AMEND: THE FIGHT FOR AMERICA DESIGN PROCESS
INTERVIEW PRODUCTION DESIGN | SALLY LEVI
I came into the creative process of “Amend” after the primary interviews had already been shot with the people sometimes referred to as “experts”. In this project, the creators of “Amend” (The Documentary Group) call them storytellers - “the most dynamic and knowledgeable storytellers who tell rich, character-driven narratives. Some have been in the thick of battle, some have watched closely from afar. All have incredible perspectives to share.” These storytellers included: Jim Obergefell, Al Gerhardstein, Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson, David Blight, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Vanita Gupta, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Dr. Khalil Muhammad, Garrett Epps, and more.
The production design for these interviews was by Sally Levi, and expressed beautifully the original vision of the documentary creators which called for “a collage of performance and documentary, all grounded in one visual home base, a theatrical space that ties the elements together. Composed of sound stages in various cities and locations, this is where the interviews, monologues, and vignettes will take place. We lean into the theatricality of performance, and use the aesthetic of a raw sound stage as our overall design inspiration.” Sally’s design for these storyteller interviews was simple and effective, exposing the beautiful rawness of the sound stage, and playing with ideas of theatricality through the use of a simple raised stage, and a contained backdrop, shot by Eric Lin from a variety of angles, exposing different balances of backstage and front-stage composition.
MONOLOGUE DESIGN | JASON ARDIZZONE-WEST
My primary role was to design the performative moments of the documentary - “Monologues”, performed by a diverse ensemble of actors who deliver excerpts from 150 years of autobiographies, speeches, writings, FBI wiretaps, etc. Some of these actors include: Mahershala Ali, Samuel L. Jackson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Laverne Cox, Yara Shahidi, and many others - delivering the words of Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Ida B Wells, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Antonin Scalia, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and many many others.
I wanted to connect the design of these performative elements with Sally Levi’s earlier design of the interviews, while at the same time, developing a distinct and recognizably unique language for this different form of telling the complex story of the 14th Amendment. Inspired by the idea of building blocks and with images in my mind of the classical columned architecture of our symbolic governmental buildings, I designed a reconfigurable and abstract series of periaktoi, set in a raw sound stage space, selected for it’s size as well as it’s texture and unique characteristics. The Periaktoi is an ancient Greek theatrical scenic device used to change from scene to scene by rotating in place to reveal different painted scenery. We’re using a bit differently here, but sometimes using it as a surface to deliver graphic content (added in post), and sometimes using them as abstract objects to evoke spatial ideas of “power-architecture” or “city” or “labyrinth”, always shot (by Eric Lin) with portions of the raw space visible, making a visible and contextual connection to the other elements in order to give the viewer a sense of this whole project taking place in one conceptually connected theatrical space.
At the beginning of the first episode, Will Smith (who acts as our guide through this journey) says, about the 14th Amendment, something like: “this is why we are here. To tell our story. To tell it’s story. The story of the 14th Amendment.” My goal with the production design was to create this sense of this “here” - a shared theatrical space where all these people have gathered together in order to explore, examine, and tell this shared story, and to create a sense of a cohesive storytelling event, even though it was shot over a series of many years and in different locations.
Here are some early renderings exploring these ideas. The renderings are done by Ali Kashfi
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
As the script developed, we started getting more specific with the renderings and periaktoi configurations. I started storyboarding each monologue with Kenny Leon (director), Eric Lin (cinematographer), Robe Imbriano (creator/writer) and others. In my studio, Evan Alexander (renderings) and Anton Volovsek (drafting & model) supported this next stage, and David Zung (storyboards) worked with me on more cinematic storyboarding with the team at The Documentary Group.
PRODUCTION STILLS
During the shoot, Joe O’Neil (art director) worked closely with Eric Lin (cinematographer) and the whole crew to set up all the different periaktoi configurations. You can see some examples below of what was shot in the space, and what was added in post to make it look like there was projected content on the panels.
