How ‘Fallout’ production designer Howard Cummings built the ‘tactile and real’ retrofuturistic world [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Fallout” production designer Howard Cummings just received his sixth Emmy nomination in a category that covers a lot of territory and is also a mouthful: Best Production Design for a Narrative Period or Fantasy Program (One Hour or More). But as a fellow nominee pointed out, he might have an edge here.
“What’s funny is my Emmy category is a period and fantasy category, so they’re very disparate people in it. But one of my friends who designed one of the other shows called me up and went, ‘You’re actually the only one who actually covers both sides of that, by the way,'” Cummings tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “I was like, ‘Yeah, it is. Because of the retrofuturism, it’s also period, but it’s also sci-fi.”
Based on the video game of the same name, “Fallout” is set in the post-apocalyptic world of 2296, more than 200 years after nuclear bombs were dropped on Earth, forcing many survivors to seek refuge in underground bunkers called Vaults, while aboveground became an irradiated wasteland. A two-time Emmy winner for “Behind the Candelabra” and “The Knick,” Cummings was unfamiliar with the game, but quickly became well versed in “Fallout” lore as he studied fan videos on YouTube. Because the show wasn’t adapting a specific story from any of the games, Cummings had creative license for his designs while still capturing the show’s playful and dark humor and the spirit of game. Executive producer and director Jonathan Nolan, with whom Cummings had worked on “Westworld,” also had a mandate to make things as real as possible.
“We’re always treading the line [of real and artificial]. Once I showed the initial concepts, the Bethesda people [who made the game] went, ‘Oh, you’re doing the game.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And they were excited and they started sharing stuff,” Cummings shares. “In the beginning, we weren’t quite sure what we were doing and I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to be told I had to. Because I was never told that I had to do it a specific way. I only did it based on the script and what Jonah wanted.”
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The brightly colored, extravagantly patterned ’50s-inspired Vaults were all builds — and “shocking big” ones at that. And when they needed digital assistance, Cummings didn’t turn to CGI. In the series premiere, creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner had written in a cornfield in the Vault 33, described as ” you’re in it and you think you’re in the musical ‘Oklahoma!’
“They had originally written it that the walls were painted in a mural and I did bring up the idea of like, ‘Maybe it’s projected. That way we can change the time of day.’ There’s a wedding that opens up the show and I said, ‘Oh, they could get married at sunset and they could dance in the dark. And then Jonah Nolan went, ‘Yeah! And then during the fight they could shoot it out and you can see it all come apart like a film and explain that it really is a film,'” Cummings recalls. “To achieve all that, what we did was we set up a digital stage called the volume. It’s like a stage full of TVs. It’s huge. And we projected all of that. And the actors are actually in a real environment with real lighting, so when the lighting changes, they’re not acting against green screen. A lot of it we tried to make real.”
The 7-foot-tall power armor suits that members Brotherhood of Steel wear are also real. Cummings has a photo of star Ella Purnell standing next to stuntman Adam Shippey, who’s in in the gigantic suit, on location in Namibia on his office wall. “There’s somebody holding an umbrella to shield them from the sun. People walk into my office and they go, ‘Oh, that was real?’ It’s real. It moved. Figuring that out was a real challenge, which is good,” he continues. “We tried to make as [many] things tactile and real, like going to Namibia. A lot of times people use that digital stage for away places, like Namibia for the wasteland.”
Cummings is currently working on Season 2, which is set primarily in New Vegas and will film in California this time (Season 1 shot mostly in New York). “We’re actually closer to the game. We’re not at the same time. We’re not recreating that game exactly in that way. It’s a different story based on the timeframe, so it’s fun because I love the characters in that area in the game — they’re all new and over the top, and there’s new creatures and robots and all that. So I’m having a lot of fun.”
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