Fallout is a tall order. The thrilling adaptation of the Bethesda Games’ series shows a retro-past and a post-apocalyptic future. The two contrasting worlds suit each other just fine in the hands of production designer Howard Cummings.
The artist is nominated at The Emmys for Outstanding Production Design For A Narrative Period Or Fantasy Program, thanks to his work on the pilot, “The End.”
Cummings is a pro behind several Steven Soderbergh projects, including The Knick and Behind the Candelabra, in addition to sci-fi projects such as I Am Legend and Westworld. The production designer knows how to dream big. In the case of Fallout, his imagination goes suitably wild.
[Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length]
Did you look at any classic movie stars, their homes, as an influence for Cooper Howard’s home life?
I had to sort of balance it because we did these flashbacks, which aren’t a part of the game, although the fourth game opens up with sort of a pre-war people, vault salesman going around trying to sell. But we decided that the flashback stuff for Cooper should be almost a little more realistic, not quite as game as the rest of it.
For instance, we picked real mid-century houses. One of the things I was trying to push was the sort of ’50s look of everything. A lot of the stars at that time, like Desi and Lucy, lived in a very large colony that was quite big.
To be more accurate to the period, I should have picked a colonial, but I wanted to reinforce the ’50s thing. Actually, there’s an architect who is out toward Long Island who was a big mid-century architect. Their house looks like a ship flying around it.
I actually got back from the show, and I live in Palm Springs, and I went to a lecture and somebody was lecturing on that house and I said, “Oh, I just shot in that house for Cooper’s House.” I had to reinforce the star thing. But his house, it’s somebody who has money and a lot of flair.
If you look at his furniture as opposed to when you go into the vault residences, it isn’t super colored or overly giant patterns. It’s actually real furniture. I mean, it’s still colorful because that’s the look of the show. Jonah Nolan, who directed the first two three episodes, shot on film in a sort of letterbox format. It was to give it that period look, which ties into westerns and everything that Copper comes from. So, in many ways, the whole show pivoted around that.
Did you enjoy seeing your work on film again?
Well, Fallout is interesting, it’s retro-futuristic. For the Emmys, my category is period and fantasy. It just turns out that I happen to know everybody else I am up against. They’re all friends of mine and actually a lot of the [same] people are on the crews. It just worked out that way. One of them called me and said, “You’re the only one who actually is period and fantasy together.” It was a balance of trying to figure that out, but certainly, the film helped. It does process everything in a way, just the quality of light. So for instance, we shot on a digital stage, it’s called a volume.
A beautiful combination of the cornfield in the vault and the volume during the pilot.
And there aren’t too many people that I know of that use film in a volume. People thought we were insane because you always use digital cameras in a digital world, but having the film camera helped the process. In a way, it all brought together what we shot outside and inside; it didn’t look like two different things.
Jonah wanted, “Let’s make it, let’s go big, let’s have scale. Let’s go to freaking Namibia to shoot bombed out houses and stuff.” They’re all real and it’s there, but give it scale and give it this processed, real movie feel. It’s meant for television, but we didn’t approach it strictly in that way.
Given the wild tone of the series, what were some more off-the-wall choices you felt that you could make?
Well, you’re right. For a first season, it’s not one of the Fallout games. The writers, Graham and Geneva, created their own version of a game, but not a game. I got to invent new stuff, which is great. I didn’t have to take stuff directly from the game. Bethesda, the gaming company, was great to work with because they never dictated to me what I should do.
It was very collaborative. I would go to them because I knew the fans know so much. I knew any decision I made would be analyzed. It has. I get alerts, like yesterday’s alert was, “Why does Muldiver Keep Rose?”, which is Lucy’s mother alive as a ghoul, that seems incredibly cruel. And they go, “Perhaps Muldiver is in love with her.” And I go, “Yeah. They finally figured it out months later.”
Yes, it was never said or spoken, but it was there. So, I knew that people would keep getting stuff about it, but it was fun. I got to do this crazy radio station. We were shooting out in the Bonneville Salt Flats or near there, and that’s when Wilzig gets his head cut off. I said, “He has to die, and they have to be in shade.”
The whole thing of Fallout satellites came up and I walked around and somebody had this weird thing and I said, “Oh, if I take the weird thing sticking on top of this and make some things, I can take this weird satellite from the game.” We whipped it up in three days and stuck it there, so he could be in shade. Being able to make up stuff like that was super fun.
What were your references outside of the game? And, with the density of the world-building in the games, how’d you find that inspiring?
Design-wise, it seems like somebody smoked way too much pot or something at some point. I don’t, but dang. I’m just saying that the obsession of detail is like, wow, who really sat down and thought that? You kind of whip through it in the game, but if you have to pull it apart and look at it, you go, oh my God, there’s so much there.
The density, that was my biggest challenge, trying to preserve that detail. I’ve done a lot of Victorian movies. I’ve done a lot of Victorian work. It has the same queen and Victorian house with lots of ornate stuff in there. It has nothing over those vaults. The vaults are insane.
How so?
At one point, I know Jonathan Nolan is walking through the residential hallway. It was one of the first ones we put up and he’s walking, all the ceilings and stuff in the vaults. It’s not like a TV show. I mean, it’s built like a room and the lighting is all the lighting that you can actually buy when you make your own vault. You can buy a kit of lights and have different styles for different areas.
We actually took that little kit and broke it apart and made them real, made it for real. We had to put our own movie lighting in it. But all that lighting was there. Actually, it’s what’s lighting the actors for the most part through the thing. So, the ceilings are kind of important. So Jonathan is walking down the hall and he’s looking up and he’s kind of going like, hmm…
And I said, “Not enough detail up there? Because I thought I’d save some money somewhere. How about some more rivets?” He goes “yeah,” walked out, and then at the other end of the vault, one of the line producers came in and went, “There’s too many rivets.”
They weren’t wrong. There were a lot of rivets. I said, “I have to do rivets.” We actually figured out a system that became much cheaper and faster if we put the rivets on a strip and we figured it out and it was all okay. But it was funny. Just push and pull.
Where did you spend a lot of your time in New York creating a post-apocalypse?
I was worried because we’re going around the world for this thing and we’re shooting in New York, not LA, for post-apocalyptic LA. Who knew you could find a cave in New York, by the way. It’s called Rosendale, just south of Woodstock. This isn’t a natural cave. It’s actually a mine, where they got the cement to make the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s naturally occurring cement. You can dig it out.
The good thing about naturally occurring cement is that it cures underwater. So, all the footings for the Brooklyn Bridge were mined out of this place. That’s where we did the yao guai cave, which looks fake. It’s actually real and full of water. It was a crazy place and very safe.
What were maybe some of those details that were like, this is really obscure, but you had to have it in the show?
There’s one icon in the game that wasn’t really written in and they couldn’t find a place for it. I kept begging and begging for the Red Rocket, the kind of fueling station. It didn’t have fuel because everything’s atomic powered. It’s a power station, I guess. I said, “No, no. This is where Thaddeus has to drop off. The dog has to be there.” I don’t know, we didn’t have time and I couldn’t build it. It was too expensive.
The location guy, his name’s Paul Kramer in New York, found a gas station that was so close in the shape. It’s got a flying triangular wing thing. You go over a bridge and it’s right there. Paul took me there and I went, oh my God, this is it. They kept saying, “No, no, we can’t.”
I finally got everybody to agree to do it and they said, “You can’t spend money on it.” When I went in, I met the guy who owned the gas station. I said, “How many days?” And he says, “What?” I said, “How many days do I get? How many days will you close down for?” Five. And I said, “Okay, Monday-Friday.” That means we have to prep it, shoot it, and wrap it in five days, so we had to figure out the system of how to do it real fast.
All the people on my crew were so happy to do that. They figured everything was with this molded lightweight plastics we could that was pre-age. We slab ’em up there and put it all in, cover it. Their actual pumps are under there. And then, I brought in truckloads of sand and old cars. We built vending machines and all. It was just super fun. It was so important to the game. We all drank the Kool-Aid.
Well done. The power of negotiation.
I’m a used car salesman. I swear to God, that’s all I do is pitch all day long to people.
Before we wrap up, I just happened to watch one of your earliest projects, A Shock to the System.
Oh wow. One of my first films.
That’s a really good movie. Was it a good gig?
Oh yeah. Well, Michael Caine’s an amazing actor. Fun. It was a great cast. Several of the people that worked on Fallout, actually, I started with in New York on A Shock to the System. Yeah, the same painter. There were a bunch of people. It seems I gave everybody in the business their first job. “That was my first job.” I am pretty good about looking at people and going, “You can do this. You look like you’re a painter. You come over here and start painting.” So, we did. It was great. That was fun.
Fallout is available to stream on Prime.
