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Houses and exteriors: from sketches to final sets - The Orphanage




The Orphanage: this one may look like a simple set, but it gave me more headache than most. I sheduled it as the first one to shoot, which also coincides with it's place in the film's cut. But the reason I shoot it as first is to determine the lighting arrangements (and shadows) for night scenes in general, etc. Moreover, it was one of the "curved" shots, so I wanted to see how it looks in reality, does it function at all? Also, this was to be and is the most -exploited exterior set, with the biggest number of shots in the same setting. The building itself was largely based on the animatic model at first...


The Orphanage house, as finished upon blueprints of the animatic model. It took me a lot of poundering and reference searching before I opted for this design...












Finished house reminded us rather of an old small-town train station, instead of an Orphanage. It became obvious I had to change something. The trouble was, I didn't know what exactly. So, I've tried few things, like adding a whole floor. However, It was easier to experiment on a smaller scale. I needed small-scale house anyway - for the wide shot, and with surrounding park, so there came the time to build it. It may look tedious, to build such an exact replica, but that was actually simple, straightforward job, once that my mind was set about the design.








I've constructed the floor insert to be detachable, and I've copied the same thing on the bigger scale house.


There was one more Orphanage incarnation in different scale to be made: the attic window detail, in scale for big size kid puppets.



	Below (and insert): matching the colors and lighting for the attic window model for smooth transition between shots.

The interior in this, and similar "Christmas shot", was another good excuse for middle size orphanage model- it was far easier to improvise interiors in bigger version, together with lightings and, in later shot, Christmas decorations. There was no way around it: the house looked fake with empty interiors. It's hard to do things knowing nobody'll notice them... however, if I didn't do it, (mostly) everybody would notice something's wrong. It's that simple. Also, I had to produce delicate sets of window blinds in both smaller scales, to fully finish 1st. floor windows of smaller orphanages. I've decided to put the blindes in order to achieve even more worn-out look to the house, to add upon the crookedness, and gave the feel of rather residential purpose, just to deflect previous "train station" impression.



All orphanage models (small on the left) had to be painted in matching colors.






Unnatural inner lighting (and accompanying emptiness of it's interior) is far too obvious on this middle-sized orphanage model on the image above right. However, there's noticeable improvement visible on those images below-right. On the other hand, the small Orphanage model (second image below-left) couldn't be more than sketchy about the interior.



l used small orphanage model (on the images above) to prepare the set-up for the "shadow shot" with the bigger model (right and below). If it weren't for this shot, it's quite possible I didn't need the bigger model at all, cause it turned out the small one hold the details enough, or just barely enough, but still usefull, for close-ups. But, shadow is another story: to get it right, I needed rather large cut-out of agent to cast the shadow onto the house. Surface of the Orphanage isn't completely flat, so casted shadow tends to loose it's distinctive appearence in the facets. To overcome that, everything needed lots of fine tuning, even on that larger model..





Two more uses for the smallest Orphanage model: revealing in the background, on the outskirts of the town;

	...and for the frozen-pool, mirror shot. Lots of adjusting here, with dubious results.