Budget affects everything.
I was a child of a single mother/art teacher, and a father who was an architect, so I've always been around the combination of art, fine art, and architecture my entire life.
You take for granted the details that make something look real. It can still look fabulous, but if you add a light switch, a vent, or the notion of air conditioning, it can look real.
I don't even know of a room that doesn't have a flat-screen TV in it. These are things that just come in environments these days. And if you were going to walk into a space, where did you come from? Was there a bathroom around the corner? These are things that are authentic, and that's what makes successful television. It's not pre-produced garbage. It's believability and connection. The environment has to tell that story.
I treat every show, every production, like its own individual human organism that's grown up in a certain way, and they all have crazy habits and do different things.
Just to give the audience a breath of fresh air is important.
To me, Los Angeles and California and executive power are about big, open warehouse buildings. Tech companies are buying oversized buildings, because they project growth immediately.
These big Silicon Valley companies that are popping up are projecting growth skyrocketing in a few years. So they need a space they can grow into. Not so much in New York. Super conservative, super small.
In New York, it's a little bit more formal, a little bit more decorated, and there's a real appreciation for traditional style. Out here, it's casual, fresh, new, and almost humble.
I'm 36, and sometimes I'm working so hard I don't realize how much I've gotten done.
If you look around anywhere, layers are an important part of, not just the story and the concept, but the world you're in. If you just turn around and look at your office door, there's a door, and there's something behind it.
If you can give your walls history, it supports the action that's happening in front of them.
If the person or artist doesn't touch it, and if the camera stays relatively far away from it, it doesn't really have to be real.
There was a period there where I was like, "No, no, no, this is crazy. I don't want to take any more drawing classes and talk about what looks best. I want to study math and psychology and physics and all these nerdy things with computers." That was fun and great, but that didn't work out. At the end of high school, I was like, "Uhh, what's easier? Drawing is easier, I'll do that".
I was a gay kid in high school in the late '90s, and I was in theater club. I was never a thespian. I was much more of a lighting guy or a backstage guy. Because I wanted to do something easy for the rest of my life, I thought, "Maybe I'll go and apply to colleges that specialize in theater set design. I'll do that. That's what I want to do". With theater, really, I'd be around the gays.
I was applying to the art school, but there was a checklist that said I had to do either production design or stage management or acting. I thought, "I don't want to be an actor, but I know production and stage management take acting classes" - this is literally my internal monologue. I was like, "Designers don't have to take acting classes. Cool. I'll check that box".
I think unscripted variety television may or may not get a bad rap now, but it is a fabulous environment. It is exactly who I am, and there's so much creativity there to express.
Producers are looking to me to concept full worlds for subjects to compete, play a game show in, win an award, blah blah blah.
The word "budget" is the idea-killer. It slaughters any idea.
My approach is to 100 percent get the concept and the visual right. Get the client to love the space. Once they love the space, everything's possible.
Once we have a nice, conceptual sketch and rendering and design approved, then it's really about pinpointing what's functional and what's not, because functional equals expensive.
I'm being totally honest, but I really do get chills every time I see something that I designed, painted on the biggest stage in Universal, standing proud there among all the other stages. I think, "That is so amazing that I did this".
