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By now, it’s a given that watching Christopher Storer’s smash hit series “The Bear” is a very stressful endeavor. That doesn’t mean it has be stressful to make the Emmy-winning comedy from FX, starring Jeremy Allen White as one hell of a driven chef, bent on turning his brother’s classic Italian beef shop into the finest of fine dining establishments (and is about to drop its fifth and final season).
Yes, it may be a pressure-cooker on-screen, but nifty and smart production design elements help life on set feel just a little easier for all involved. To that end, production designer Merje Veski and her team turned to practical fixes to keep things cooking.
“The restaurant, everything is designed with the lighting in there, even under the shelves so you can just go in and film,” Veski explained during IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables. It’s a smart choice, she added, “especially [because of] the tone of the entire show and all the busy-ness and craziness was going in the kitchen.”
Baking in (sorry, we had to) real lighting doesn’t just help the set feel real and lived in, it saves time and energy when production starts. Veski shared that lights are everywhere in the kitchen and restaurant, all the better to get things cooking with gas (sorry, again) in the minimum of time. Watch even one episode of “The Bear,” and you get why time is of the essence in every kitchen. It’s no different on set.
“You don’t have this extra time for lighting and setting it up,” she said. “It’s ready. You’re just turning on and we have lightings in the walls, under the shelves, above the shelves, in the cabinets, everywhere.”
That’s practical production design, as easy as, say, flipping on a light or simply saying, “Yes, chef!”
This conversation is presented in partnership with FX.
IndieWire’s TV Craft Roundtables is now streaming on @PBSSoCal and the PBS App as well as IndieWire.com and our social channels.
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