@brook.willard How do you shoot a a scene at a train crossing when you don’t have a train crossing? Your wonderful production designer Bryan Norvelle and his phenomenal crew builds train tracks.
If I hadn’t seen it for myself I wouldn’t have believed how much work it was. The idea of putting some tracks down for a movie seems simple - just carve ‘em out of foam and stake them into the ground! Well, add this to the list of reasons I’m not a production designer. They laid down a full truckload of gravel, proper ties, and 8 tons of steel rail.
And after all that work we woke up that morning to find it snowing and absolutely frigid. As a standalone flashback in the episode, we decided to keep the snow on the tracks and lean into the look. With some rail extension and a dash of snow flurries added in by our VFX department - and @realmarksheppard lovingly reading the scene’s voiceover on set - a very cold morning turned into some very cool footage.
Thanks to @jaredpadalecki and @matt_barr_ for enduring the bitter cold and 1500mm closeups (it is a standoff, after all…) for our wonderful little western.
Wow! That's amazing to read everything that went into creating a short little scene. I love this crew and cast! (And love that Mark joined them on the set to do the reading.)