Work by an alumna for the F/X show Reservation Dogs won a prestigious Art Directors Guild Award. Stacy Suvino, Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design ’08 (now called Spatial Experience Design), acted as a set decoration buyer on a team headed up by production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly in the category Half Hour Single-Camera series.
Suvino wrote to Newsroom about the experience: “We were nominated for the ‘Deer Lady’ episode, which depicts a difficult time in history, the 1950s, when Native American children were sent to boarding schools to assimilate. The sets featured are the classroom, dorm, mess hall, and a modern-day residence of the priest who ran the boarding school back then.” (See some examples in the gallery, above.)
“A lot of research went into preparation,” she continued. “We based the visuals on photographs and recollected memories of survivors. Two weeks before filming, we had a warehouse fire that destroyed crew members’ kits and tools. Some of ‘scenic’ (signs, background, etc.) was destroyed and several pieces of set decoration were also lost and some damaged. Our team pushed through and replaced what we could, and put together these sets two weeks later.”
Suvino also did set decoration buying for the Oscar-nominated film Minari.
Held February 10, the ADG Awards celebrate outstanding production design in theatrical motion pictures, television, commercials, animated features and music videos.
