Station Eleven: The place the tip of the world is a vibrant, lush inexperienced

When serious about how one can introduce viewers to the world of HBO Max’s Station Eleven, the present’s manufacturing crew determined to flip the standard script: The current would really feel like the long run, and the long run would really feel just like the previous.

“We selected numerous places that had synthetic lighting, subway stations, a theater, even the streets at evening. All the things has this stark, artifical aesthetic,” cinematographer Christian Sprenger mentioned. “We meant to let that be what the sci-fi future aesthetic usually looks like. And whenever you soar ahead to the long run, that nearly looks like 200 years in the past.”

That imagined future is lush and inexperienced and delightful. It’s an iconoclastic alternative for a post-apocalyptic story. The primary episode of Station Eleven drops viewers in a now-familiar fictional setting: The world is ending, and a handful of characters try to navigate that reality. The episode is generally set in our present-day world, in a snowy Chicago that’s about to be devastated by the lethal Georgia Flu. The story takes place over just a few hours at evening, and the photographs are stark and white, snow in every single place.

However look extra carefully and also you’ll see the episode makes distinctive use of colour. Christmas lights twinkle, and the whiteness of the snow is so, so white. A younger lady wears a pink jacket over a cream-colored gown. The within of a subway practice options transient, brilliant pops of colour.

This premiere episode is directed by Hiro Murai, certainly one of TV’s greatest visible stylists working proper now, and discovering colours on the finish of the world seems to be the overriding philosophy of the sequence, which captures the surprisingly hopeful tone of the Emily St. John Mandel novel the present relies on. Reds, blues, and greens are in every single place, and the producers tweaked the photographs to be extra colourful in post-production, the place so many post-apocalyptic tales would tweak them to have much less colour.

“In some ways, we have been making an attempt to invert the post-apocalyptic style,” mentioned Station Eleven creator and showrunner Patrick Somerville. “Hiro at all times mentioned he needed to be there once we have been speaking about yr 20 [after the plague that kills most of humanity]. Quiet, large, expansive, lovely, inexperienced. Not destroyed. Simply nonetheless.”

The tip of the premiere units up that visible thought fantastically. The episode leaps ahead 20 years for a really transient shot set within the post-apocalypse, the place every part is lush and inexperienced. That tiny quantity of footage ended up being key to holding collectively a large manufacturing that filmed simply two episodes (the primary and third), each of which have been largely set within the pre-apocalypse, earlier than Covid-19 compelled an prolonged shutdown onto the manufacturing. That tiny snippet of footage of the post-apocalypse was shot by Sprenger, the sequence’ cinematographer for the episodes shot earlier than the shutdown. It turned key to every part shot after the shutdown, the place Steve Cosens served as cinematographer.

“That second of Mackenzie [Davis, the series’ star] within the sand lure on the finish of episode one meant that Christian, who was the unique conceiver of the earlier than and after, did the colour timing of that scene. He popped the greens within the scrub and different plans. There’s that loopy blue sky, after which Mackenzie has pink and blue on. Christian simply popped all these colours for about 15 seconds in episode one, and it turned a information for Steve Cosens for all of yr 20,” Somerville mentioned.

And in distinction to most tales set in post-apocalyptic or dystopian futures, Station Eleven truly deemphasized colour in scenes set earlier than everyone died. Sprenger mentioned that arose naturally from the design decisions made for the post-apocalyptic scenes.

“12 months 20 may be very naturally lit with numerous brilliant daylight and many colourful greens and flora and many saturation. We needed that world to really feel welcoming, and we needed to push towards that idea of Cormac McCarthy’s [The Road’s] very gross, soiled, virtually monochromatic future, that unhappy apocalypse aesthetic,” Sprenger mentioned. “The place that led us was that yr zero, the world we’re at the moment residing in, needed to really feel a bit bit extra subdued and barely desaturated.”

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Shade can also be used all through the sequence for storytelling functions. The colour pink units the principle character, Kirsten, aside from others throughout the present. It nods each to a violent militia generally known as the Pink Bandanas (largely heard and never seen over the course of the present) and to the times she spent early within the apocalypse in an condominium with two brothers. As you’ll be able to see within the picture above, that condominium was streaked with reds.

However the picture that leads this text additionally includes a pale sea inexperienced, which the manufacturing used as the colour of a mysterious group whose true plans grow to be evident all through the course of the present. Thus, Station Eleven might use that sea inexperienced to emotionally hyperlink sure characters — typically simply characters who would flirt with becoming a member of the motion — to mentioned group. It might additionally pop that colour into the background of scenes so your unconscious would nonetheless sense the presence of the group, even when no one from mentioned group was round.

Retaining a colourful search for the scenes set in yr 20 might be difficult for the sequence’ designers, who wanted to create garments and units that believably mimicked human beings’ scavenging objects out of the wreckage, with out sacrificing the colourful colour schemes. (In a single scene, a personality memorably wears an outfit made from soda bottles, as an illustration.) Costume designer Helen Huang says she used numerous athletic put on, which might retain no less than some colour.

“You possibly can sand it to obliteration and it nonetheless appears like what it’s. The colour continues to be very sturdy. We tried to overdye as many issues as attainable, so they maintain numerous that colour,” Huang mentioned. “We had our ager-dyers, paint over every part very strategically. It retains a colour however creates kind of a sun-faded look. We did cheat how soiled some issues are to push again a few of the colour to retain its unique efficiency.”

And as soon as it got here time to digitally tweak the sequence’ colour scheme, Station Eleven subtly used the desaturation widespread in post-apocalyptic tales for the scenes set proper now and within the rapid aftermath of the Georgia Flu, in distinction to the hyper-saturation of yr 20.

“Desaturation to me felt a bit bit like an overcast earlier than and after a storm. Having that feeling helped inform what folks have been feeling simply as a pandemic hit, they usually’re realizing they’ve misplaced relations,” mentioned Gina Gonzalez, the sequence’ post-production supervisor, who labored carefully with the digital colour crew. “Then in yr 20, we’ve these artists who’re remembering what they liked, and making an attempt to make artwork of what’s left to them and doing an excellent job of it. So magnificence is vital.”

In spite of everything, for those who immediately eliminated everybody from our current second, there would nonetheless be a lot colour, argues Huang.

“A big a part of this venture is about optimism and reminiscence. These two issues additionally spark colour, as a result of for those who take a look at our world as it’s now, for those who took away all of the folks in it, it’s filled with colour. It’s filled with graphics. It’s a reminiscence of our civilization,” she mentioned. “It creates this world that’s separate from all the opposite language of the post-apocalyptic world that’s on the market.”

Station Eleven is much from the one post-apocalyptic film or TV present to embrace a colour palette that differs from the standard bleak greys and blacks. Mad Max: Fury Highway, as an illustration, is stuffed with crisp blues and burnt yellows, highlighting its desert setting, and different post-apocalyptic tales like I Am Legend and The Strolling Useless have been set in worlds the place greenery has overtaken what as soon as have been human areas.

However what units Station Eleven aside is its willingness to push these vibrant colours to an excessive. Each time the sequence drops us right into a world the place humanity is rebuilding, regardless of the devastation of the Georgia Flu, that world feels virtually inviting. It’s not a suggestion that we needs to be hoping the tip of the world arrives, nevertheless it does supply the promise that even after the tip of every part, folks will hold discovering methods to look after one another. That optimistic vibe wouldn’t work with out the nice and cozy colours of the sequence’ visuals, so the present’s barely idiosyncratic decisions add as much as one thing not like every other present on the market.

“This present was too difficult emotionally to not have colour play an enormous function,” Somerville mentioned.