big TV job was the now-defunct NBC cop drama Third Watch—quite a difference from his current gig, which he considers a surprising and welcome shift. “We would prefer to scout the Upper East Side, rather than crack dens in Harlem and the Bronx,” he says.
Although the team might get a heads-up about an upcoming party scene a month out, decisions about the location and design aren’t finalized until a director begins work on the episode—usually eight business days before they start shooting. (They might get three or four more days to finish the build-out.) That can mean tentatively booking a few venue options.
The show’s budget limits the number of party guests (a.k.a. extras) to 80, so Weeks often sections off part of a large venue. Sets are designed to be easily taken apart to accommodate a director’s choice of shots and camera angles, but the team usually builds out an entire event to give the director options and to set the scene for the actors, who may be the only people who see the full design. “One of my favorite expressions is ‘Some of the best work you’ll never see,’” Weeks says. If an episode is running, say, 90 seconds long, an establishing shot panning over the room often gets cut.
Working within this tight schedule, it helps that the show has a large staff of painters, carpenters, grips, and set dressers. Weeks estimates the total budget for an event shoot can be as much as $200,000, including labor, location fees, and materials. Still, Janocko says—sounding like many real-life event producers—“There’s never enough time."
—Chad Kaydo
RELATED TOPICS
The CW, Gossip Girl, Warner Brothers
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