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Worm Radio
When young Ellie stumbles upon a worm hole near the junkyard where she made her home, she is determined to find a way through it after seeing a whole new planet on the other side.
Role: Production Designer/Set Decorator
This project is probably one of my favorite to date. I love the character of Ellie and getting to be involved in every aspect of creating her world, and how she lives day to day.
I was honored to be asked by Austin Smith of DMan Films to be production designer on this project.
Ellie is a character who is very independent and determined to get to space. She made herself a home out of an old van in a junkyard, and builds model rockets and different devices from the scraps she can find.
When it came to creating Ellie's world, we wanted something stylistically retro, but also incorporating elements that show Ellie lives in the future. Ellie has her own accent color of Red to show her passion and determination for finding a way to get to her dad across space; which you can see in her van, clothes, and Walkman.
Ellie has a love for things of the past, which is why her clothes are inspired from the 70's and 80's, and especially why some of the items you see in her home are vintage pieces she has discovered over time. Most of these were found on ebay, or borrowed from relatives and friends.
The biggest challenge was creating certain props like: the wormhole machine, a futuristic hologram pad, and the many model rockets. Everything was made mostly from scratch. We came up with the idea of having the wormhole machine be round and almost look exactly like a wormhole diagram you would find online.
We wanted a lot of wires stretching from the outer rim down towards the middle, and then connecting to a laptop and car battery. We put strips of led lights going down the machine to give it a cool glowing effect as if it was actually creating a wormhole, and we put a lot of copper wire around the ends of the machine as a noticeable conductor, kinda like what you would see on a particle accelerator.
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As for her authentic space suit costume, that was another challenge within itself. It was hard finding something that looked futuristic enough and wasn't super bulky...or expensive.
Finally we decided on a ski suit that had the best design, and we attached custom made patches to the costume, as well as the tubing that would connect to her helmet. The helmets used in the film all had professional paint jobs done by our Key Scenic, Mievre Lirazan, to match her wardrobe.
Ellie's retro everyday outfit was probably the most fun I had when it came to designing a costume. We incorporated all these retro pieces and had to dirty up everything to show that she had been living in these clothes for a long time. Our Set Dresser Jasmine Thompson and I did this the day before shooting and could not stop laughing trying to get the dirt to look just right.
I think my favorite part of everything was decorating Ellie's van. I saw this idea of criss crossing wires and ropes from a disney park attraction, and instantly I knew I wanted to do something similar with the ceiling of the van. So we criss crossed multiple different color lights and then a multicolor string from an old children's toy kite, and stapled it all to the van.
The rest of the van interior was made up from multiple old gadgets and toys from my childhood. It was important to construct everything how we saw Ellie doing it, we made sure to show that Ellie's space was creative and was her own. This made the designing process extra special because I got to see things like I was a child again.
Another cool thing to mention is that some of the junkyard pieces you see were donated from the Walking Dead: World Beyond Set after they had finished shooting. So thank you Shawn Stanley and the Walking Dead: World Beyond art team, we really appreciate it!
