It’s one of my geekier predispositions, my obsession with scrutinizing the sets on TV shows. I watch television armed with a pencil and graph paper, sketching out the floorplans and trying to figure out how the sets are positioned on the stage. I’ve been doing it for years, without realizing that it could be art. Of course, what makes my little drawings different from Mark Bennett’s is that mine are rooted in reality, drawings of the sets as they actually stand on the stages. Bennett creates blueprints of the actual buildings represented by the sets, taking liberties as necessary when the sets don’t translate into real-world architecture.
Anyway. I figured I’d start sharing my drawings with you from time to time. First up, here’s the main set from “St. Elsewhere,” which I’ve been watching this week. (The first season DVD set just arrived! Yay!) This is a cleaned up, Illustrator version of my pencil sketch, which is a work in progress and covered with erasure marks and pencilled-in notes. Fans of the show will instantly recognize this as the “main corridor” of St. Eligius Hospital. I believe this set lived in soundstage 2 at the CBS Studio Center, by the way. Ironically, that stage is right next to the former location of the Gilligan’s Island lagoon, which Mark Bennett covered in his sketches.
It’s one of my geekier predispositions, my obsession with scrutinizing the sets on TV shows. I watch television armed with a pencil and graph paper, sketching out the floorplans and trying to figure out how the sets are positioned on the stage.
