dimanche 8 janvier 2017

Rebuilding a Faithful Salem: the Set


From the pilot, the viewers are enabled to have a clear perspective of the town of Salem. The main places where the action is taking place throughout the show, are presented right away to the audience so as to make it familiar with them.
Salem, the series, depicts a rather faithful and sticking to the reality Salem. In an interview for Collider, when Production Designer Seth Reed is asked "It is a history show but it's also a fantasy show, are you taking liberties or are you trying to be as historically accurate as possible?", he answers: " Well, both. We start with being as accurate as we can, as much research as we can get, as much knowledge about the color palettes, about the materials that we used, about the types of architecture, there were a lot of research about the architecture of the period, but then at some point we get the pleasure of digressing away depending on what the script asks us to do. Were there really brothels in the 17th-century Salem ? Probably not. Would they have used colors like this ? Probably not. But in order to convey some of the pieces important to the script, we have to do it. It's been fun."


 The public place and prison, Season 1, Episode 1
 The public place where convicts get punished in front of the village. Executions take place on the wooden stage in order to be visible by all. Under the stage, there are cells where people are held either before being released or being punished.

Outside the church
Inside the church
It is a key place of the show. People often go to the church where the mass takes place, but also the trials.
Indeed, the church is also the court. Every sentence is proclamed in this place. It is thus a place of God, religion but also of justice and punishment. It makes the connection between good and evil in a Puritan point of view. In the final episode of season 2, the church is burnt down after a fight between Mary Sibley and the Countess Marburg. Therefore, even if it is a sacred place, the witches win over it ; evil beats good.


The woods
The shore

The docks
Here are two interesting places: the woods and the shore.
The woods are a place where man did not settle. It represents the wilderness. Nature is represented as a big and powerful force ; indeed, the hive hides there. It is also the place where a seer lives and where dead bodies are being rid of. It is thus a powerful place, full of magic but which symbolizes death as well. Yet, it is where Mary Sibley became a witch, it is thus a place of revival. Interestingly enough, this is where the Native Americans - that we will call Indians - live and appear in the TV series.
On the contrary, the shore is next to the village; it is a place where boats sail. They bring resources, goods in Salem but we can imagine that they also ship goods from Salem to other colonies. It is thus a place of commerce, where the economy grows and it symbolizes the settlement, the obvious mark of mankind into the landscape. This is where the settlers live.
A clear opposition is then made between the settlers and the Indians and between these two places. 


The streets: dwellings of the poor

The streets: an animated place
As we can see it on these stills from the TV series, the streets are represented as filty and dark. The poor live in that place of the town and work in the mud. The streets are half-paved, pavements are only to be seen in front of buildings such as the bar or even the whore house. The streets are then portrayed as an animated area where the daily life takes place.

At the Sibley's
At the Hale's
These two houses are the most important ones in all Salem.

At first, we notice that the Sibley's is darker and bigger than the Hale's, maybe was it made in order to point out to the viewers who is the most powerful in town and who is the witch (Mary Sibley). Later, the viewers get to see a secret place inside the Hale's, only accessible by magic.

Production Designer Seth Reed said about the reconstruction of Salem: "We had a very large crew and we came in during the month of August, there was a lot of planning to do, all the usual surveying and we had a huge team of set designers. An then from there, we came in and started building. Between the carpenters and all the craft people, the decorators and everybody else, we probably had a couple of hundred people working seven days a week for two straight months, even nine or ten weeks, to get it out and ready, and that was only a partial job because then and ever since, I've come in and I've just been adding more and more to everything that you see, everything around."



1 commentaire:

  1. Very informative post. Good analysis of the symbolism of places, especially for the woods (wilderness, Natives, the place of the devil where) and the docks (that represent the imprint of the Europe and civilization).
    Good use of the Collider interview but you should give the complete reference. And also name the rest of your sources.

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