Thinking ahead, Welch had already assigned colors in different episodes - the "Grim Grotto" block, for instance, was a dismal red. The fountain pond, several floors deep in the story, became less than a foot deep for the show. The rooftop pool was 4 feet deep but was only filled with digital water. The main elevator only rose two and a half floors (there was a separate one that dropped down into the subterranean set). Then he started creating spaces inside that were just functional enough for the show's purposes. To evoke the atmosphere of those buildings for the Hotel Denouement - whose rooms are organized in accord with the Dewey Decimal System - Welch combined their designs with the look of a bank of pull-out library card-catalog drawers for the building's façade. And the Bradbury had the same vibe, with its cast-iron mixed with glazed brick and wood. But the central atrium with the skylight in the ceiling was so cool. "Back then," Welch says, "it was in horrible disrepair, and the paint peeling off the walls contained lead, so it would have cost millions to make it safe to use. Welch took inspiration from both real and fictional buildings, among them the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, The Bradbury in Los Angeles, and The Beekman in New York, which he discovered on a scout for the 2012 Men in Black 3 with director Barry Sonnenfeld. "It involved engineering and other things that you don't ordinarily concern yourself with in designing a television show." "I spent a hellacious number of hours trying to figure this thing out," Welch says. Even trickier, the structure needed to convey a sense that there were secrets around every corner. And the hotel needed other features, too: a working elevator, multiple guest rooms, a restaurant, a kitchen, a laundry, a steam room, a rooftop pool, a basement, subterranean passages, and an exterior reflecting pond outside. The massive seaside resort needed to accommodate nearly all of the characters accumulated during the course of three seasons, which meant the lobby had to be huge. Welch's distress was triggered by the thought of designing and constructing the Hotel Denouement, the Netflix series' most complex set. Oof - I'm starting to get sweaty just thinking about it!" "It was going to be fun, too, but I was dreading it.
"From a production standpoint, looking at what we'd have to figure out was pretty daunting," Welch recalls.
When production designer Bo Welch read The Penultimate Peril, the 13th book in Lemony Snicket's 14-volume A Series of Unfortunate Events series, he says he nearly passed out. Today we speak with Bo Welch, the Emmy-nominated production designer for Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This month, SYFY WIRE is speaking to a long list of actors, artists, and artisans whose work earned them Emmy nominations this year.
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