In a flashback sequence in episode three of Pluribus, protagonist Carol (Rhea Seehorn) and her partner, Helen (Miriam Shor), are transported to a Norwegian igloo hotel, roughly seven years before the Joining event. To the viewer, the glacial accommodation looks like the real thing: a frozen room intricately adorned with ice-carved sculptures. In reality, the characters are on a soundstage in the Canary Islands in a space crafted by production designer Denise Pizzini using translucent panels and Styrofoam blocks.
“My first thoughts were always, ‘How do we build this?’ ” Pizzini admits. “How do we make it look real and how do we light it?”
Pizzini worked with Paul Donachie, the cinematographer on the Vince Gilligan Apple TV series, to figure out the latter — specifically, how to illuminate a set so there would be no reflections from the lights or cameras in the ice. The pair first tried translucent panels made of a clear plastic that looked like molded ice, “but they were too translucent,” Donachie says.
“We went through a few materials crunched up behind them to give them more depth. We actually used some stuff that you use for softening lights in the end, and Denise’s team sort of crunched that up and that gave it some depth, it felt more real. And I experimented with lights above it and behind it,” he adds.
