Dark secrets lay deep below the icy surface in HBOs detective anthology dramaTrue Detective: Night Country.
The investigation of their death leads the pair to unearth a conspiracy in a internet of ice tunnels.
And then she referred you toTrue Detective?
Jodie Foster as Detective Liz Danvers and Kali Reis as Detective Evangeline Navarro.HBO
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DANIEL TAYLOR:Exactly.
Im writing the show, running, directing.
Do you want to be in?
Ice Cave concept boardsHBO/Daniel Taylor
And Im like, Yep, thatd be quite cool, thanks.
Its got an extraordinary presence in terms of a high watermark of filmmaking.
DEADLINE: When you got the script, how did you interpret that in your mind?
Did you get inspired by some music first or Pinterest mood boards?
How the fuck are we going to shoot this?
It took me a long time to start to process the process.
I just was like, this is something that I havent done before.
I havent even come close to doing something like this.
This is proper world-building in another country to double for another country.
Its just referencing and researching.
I mean, we went to those places.
We went to Nome and Kotzebue and thought, How are we going to make our Ennis?
So we went to Alaska, and then we went to Iceland on a kind of fact-finding mission.
Can we recreate Alaska in these parts of Iceland?
Theres lots of other factors, too, right?
How available is everything?
Is there a competent film community?
The temperatures are a lot harsher.
It will just ruin everything.
And then, very quickly, we started building this town where everybody lives.
It was the most fun process.
DEADLINE: What were some challenges with building sets in Iceland while trying to make them look American?
TAYLOR:Theres two parts to this question.
So, theres a lot of stuff that I felt like I was tasked with getting right.
I imagine there are huge amounts of Alaska that most people from the U.S. generally havent seen.
Thats a headache everywhere you go.
And then you have to put them back when you move out of the house.
All of the light fittings needed changing.
So, it was complicated in that respect.
But to be honest, that is always the situation.
Whenever you kind of go into filmmaking thats largely location-based, youre going to have these complications.
We had to treatTrue Detectivelike a period movie because you have to change everything.
Sarah Ayagi Whalen Lunn ended up coming on board as our indigenous artist.
So, she did a lot of the graffiti and artwork around and in peoples homes.
Shes an Inupiaq artist living in Anchorage; shes a fucking genius, that lady.
I think thats really important because part of my work as a production designer is a lot more psychological.
DEADLINE: Id be remiss if I didnt mention the ice caves.
How did you approach building those?
So, we needed to make the ice caves work to join the two set pieces.
We wanted the first cave they break through to be small, little and a bit of a struggle.
And then as they get into the more established tunnel, they become slightly larger.
He works in Unreal Engine, the game engine.
We built bits up on a roster so they could fall through.
DEADLINE: What is it like to build an ice cave when youre already in Iceland, though?
TAYLOR:Yeah, to be honest, I was like, Guys, were in Iceland.
There are ice caves here.
Can we not shoot an ice cave?
Because part of me was a little bit scared about delivering a convincing ice cave.
I hadnt seen one thats been built before.
I worried because I lost sleep thinking about how we were going to fabricate this environment.
The build allowed us to take sections out.
It was complicated in that aspect, but it was so good and effective.
The construction manager had brought his neighbor in, and it was like a theme park ride.
So, it ended up being quite the attraction.
