written by Palmer Haasch, Business Insider India
"Station Eleven," the HBO Max limited series based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel, is a rumination on art, apocalypse, and how humanity chooses to survive in the face of overwhelming loss.
The story takes place predominantly in a society that was decimated by a deadly flu, tracking its characters from their early lives, to "year one" after the disaster, and eventually all the way to "year 20." The show follows disparate groups of people surviving in year 20: the Traveling Symphony, a Shakespearean acting troupe that circles Lake Michigan; the Severn City Airport settlement, a community of people who were stranded at the airport at the onset of the flu and stuck it out; and the Undersea, a group of children led by a miraculous Prophet.
The series scored seven Emmy Award nominations, including outstanding cinematography, directing, single-camera picture editing, music composition, sound editing, and writing in a limited or anthology series or movie. Himesh Patel also earned a nomination for outstanding lead actor in a limited or anthology series or movie for his performance as Jeevan Chaudhary.
Insider spoke with Production Designer Ruth Ammon, the show's production designer, about crafting the show's lush post-apocalyptic landscapes, its caravan of traveling Shakespeare performers, the "suburban" airport community, and the spaceman — Dr. Eleven — at the heart of the series. This story also contains concept art from the show.
Insider: I wanted to first ask specifically about Dr. Eleven's station in the show. We don't get a ton of glimpses of it, but it's obviously very striking when we do, whether it's with Miranda or in the first episode. I'm curious what your approach was to that space, given that it's so divorced from the very grounded reality on Earth.
Ammon: We didn't want too much specificity with Dr. Eleven because, you know, is he real? Is he not real? I think we all carry Dr. Eleven in our hearts. And with the pandemic — I mean, we actually created him before the pandemic — he was such a central figure in some way.
When we talked about the spaceship, the Thompson Center, which is a Helmut Jahn-designed building in Chicago, is kind of an eighties postmodern building where the interior is just absolutely striking beyond belief. I had landed in Chicago a day early from meeting [showrunner Patrick Sommerville] and [director Hiro Murai] and I actually went into that building to get my phone fixed. And I said "Oh my god, Patrick, you've got to see this building."
And actually, on the first night of scouting, we walked past this building and he had actually had it in his mind as a reference for something in the show. So it was this incredible kind of synchronicity that happened between all of us. And at night, the building looked like a giant spaceship, because the mirror is very reflective. And the shape of it, its scale — I think so much of "Station Eleven'' is about shifting scale and perspective of lights, and Earth, and the entire universe. Hiro's approach to flipping it upside down, and never seeing it as a whole spaceship — it's more of the feeling of it, if that's clear.
Even though you started working on this show pre-pandemic, it's extremely difficult not to put "Station Eleven" and COVID-19 into conversation. Were there any instances where the pandemic bled into, or influenced, the creative process for you?
Ammon: We were filming all of year one in Chicago — that would be episode one and three with Hiro. I read an article in The New York Times [about the coronavirus] and sent it to Hiro. Then our AD, Jennifer Wilkinson, sent us all a text like, 'Ha ha ha." And it was really the first news article that came from The New York Times that said there was a virus starting to rage in China. And we just all kind of looked at each other. Hiro has an extraordinary face, and I remember seeing his eyes and just going, "Uh huh. Uh huh. Weird."
And then it happened. We went back to LA, and everyone else was at home. And you know, the pandemic became such a confirmation of all the beliefs that we had, and what was written by Emily St. John Mandel. Some of her words — I used them in my original pitch — were like, "When there were no cities. When all you could see were stars. When sound changed." I mean, there's references to her book that I knew that I just felt that way, like not hearing people anymore. You hear how quiet the world was, and how we all started hearing birds more in our life.
I remember the first time I got in a car, feeling speed — and I hadn't felt speed for three months because I just stayed home. That for me was confirming all these kinds of gut feelings I had from her book. And Patrick's amazing script just took it even further.
Looking specifically at the Severn City Airport, I think it's so interesting that the most permanent civilization we see in this show has settled in what's usually a transient space. How did you go about designing that community?
Ammon: We did have a little bit of time during the summer — we called it "concept time" — and Helen, the costume designer, and me and my art department, and Patrick, we had time to just create anything we wanted to create, no location. So I sort of built it all from a fantasy I had. I felt like we needed to see the whole airport vernacular. That was absolutely critical to me.
I mean, I love an airport. I could spend a lot of time in airports, and I frequently go early, so I can sit and just watch this kind of system. There's a rhythm to an airport: There's a gate, and then a pause, and then a gate, and then a pause. The way things line up, that to me is kind of suburbia.
This definitely was American suburbia, extended.
The houses we had there didn't quite fit the way I hoped, but I feel like the repetition of them and the way we saw them felt organic to the space. They were all the same in a way, but there were little tiny elements that made them personal but not too personal, because then your neighbors might think you have more than the other or you're showing off. There's an order to that that I think makes people feel safe. And I think that's exactly what Clark and Elizabeth and Miles were doing.
It wasn't a socialist community, and it wasn't communist — we talked all that through. He didn't want a commune or a kibbutz. This definitely was American suburbia, extended.
My other favorite thing about the airport was how Michigan it was — you had that Great Lakes rug, and an Adirondack chair shaped like the state itself. What was it like crafting those details, and why were they important?
Ammon: Well, number one, Patrick's from that area, but I would've done it anyhow. I think all airports have an identity about where it is that you've landed. With some of the world being very homogenized with the hipster aesthetic, we did do a little bit of that with our brewery. I thought within that, it was really important for me that all the choices in this airport were kind of local and regional, because I think it drives the character and it also sets a palette for us.
I wanted to keep the palette in all these kinds of blues and greens of Northern Michigan and Lake Michigan, and then with these pops of red. So there was color, and those kinds of colors are slightly reflected in "Station Eleven." Throughout, we've never really wanted a post-apocalyptic world that was void of color and life.
We also started thinking about all the things that would be fun for people to survive on. I had a list of all the shops that we got people to let us use, like Silver Harbor Brewery, Halo Burger, Mr. Pretzel, Mackinac Island Fudge.
I'm curious what it was like designing the Traveling Symphony. What were some of the challenges in building out what they look like as a group, and how they get around?
Ammon: There were the guidelines of Emily's novel, but then it's like, "How do you make that look like it belongs in the picture?" We worked on this for a really long time, and it was honestly my biggest fear, in a way. Something Patrick always said to me was that they have to be smart. Having worked in the theater, having worked in film and television, we try to be very smart and very efficient and then flourish at the moment of the performance.
That was the guiding light to us: Be as efficient as possible, and then flourish when it's magic time. I kept the cars in a darker palette, because it's scary out there. They could have been attacked, they didn't want to draw attention to themselves until they did. One of the popping things was the symbol of the Traveling Symphony, which was color. All of the popping elements were the contemporary colors of camping fabrics: Gore-tex, Patagonia, things like that, colors of turquoise and orange and reds and these beautiful yellows.
Be as efficient as possible, and then flourish when it's magic time.
So we attach those as their carry-all bags and their tents and their awning fabric, so that the symphony itself was dark, but the accouterments on them, the packing up of them, built up the color. And when they opened, that's when the light began. There were four different looks: the traveling look, the camping look, the backstage look, and then the performance look. And we wanted everyone to believe that it could work, so we did lots of tests on taking engines out, weighing cars, and cars are pretty light once you take that stuff out. Those horses could have pulled those wagons forever.
Tell me more about this idea of flourishing in the moment of performance.
Ammon: I thought of them as music boxes, with the three stage pieces opening up and revealing. And the white van, we just covered the inside with white leather and a cat. And I think there was a mirror on top, which was for bringing in shiny metal, chrome. And that was sort of an expression of something that would be slightly efficient — a mirror doesn't get dirty, it doesn't get dull. And the chrome from all of the truck parts.
You didn't see, but my most favorite piece of scenery were the thrones. And the thrones were so beautiful. They were made out of the lens lights from Priuses, the back lens of the brake lights for Priuses, and really contemporary cars right now. I actually made them myself in the office one weekend, but they were never seen.
There was also a visual theme of repurposed old items.
Ammon: I like the truck elements. I don't know that you can see them all, but we used a lot of chrome detailing from trucks and cars. The torches were kind of decorative exhaust pipes from trucks and cars, we actually had shipped them in from Orange County. But that's what the torches were. And all of the stage lights were mirrors from trucks. Some of the sconces were truck elements, truck exhaust pipes that were chromed. You can see truck people flash up their vehicles and personalize, so they were from there because I felt like you'd never have to repaint them.
Is there anything else from the show that you've been dying to talk about, or are super proud of?
Ammon: During my original meeting with Patrick and Hiro, I had put in my interview deck a photograph from an artist called Brian Ulrich, who did a photograph book called "Is This a Great Place, or What?" It was really one of my bibles. And there was a photograph of a derelict parking lot: It's literally a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign that has fallen over, and it's a bucket. It's a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken that's 20 feet on its side.
And I wanted to recreate that so badly, because one of our aesthetics was not to complicate the frame with too much information. So other than the one suburb we went to — and that was year one, in year 20 you do not see the suburbs — we had to create landscape sculptures. And this 20-foot bucket of chicken — we had to create our own fast food, and our fast food is called Sizzle Bird.
The conductor's sitting in front of it when she meets Kirsten for the first time, and in the background is the gas station. And we built the gas station, we built the bucket. And then when we evolved into year 20, we rolled the bucket on its side and moved it across the street, and it became a shelter that they're in when it rains. And that is meant to be like a big, metal, sculptural fast food sign that fell down.
It kind of formed a triangle with the billboard that burned and the gas station. And it's meant to be the intersection point where Kirsten meets the conductor for the first time, but also where the symphony splits up. So we see it 20 years later.
It was such a delight because Patrick wrote it in the script. Reading that script one day, I mean, I just squealed with laughter. Patrick and I would look at that and laugh because you can't explain that to a producer, you know, "Oh, we wanna build a 20-foot bucket of chicken."
It's such a neat location to watch develop over the years.
Ammon: We had to travel a bit. It was an hour away and I had another location that I love even more but that was like an hour and 15 minutes, and I could not get them to budge. So I had to make that work. It was a very limited crew, and our construction paint crew ad to be put up in hotels for I think two weeks. The people who all worked together on that, you can just watch them believe in a vision.
You try to talk people through — we did have one concept sketch at that point, but that was before the bucket — but you jut have to get people to believe in you. They're like, "What? You're gonna build a gas station on a runway?" And everyone just looks at you like you're mad. Patrick never for one second thought I was mad. And I think the support of the one who has that kind of vision was really, you know, it elevated me, and it elevated the show. You could totally be the artist you are on that show. You're not getting a side-eye glance except for, you know, "Why would that bucket of chicken be there?"
It's such a neat location to watch develop over the years.
Ammon: We had to travel a bit. It was an hour away and I had another location that I love even more but that was like an hour and 15 minutes, and I could not get them to budge. So I had to make that work. It was a very limited crew, and our construction paint crew ad to be put up in hotels for I think two weeks. The people who all worked together on that, you can just watch them believe in a vision.
You try to talk people through — we did have one concept sketch at that point, but that was before the bucket — but you jut have to get people to believe in you. They're like, "What? You're gonna build a gas station on a runway?" And everyone just looks at you like you're mad. Patrick never for one second thought I was mad. And I think the support of the one who has that kind of vision was really, you know, it elevated me, and it elevated the show. You could totally be the artist you are on that show. You're not getting a side-eye glance except for, you know, "Why would that bucket of chicken be there?"
