How ‘Abbott Elementary’ production designer Michael Whetstone constructed the Philadelphia school district offices in Season 3 [Exclusive Video Interview]
Heading into production on Season 3 of “Abbott Elementary,” production designer Michael Whetstone knew it was time to start thinking “long term.”
“And by long term, I mean sets. We have sets that are outside, that are standing on the Warner Brothers lot, that are in the rain and the sun — and they take a beating,” he reveals during a recent webchat with Gold Derby (watch the full exclusive video interview above). Because the ABC sitcom was an established hit heading into its third installment, Whetstone and his team decided it was time to take measures that ensured the show’s sets would remain intact. “We literally rebuilt our school façade completely from the ground up using real concrete, 40,000 bricks — we ordered our bricks from New York; we wanted a specific kind of East Coast look to our bricks. And then maybe some people will notice, but the opening of our school grew by 15 feet this year. And that makes it easier for our camera crews to cross-shoot — ‘Abbott Elementary’ shoots three cameras at a time. And so, having the space to work is something that helps us be more efficient.”
In Season 3 of the workplace comedy, Janine (Quinta Brunson) leaves the titular underfunded public school to work for the Philadelphia school district in a fellowship program led by Manny (Josh Segarra), which meant that Whetstone and his team were tasked with constructing a set for the school district offices. That set, the production designer reveals, is modeled after the real Philadelphia school district, which is located in Franklintown, an area that is somewhat distinguishable from West Philly, where Abbott is located on the show. “It’s where the museums are bigger architecture,” Whetstone says of Franklintown. “And the school district is brand new. They’ve got all the money, they’ve got a brand new building — it’s maybe 10 years old.”
But when trying to get a sense of the scale of the set they needed to create for the school district offices, Whetstone and his team actually drew inspiration from their very own art department. “I looked at our art department, I said, ‘Wow, the scale of this and the pattern of the rhythm of the offices feels about right,'” Whetstone divulges, noting that smaller details, such as the texture, concrete and large windows, were added later on.
“Within that space, though, there is a sameness to the offices, if you will,” the production designer continues. “But then we had to say, ‘How do you define each character? Who’s got the office with the million-dollar view of Philadelphia out their window? Who’s got the office with a tiny clerestory window?’ That was how we started defining each character in their office and what they would have. And then our set decorator, Cherie Ledwith, really got into, I mean, the tiniest details, of Philadelphia Flyers keyboard, what kind of lighting they would have. So yes, there was a lot of sameness to the offices — Quinta [also the creator and co-executive producer of the series] wanted it that way — but there were also little things that let each character stand out.”
Another set that the series introduces in its third season is Rubensteins, a bar in which Janine frequently hangs out with Gregory (Tyler James Williams) and Jacob (Chris Perfetti) after work following her exit from Abbott. Brunson and Whetstone settled on University City as the location for the bar on the show and, after some deliberation, agreed that it should be a sports bar.
“We had a combination of booths and tables and… we were able to add a dartboard that they wrote an episode around,” Whetstone explains about the process of laying out the bar — one that, he divulges, only took about a week. “What you don’t see a lot, maybe on cameras: We built the entire neighborhood around the bar… So if you pay attention, you will see, architecturally, the area around University City has its own language. It reminded Suzan [Wexler], the art director, and me a little bit of, like, Victorian San Francisco — everything’s got a moulding. So we painted that area to highlight those things.”
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