Decorating Pages: TV and Film Design

How do you design a horror movie set to actually make an audience uncomfortable?

Production Designer Nick Bassett joins Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop to go behind the scenes of Insidious: Out of the Further, the latest chapter in the Insidious horror franchise.

Nick reveals how the production design team created the film’s terrifying practical environments—from the enormous pillow-fort maze to Gemma’s family home, the dentist office and the tattoo parlor built partially in reverse for an elaborate mirror sequence.

They break down how architecture can create suspense, why hallways and rooms are sometimes intentionally altered for horror blocking, how the same house was transformed between the 1990s and the present day, and how practical sets, in-camera effects and visual effects worked together to expand The Further.

Nick also talks about working with Set Decorator Maddie Worthington, sourcing American-looking furniture while shooting in Melbourne, designing believable character history through set decoration, the pressure of an extremely short prep schedule, and why some of the most important production design choices are the details audiences may never consciously notice.

Bassett’s credits include Evil Dead Rise, Sweet Tooth, Ash vs Evil Dead, Fear Street: Prom Queen, Avatar and Guns Akimbo.

If you love Insidious, horror movie sets, production design, set decoration, practical effects, filmmaking and behind-the-scenes movie stories, this episode is for you.

Watch the full video interview on the Decorating Pages Podcast YouTube channel for Nick’s drawings, set photographs and behind-the-scenes images.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

👉 Love movie & TV design? Join Decorating Pages for behind-the-scenes stories, set breakdowns + new interviews

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

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Stanley Kubrick’s films are known for their unmistakable visual style — but who actually designed the sets?

Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop examines the production design and set decoration of five Stanley Kubrick films: The Killing, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon and The Shining.

Go inside Ruth Sobotka’s stark noir environments for The Killing, the Oscar-winning art direction and set decoration of Spartacus, Ken Adam’s legendary Dr. Strangelove War Room, the historic locations and candlelit interiors of Barry Lyndon, and Roy Walker’s unforgettable Overlook Hotel for The Shining.

Kim breaks down the impossible architecture of the Overlook, Room 237, the red bathroom, the truth about Barry Lyndonbeing shot by candlelight, Kubrick’s use of negative space and architecture, and how production designers, art directors, set decorators and cinematographers helped create what we now think of as the “Kubrick” look.

A production design deep dive into five classic films — and the designers whose work deserves to be part of the conversation.

What did Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Punky Brewster, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Full House, Scooby-Doo, Rainbow Brite and Jem teach us about design before we even knew what production design was?

In this episode of Decorating Pages, Emmy-winning set decorator Kim Wannop goes back to the television worlds that shaped a generation of kids growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Why did the Sesame Street neighborhood feel so real? Why does Mister Rogers’ set still feel remarkably calm? Why did Punky Brewster’s bedroom make so many kids want control over their own rooms? And how did the extraordinary visual world of Pee-wee’s Playhouse prove that objects, colors, patterns and furniture don't have to match when they share a strong point of view?

Kim also revisits early Nickelodeon favorites including Pinwheel and Today’s Special, the evolving bedrooms of Full House and Clarissa Explains It All, and the animated worlds of Scooby-Doo, Rainbow Brite and Jem and the Holograms.

It’s a nostalgic look at 1980s television, production design, set decoration, color and childhood spaces — and at the visual lessons we were absorbing long before we knew how much those environments were influencing us.

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

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I spent both nights of the 2026 Emmys inside the Peacock Theater, and this week I’m taking you with me — from a Decorating Pages point of view.

We’re talking about this year’s Production Design Emmy winners, including The Muppet Show, The Traitors, Fallout, Widow’s Bay and Pluribus, and an extraordinary weekend for Production Designer Denise Pizzini, who walked away with Emmys for two completely different shows.

But this isn’t just a winners recap. I wanted to talk about what these nights actually feel like when you work in the crafts: sitting in a theater surrounded by editors, costume designers, sound teams, production designers, set decorators and hundreds of other artists whose names usually live in the end credits.

I’ll take you inside the Peacock Theater, talk about this year’s Emmy stage, the speeches, seeing past Decorating Pages guests become Emmy winners — and then walk into the Governors Gala with me before anyone else gets there.

As one of this year’s Gala Committee Chairs, I got to see the finished “Garden After Dark” design completely empty before more than 2,000 guests came through the doors. And yes, I looked at the whole thing like a giant set.

Plus, What Wannop’s Watching: The Odyssey, Reality Bites and Lanterns.

This is the Emmys through the eyes of the people who build the worlds on screen.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

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How do you design a modern Los Angeles noir without simply recreating the past?

In this episode of Decorating Pages, I talk with Production Designer Meghan C. Rogers about creating the visual world of Season 2 of Apple TV’s Sugar, starring Colin Farrell. Meghan joined the series for its second season and pushed the show’s established noir language further, using architecture, texture, lighting and locations to make Los Angeles itself part of John Sugar’s story.

We get into the massive Indonesia sequence built at the Paramount water tank, including the engineering, water-safety and fire requirements behind a set that had to work both inside and outside. Meghan also takes us through the Hotel Del Corazon and its Casablanca-inspired circular bar, Sugar’s mid-century hideaway in the Hollywood Hills, the boxing gym, K-Town locations, homeless encampments created beneath some of LA’s incredible concrete architecture, and a vintage trailer the art department found on Facebook Marketplace.

We also talk about the less glamorous realities behind what appears on screen: graphics departments, graffiti and artwork clearances, sun studies, multiple company moves in a single day, rebuilding interiors, finding camera-friendly architecture and what happens when production asks you to flip a set…and then suddenly needs the original set back.

For Meghan, the opportunity was ultimately about showing Los Angeles in all of its layers—from glamorous hilltop views to the city underneath the freeways—and finding a contemporary version of classic noir that still belongs completely to Sugar.

Sugar Season 2 is streaming on Apple TV.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

👉 Love movie & TV design? Join Decorating Pages for behind-the-scenes stories, set breakdowns + new interviews

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

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Presented by HBO Max | For Your ConsiderationIn this special Emmy® season episode of Decorating Pages, I’m joined by five HBO Max Emmy-nominated production designers whose shows could not look more different: Nina Ruscio of The Pitt, Bob Shaw of The Gilded Age, François Audouy of Euphoria, Rob Tokarz of Hacks, and Tom McCullagh of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.We get into what production design actually does for storytelling — from making a 25,000-square-foot emergency department disappear into reality on The Pitt, to transforming existing locations into the extravagant world of The Gilded Age. Rob Tokarz breaks down creating an entire fictional 1970s television history for Hacks, François Audouy talks about shooting Euphoria on film and building a practical miniature Los Angeles for its giant Cassie sequence, and Tom McCullagh takes us inside the enormous Ashford tournament build for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

We also talk about something every production designer understands: finding the location you don't want, making it work anyway, designing sets that can shoot in every direction, building spaces actors actually respond to, and creating worlds that support story without calling attention to themselves.At the end, I ask each designer to choose one set they would show a film student to explain what the art department really does — and their answers are practically a production design class in themselves.

Featured Production Designers:Nina Ruscio — The Pitt. Bob Shaw — The Gilded Age François Audouy — Euphoria Rob Tokarz — Hacks.Tom McCullagh — A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Explore the HBO Max FYC experience and watch the nominated programs:https://www.hbomaxfyc.com/homeFYC Site Access Code: B25C8W3R

More from this special presentation:https://www.decoratingpagespodcast.com/hbomaxfyc

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

👉 Love movie & TV design? Join Decorating Pages for behind-the-scenes stories, set breakdowns + new interviews

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

📲 Follow for daily design content

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How do you bring back one of television’s most beloved environments when almost none of the original scenery or plans still exists?

Emmy-nominated Production Designer Denise Pizzini and Set Decorator Bethany Barton reveal how their team recreated the original Muppet Theatre for the Disney+ special The Muppet Show.

Using screenshots, extensive research and one surviving drawing of Kermit’s backstage office, they reconstructed the theatre’s architecture, auditorium, backstage spaces, practical lighting and decades of beautifully controlled clutter.

Denise and Bethany explain the hidden engineering required to design simultaneously for Muppets, puppeteers and human performers—from elevated stages and hollow counters to removable chair backs, adjustable furniture and performer pits.

They also take us inside Sabrina Carpenter’s glittering cowboy bar, Miss Piggy’s Bridgerton-inspired ballroom, the Bayou musical number and Gonzo’s practical stunt set with real fire and sparks.

It’s a detailed look at nostalgia, scale, fabrication and the high-stakes scavenger hunt required to make Jim Henson’s world feel as though it never stopped living.

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

📲 Follow for daily design content

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Production Designer Laurin Kelsey joins Decorating Pages to discuss designing Elle, the new Prime Video series from Amazon MGM Studios.

Laurin takes us inside the visual world of a younger Elle Woods and explains how production design helped build her backstory through color, contrast, nostalgia, and character. We talk about finding Elle’s signature pink, creating the difference between Beverly Hills and Seattle, and designing the spaces that shape her world before UCLA and Harvard.

In this episode, we discuss Elle’s bedroom, the Woods family house, the Seattle high school, the Cosmo office, Blockbuster, and how the design team balanced 90s authenticity with a fresh visual style for today’s audience.

This conversation is a thoughtful look at how production design and set decoration can reveal who a character is becoming through palette, texture, space, and detail.

Listen to Decorating Pages for more interviews with the production designers, set decorators, and art department teams behind your favorite shows and films.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

📲 Follow for daily design content

Instagram: @decoratingpages

TikTok: @decoratingpagespodcast

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In this episode of Decorating Pages, Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop takes a design-forward look at the production design of summer blockbusters.

From Jaws and Star Wars to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Top Gun: Maverick, Inside Out 2, and Barbie, this episode explores how production design and set decoration helped turn summer movies into cultural events.

Kim breaks down how blockbuster worlds are built to read instantly, create emotion, support story, and stay in the audience’s memory long after the credits roll. From beach towns and spaceships to suburban homes, dinosaur parks, pirate ships, and dream houses, these are the sets that helped define generations of moviegoing.

A must-listen for fans of production design, set decoration, filmmaking, movie history, summer movies, and behind-the-scenes film craft.

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

📲 Follow for daily design content

Instagram: @decoratingpages

TikTok: @decoratingpagespodcast

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Production Designer Cabot McMullen, Art Director Raf Lydon, and Set Decoration Buyer Susan Chooljian join Decorating Pages Podcast to discuss the production design of HBO’s Rooster.

Host Kim Wannop talks with the team about designing Ludlow College, creating an East Coast campus world in California, and building half-hour comedy sets with scale, texture, history, and character. Cabot shares his long creative history with Bill Lawrence, from Spin City and Scrubs to Shrinking and Rooster, and explains how authenticity drives the design of the show.

The conversation covers the Warner Bros. stage builds, University of the Pacific exteriors, neo-Gothic architecture, the Elizabeth Stoddard Student Center, Walt’s office, the diner, the bar, the steam room, custom wallpaper, aging, plaster work, sourcing, graphics, and the layered design details that make Rooster feel like a real college town.

For Your Emmy Consideration: RoosterOutstanding Production Design for a Half-Hour Program

Production Designer: Cabot McMullenArt Director: Raf LydonSet Decoration Buyer: Susan Chooljian

Listen to Decorating Pages Podcast for behind-the-scenes interviews with Production Designers, Set Decorators, Art Directors, and the creative teams behind the sets of film and television.

👉 Get the FREE Quick Reference Set Decorating Template: www.decoratingpagespodcast.com

Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast

Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.

Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.

🔔 Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

📲 Follow for daily design content

Instagram: @decoratingpages

TikTok: @decoratingpagespodcast

YouTube: Decorating Pages Podcast