So never having produced anything on this scale, I needed a set designer. I put the word out via Facebook (status updates are your friend) and got a few leads. With our budget, however, it was never going to be easy. A couple of people bowed out immediately, one of them mentioning that a friend had worked on James Cameron’s latest film Avatar and had gotten a lot more than I was offering. I really had to suppress the laughter on that one; first off, it was a friend who’d gotten that gig, not her, and secondly, um, er, we’re not producing the most expensive film in the world ever. Then a recommendation led us to Kim Seff who turned out to be a dream; she came in brimming with ideas and could work within the budget!

She showed Paul and I some of the designs she’d come up with and I wound up going with a bit of two of them; retro mixed with futuristic. Me and Paul went out to a car junk yard where they charge you $2 just to get on the lot. The cheek! But it ensures you buy something otherwise you’ve wasted two dollars. We picked up various elements of dashboards from different cars and laid ‘em all out in the driveway.

Kim then began transforming the pieces she wanted, along with buying more like Car Seats and car radios, etc. My garage quickly became a workshop as Kim was tasked with not just creating the interior of the Scarad (the spacecab), but also dressing CJ’s desk (CJ is the CEO of the Cabonauts Inc) and creating elements that we’ll be using a fair amount of – clone brains. We’ve bought more yellow spray paint than should be allowed and I’ve had to keep my dog well away as he’d only go and lick it all. She’s also been wrapping the car seats in discarded rubber bicycle tires for a unique look. I can’t wait for it to be finished!
CJ’s desk came from ManiaTV – an online production company that, when they folded, had a fire sale. We picked up a couple of things including a massive desk they’d been using to shoot one of their shows with. It’s now being dressed up with a cab motif as well as monitors and keyboards, etc. And a place just for Grandma’s clone brain. (What??? More later. . .)

I’m going to be posting a video of some of the work she’s been doing, assisted massively by Paul, so you can see the humble origins of the set.