How 'Fallout,' 'Spider-Noir' Built Their Emmy-Nominated Worlds
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- "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" production designer Tom McCullagh and set decorator Stephanie Rea built the Ashford Meadow tournament base out of steel in Northern Ireland, where rain constantly destroyed sets requiring constant rebuilding; many artisans were brought over from "Game of Thrones."
- "Fallout" production designer Howard Cummings shot Season 2 mostly on LED-volume soundstages and on film across California locations including an abandoned hotel in Baker and the Mojave Desert, expanding to New Vegas in the year 2296 and revamping the Deathclaws in Illustrator to be "meaner" and "less goofy" than the 2010 game.
- "Spider-Noir" production designer Warren Alan Young designed episodes for both black-and-white and color viewing, requiring a LUT filter atop digital cameras so every texture, pattern, and wallpaper fabric would pop in both formats; the Rockefeller Center construction scene was one of the toughest builds.
- "Widow's Bay" production designer Steve Arnold pieced together a fictional island from Massachusetts locations since real island filming wasn't possible, building the Loftus house, the Breakwater Inn, and two boats from scratch across four soundstages and reusing the inn's basement to expand into the town hall basement.
- "It: Welcome to Derry" earned an Emmy nomination for its title sequence, designed by Filmograph's Seth Kleinberg, Aaron Becker, and Troy Miller over six months with eight artists, depicting an "endless diorama" that flattens into a Derry tourist postcard and contains Easter eggs teasing future seasons.
- The genre shows — "Widow's Bay," "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," "It: Welcome to Derry," "Fallout," "Spider-Noir," and "Alien: Earth" — all received multiple below-the-line Emmy nominations, an unprecedented push for the genre and fantasy categories.
Why it matters: Six genre shows broke into this year's Emmy below-the-line categories — and their production designers reveal how practical builds, LED-volume soundstages, and even custom LUT filters for black-and-white viewing are now standard tools for adapting source material while expanding it. The unprecedented depth of nominations shows that production design has become a primary differentiator in the streaming era.
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