Gallows Hill – Fort Salem

From Motherland: Fort Salem, Season 1.

On the scripted page, there’s a powerful layering of imagery and a blurring visual boundaries during the Gallows Hill scene. What we think is real is only pretend and what we discover to be real in this world is fantasy in our own.

With show runner Eliot Laurence and director Steven Adelson, the art department was determined to give this scene the visual impact it demanded. In order to achieve this, we drew on theatre imagery from the 18th century, specifically the street spectacles of France and Italy. This was a world of flickering floor lights and painted canvas, where great crimes and great deeds were both on the playbill. The “hand pained” curtain and backdrop were in fact created digitally by the brilliant Jonathan Stamp and then printed onto commercial sign canvas.