Before joining the Emmy-nominated Prime Video series “Fallout,” only a handful of crafters were gamers who had even played the popular video game. Makeup artist Michael Harvey was the only one who had a deep knowledge of the game after playing it for more than 20 years.
Based on the video game series of the same name, the series takes place 200 years after the end of the world where people live in underground communities known as Vaults. Following a nuclear disaster, a young woman named Lucy (Ella Purnell) embarks on a journey into the devastated area to find her father. Along the way, she encounters The Ghoul, played by Walton Goggins.
Thanks to executive producer Jonathan Nolan's writing and research, creators didn't need to spend hours learning about the video game to successfully adapt it to their work. Sitting Down to Watch 'Fallout': A Conversation About Craftsmanship in diverse Production designer Howard Cummings explained in a Prime Video presentation that Nolan successfully captured the essence of the game's humor, violence, and weirdness. “The writing was very close to the spirit of the game,” Cummings said.
Cummings was joined by fellow Emmy nominees Harvey, editor Yoni Rice, sound editor Sue Cahill, and sound engineer Steve Buccino.
Cahill didn’t play the game itself. But Bethesda, the company behind Fallout, provided her team with the sounds. “We were able to incorporate the actual sounds from the game into the trailer,” Cahill said. “So I think you can recognize them, and it gave us the ability to have a set of sounds to build off of those little clips that we got from Bethesda.”
“The DNA of the game is there in everything, but we had to work on developing it and making it more detailed and expansive,” Buccino added.
Likewise, Cummings would watch games, browse YouTube and learn from fans “who would tell endless historical stories. I could learn about the game and the things they were drawn to.”
In episode four, “Ghoul,” Lucy and the Ghoul spend a large portion of the episode walking through the Wasteland, a pre-war place filled with abandoned buildings, cars from the past, and all signs of crumbling infrastructure.
Rather than using CGI, Nolan wanted the sets to be in-camera, so Cummings was tasked with building them. The game helped inspire some details, including the amount of trash that would be strewn across the wasteland.
This helped inform Rice's editing decisions. The production design was a character in itself; Rice wanted to give the set room to breathe. “Thirty percent of that is the characters walking through Howard's amazing sets, trying to figure out what's going on,” Rice explained. “The pace of the episode is pretty slow. There's not a lot of dialogue, and Lucy is basically walking through a Super Duper Mart.”
As for the ghoul’s appearance, the instructions were simple. “We were told to use the game and the characters in the game as a reference, and not to copy or rip someone from the game and put them on the screen,” Harvey said. The process of transforming Goggins required nine pieces of silicone. The application started at five hours and was reduced to less than two.
Watch the conversation below.
In the second conversation, prosthetic makeup artist Jake Garber, visual effects supervisor Jay Worth, editor Ali Compercio, costume designer Amy Wescott, and music supervisor Trig Tovin discussed the importance of the collaborative process, especially with Nolan.
Worth had conversations with Nolan about what Goggins might look like. “I remember those first meetings about how do you create this multi-complex, terrifying villain who also has a little bit of intrigue and a little bit of gravitas to him?” Worth said.
“That was a concern at first because when you hire Walton, you want Walton,” Garber added. Nolan was adamant that The Ghoul would not be about alien imagery, he continued. “We kept those pieces as thin as possible so that we could see Walton through them.”
Westcott was involved from the beginning in helping bring Cooper Howard’s character to life. Working with Nolan in that early period allowed her to connect with him. “He runs a very tight, very precise, very specific ship, but he’s very creative and allows his creative departments to have fun and do unique things,” Westcott said.
Nolan was also a sound collaborator, working with Thauvin to build the show's soundtrack, which included artists such as Dayna Washington and Nat King Cole. “He's very musical and knows what he wants.”
As for securing the licensing for Cole's hit song “Orange Colored Sky,” which will be released before the nuclear apocalypse, Toven said the estate was easy to deal with. “But you never know what can happen. Often times, the rights can be lost or moved around.”
Nolan was equally collaborative in post-production, working closely with Compercio. “He creates an environment where he expects a lot and pushes everyone to do their best, but he also empowers everyone to do their best,” she said. “As a director, he brings a strong point of view. Part of that is empowering his department heads to put such detail and texture into the world, and he’s very strong at world-building.”
Watch the video below.
