All Creatures Great and Small - 1 For All Production Update (Patreon)

Hello wonderful backers!

Thank you for your continued patience while we work away behind the scenes, it’s been a busy time here at Deerstalker HQ! Pre-production for our next three episodes is coming to a close, and we are jumping back on set next week to film the second half of season four!

So, what exactly is pre-production? Well, this is where all of our creative team gets to work and makes some movie magic happen. Our writer and director Elliot Ryan workshops the scripts, collaborates with our storyboard artist, and meets with our production design team to start to shape what the episode will look like. From there, our production design team dives into creating the sets, costumes and props you see in the show! Every little detail, from the buttons on a shirt to the items on a table is planned for, sourced and workshopped to make sure it is perfect for the story.

Storyboard art by Yumi (@yumiyumyum.illustration)

This season, we’ve been playing with using scale to bring to life more of the fantastical creatures of fantasy worlds, from hill giants to halflings! This means our costume and prop design teams have to consider how to make our actor (in this case, our DM Kendall Drury) look both large and small as he becomes the different characters. For costume, our designer Laura has used exaggerated proportions, padding, and scaled details (like oversized buttons) to give the illusion of different builds.

Costume elements created by Laura Cagnacci and Jennifer Pryer

Our props team has been working to create scaled hand-held props to further these visual gags! Check out the scale doubles that Thomas Taufan created to help the character appear smaller. This means we can have our main party, and the small character interact with the same prop without breaking the size illusion.

We’ve also had our incredible art department team sourcing and building some fantastic sets for the next few episodes! In the past we’ve mainly used locations to shoot that require minimal set up, but with the generous support we’ve received this season, we’ve been able to create some amazing custom-built sets for our stories to take place in. Rob Mason, our set builder, and Calum Austin, our Art Director, have been hard at work in the workshop sculpting, hammering and painting. We can’t wait to see it all lit up in the studio! (We'd show you a peek but... we need to keep SOME secrets!)

With filming just around the corner, it’s going to be so wonderful to see all these elements come together to create the 1 For All world. We’re going to be sharing on-set peeks and shenanigans on our Instagram stories throughout the week next week, so make sure you are following us at @deerstalkerpictures for all the behind-the-scenes goodness.