Set Designer Evan Spence talks about Billy the Kid, Fargo, and more

Greg Staffa: 0:00

You're listening to the Staffa corner podcast, a staffer terian look at entertainment in life with your host, Greg Staffa? My guest this episode is talented architect for shows such as Fargo, Billy the Kid Fraggle Rock, and even Ghostbusters afterlife. I'm pleased to have Evan Spence on with us today. Thank you, Evan, for joining us.

Evan Spence: 0:42

Thank you for inviting me.

Greg Staffa: 0:43

So tell us a little bit about what got you started working on films and television.

Evan Spence: 0:47

It was nine years ago that I went out on my own as a practicing architect. starting my career as a single soldier, style firm. I didn't have a lot of work to start out with. So it became known to a local art director that I had some time by way of a friend of mine who was a painter on some previous shows that had been on she passed along. My Art Director Bill Ives was hiring for the second season of Fargo, the TV series which was cleaning up at a time when hell on wheels, seasons five and six recruiting up as well as there was a shortage of crew in Calgary to tackle on the shows that we had coming in at time. And they were looking for perhaps people who hadn't worked in film before certainly me came in met the production designer Warren young talk to Bill came in the next day, more or less immediately started drawing the cane waffle up.

Greg Staffa: 1:55

Oh, wow.

Evan Spence: 1:56

And so I mean, it came down to someone needed something drawn is in time, didn't know what I was getting into. It was a maelstrom of activities for sure. Fargo season two, I do ferociously for six or seven months on Amazon that that season, and kind of hard to describe the feeling at the end of it. I felt pretty much physically exhausted but grateful for the opportunity.

Greg Staffa: 2:27

Where do you learn to start doing architecting? You said a couple years ago you started doing this but what was what got you started in designing and stuff like that to begin with?

Evan Spence: 2:38

I started out as plain Jane registered architect working for several firms in Calgary, local design boutique, Sturgis architecture national firm by the partnership architects I moved on to a design build firm. Coover in the Calgary office called Omicron became registered, which is to say, you get your stamp and your professional designation, and then started looking around for the next thing to do. I think there was never any good time to go out on on on your own. So I just took a deep breath and dove in and decided to do it. And shortly thereafter dogleg left and wound up in film, right after Fargo, I wasn't sure if film work was going to proceed. So I hadn't fully, I guess committed in my head that I was a set designer full time or permanent life and I was still moonlighting as architect doing architectural projects with candidates improvement projects, to do the interiors for a liquor store or, or someone's house or something like that. But the film work, did persist, immediately got hired on to the first season of Wynonna herb show that films here. So it just sort of just sort of rolled forward from there, the work has been very consistent, allowing for things like COVID and things like doubled up labor strife. But for these, these nine years, it's been been very consistent. So where do you show like toggle? Where do you enter into the process? And how far do you see it through? You've got Production Designer. In the case of Fargo first season was Warren a young this production designer from Los Angeles. First season for me that would be the second season of Fargo was production designed by Warren young. And then the third season of Fargo. I worked with production designer, Elizabeth Williams, who comes by way of Montreal, those production designers come up with the look and the feel of the show. walls full of visuals to sort of guide themselves and others Working on it. And showrunner No, Holly, and producers, what? Each episode what each script, what each set should look like guiding sort of look and feel, and colors, textures, those sorts of things. And that coupled with copy of the script, copy in the one line schedule, get us down to the, okay, these are the steps that if we're going to build it, how will we build it? The question I answer, if you're going to find a location, where will we do that? And what will we do to the location to make it jog with the vision that's on the wall and communicate it to show runners and producers and serves the story. So production designer has the vision, and we sort of have a mechanical set of instructions, the script what needs to be filmed scene by scene, and then we sort of parse it out into, into the sets and the builds. And that's absolutely where I come in. And sort of as soon as, as soon as possible, the race always being, you have a certain amount of prep time, somewhere between eight and 12 weeks on a show, I guess. And you want to spend as much of that time building, and as little of that time drawing and rule gathering. So it's always a rush to put down on paper as clearly and quickly as possible. Those those parts of the design that have to be communicated to the people that can agree to it. That's exactly what we want, so that it can be put into the hands of the carpenters, the sculptors, the painters, dresses after that.

Greg Staffa: 6:58

And then once your drawings and everything is done, do you stay with it? Or do you move on to another project? Or how does that work?

Evan Spence: 7:06

I stay with it insofar as I have a duty to the drawings. So if a carpenter can't understand something, because communicated clearly, or I drew something that just plain old doesn't fit, I have to answer to that and get a confused call from a carpenter saying, what's the vision here or this isn't very clear, or I'm missing an elevation. But I don't have sort of the classic architectural role of reviewing the construction to make sure it's in compliance with the drawing construction coordinator will do their very best to deliver that which is on the sheet. And if it can't be done exactly on the as it was put down on the sheet, and the carps will do do their best to get the thing that I think is closest, and then it's up to all the rest of the parties involved. And there's a massive team after after the two by fours and the drywall on such gifts, there's just a massive team to address that and make it into it. I think that just isn't walls and floors and roof. So there's a there's a role for art directors to come in and and point things out and make changes or take some photographs and redline those. But by and large, I don't do a lot of on the set.

Greg Staffa: 8:31

I'm always amazed taking Billy the Kid which Season Two comes out by the time this podcast, it'll be out. Or at least beginning we hillbilly a kid we always pay great attention to historical details as far as to look the weaponry of clothing, but I've always found like in Billy kids example, you can go to Lincoln County and see Tunsil store and here it is recreated in the film or in the in the series, but it doesn't look like the actual store. And you know, I would part of me wonders, you know, why not just create what's already there and you have the dimensions you have the all the walls lined up and everything like that. When you're recreating something that's historically there, where's that kind of fine line between your interpretation for series trying to get the best camera angles and and what's the best for the director's vision stuff like that, versus staying historically? Accurate?

Evan Spence: 9:35

Right. Well, we're making, we're making a movie here. We're not making a documentary. That is our guiding principle. We want to serve the story more than we necessarily feel we have to be historically true. Tunstall stores a pretty modest building in actuality. Yes, You know, in a very modest space actually sort of the the built environment of blank and counting, for instance, is pretty sparse. And we've shown it the parts of towns and subsidiaries shown or have more built fabric than then was actual, that's definitely true. Because it's more of them to be cinematic interesting versus in reality. This is a practical concern. Season One of Billy the Kid was a tremendous build for us, given the couple months of lead time that we had, and telling a road story, to start New York and walk our way across the country. So we built portions of all of those towns along the way, coffee bill, the New York tenement, Silver City, and others, I want to say there's essentially seven cities or towns that we had to dress, which is tricky. We there are in around Calgary, to the west of us, there's seal Ranch, western town, film sense. Been in just about every Western that we've shot around here. And to the southeast of us is Albert Kena, another western town that we filming all the time. And these things are both in the zone. So they're they're close enough to the center of Calgary that productions shooting out of Calgary cancan film at these locations without having to pay sort of distance penalties to all the casting crew, right. So they're very film friendly places. And they're full of like, it's like a sandbox full of old western buildings, films, productions roll in. And you don't want it to look like the last thing that goes there. So you have to make changes, and then the sandbox. So we would go in we're familiar with by now, I've got 3d models of all these buildings in both of these towns as a starting point. So the design visualization is very fluid, very easy for us to do. And you look at the built collateral that you have to start with, and you look at the script and you go well, okay, we have a solar, we can use it for that. We need a boarding house while we have this building that Louis will turn into a boarding house by adding some partition walls and getting some beds. And for sure that happened on season one building the kid. There was a lot of call for boarding houses in the script and of course, lots of calls for sleep. So it's repurposing existing stock and to sort of bring this back around to the Tunstall store, that part of the story is filmed at seal Ranch, west of town. And that was a building which had spent previous lives basically just being it was a train station building, I think, at one point and it'd become sort of the carpenter's shop for a bunch of years. And we repurposed that and repaired it and change some floor decking and stuff to sort of trough it up and, and, and make it look like a pretty inviting place. We were pretty happy with the transformation we had. It was pretty, kind of weird and derelict before that. We thought it worked well for reasons of sightlines in and around town. There's some Season Two spoilers I won't get into that. We thought it worked well for us. Well, we needed to use that particular building as Tunstall store because we were busy building all the other towns that we had to deliver and if we can just tick the box and we've got our store doing this interior work, then we've got our store not and that's true of the other store to the other store. That's story as well, right? We repurposed that was a schoolhouse in previous movies, and it became the store.

Greg Staffa: 13:59

And to be fair, you know, movies like Young Guns didn't do that either. It's the cinematic Trumps reality, but for someone it's knowing the area, I was always curious and wanting how they can have been visually, I love the series so far. I'm four episodes into Season Two. There's one great shot that I knew wouldn't be done if he had used the real location cuz the street doesn't work that way. But there's a beautiful shot, they turn the corner.And it's just a simple shop and it's just amazing. I love westerns. One of the things that struck me for season one was one of the opening shots showed you you know all the details of it, but it showed us New York. It was a shot of the higher up larger buildings. And it's all digitally created. And you couldn't you couldn't tell in the series, but we got really advanced and we got to see it. How much does digital influences and stuff like the volume that you're seeing more and more of like Marvel and Star Wars on Disney plus? Has that impacting your work or doesn't eat yet?

Evan Spence: 15:24

Yeah, it comes up all the time, maybe less. So in sort of doing as many Westerns as it seems that I do. But the New York scene, you're right, we, we built a five storey tenement apartment dran, probably 30, some feet wide. And all those stories for young Billy to race up through all the stairs, and stuff like the volume show up in Calgary, I had the opportunity to tour a provider that was showing just one wall have the same sort of resolution, the same sort of technology that Marvel volumes are made out of. So it's something that people are toying with bringing into the region, I guess. But I've never had the opportunity to provide any sort of digital background to anything. That said, every, these last few shows, definitely moved into more world creation. With software we're using in our department, we're using free software blender for World creation, to help with design visualization and show extensive landscapes. This past season two ability to kit we've used it very extensively. Yeah, you send a drone up, you get a scan of all the landscape, particularly the truly gorgeous landscape and around Turner Valley, where a lot of the scenes are being shot, and bring that into into blender and then put our forts and sets right into that it's a lot of fun, right? To use to use what amounts to like video game type software to raise the little guy around and show directors and producers and production designers. What it should literally look like there's not a lot of guesswork involved in there kind of showing the photorealistic representation, and then you know, throwing on throwing on the actual camera lens. So they're gonna use as well to try to be as literal as possible. I mean, there's dangers with that. It's easy to get hung up on. Well, that's, that's not the color that Billy's shirt is going to be. We weren't really looking at a shirt, right? It's a lot of fun to use all these role creation tools that the video game world have provided to us to help everyone understand what it is we're going to what it is we're going to build. And then I take that fantastic world, boil it down into what I jokingly call these boring drawings, right black lines on white sheets and get handed to carpenters. But that's the thing that I really like to do. Yeah, but without that I think your job is so fascinating because you are the one that puts paper to wood. I mean it just without your visualization. And it's amazing. Just after all these years of, of technology and filming, we still resort to drawings, we still restart resort to storyboards, we still old school things that rely on someone like you that is instrumental in creating what we end up seeing on on screen. That said the last couple of construction coordinators I've worked with Johansson on this season are really the kid and J Bart lane and doing the ramp on Fraggle Rock and first season with the kid they all have CNC machines for cutting things digitally, from files that I provide them. So if we ever get into a situation where we need to do elaborate shapes, such as ability, like curved fronts to adobe buildings, for instance, I provide them with cutouts, that they with the computer then provide curved sweeps that they can frame. So yes, paper would write that migration is traditional and timeless. But also, we're making really good use of these guys having invested in the technology that allow me to hand them a file and get that cut, kind of later that afternoon to move things along. For for scenery, such as in Fraggle Rock, but you'd be surprised how much we make use of it for what what you would think would be very traditional kind of builds like

Greg Staffa: 19:42

I was amazed season one when these sent out to critics season one was very rough cut and I was amazed of how much digital manipulation is used in a Western. I mean, you don't think that you need to cheat and do things but it was I was amazed of how much kind of digitally gets added this season

Evan Spence: 20:02

I was amazed Coronavirus seemed much more noticeable this season that they're using getting spectacular shots. Yeah, well, we would love the opportunity to get back to filming those we'd rate to get the fourth episode of season one out just before we were shut down for reasons of strike. If you've seen four episodes of season two, that is all the episodes that exists. Impact. They've made good use obviously of the time since then to get them out.

Greg Staffa: 20:38

Yeah, I don't recall anything, though. unfinished. I mean, there might have been something that I'll tweak or whatnot been looking for completed episode for us on the on the press site.

Evan Spence: 20:49

And with the promise of another for sometime in 2024, directly we get back to work.

Greg Staffa: 20:55

Now, are you able to when you do something like Billy kid, are you able to go back and watch it as a fan? Or is it just just a job you send in your stuff? They went off and filmed it? You're done with it? I mean, or is it something that you

Evan Spence: 21:10

it's kind of hard to watch anything just as a fan? And actually, we're always kind of picking things apart a little bit going, okay, I can see where they're wilding, that wall behind them to get that camera shot. Kind of hard steps on the fly. So having read the script, and drawn the sets, and seeing the dailies is you kind of can't, I don't anyways, pull back and sort of just enjoy it for the for the suspense, you're always thinking of what could what I could have done better what I would do next time, or if I could do it again. And those sorts of things. And that's just the honest truth. Having spent so much time visualizing it, and drawing it, kind of experiencing the reality of it is kind of the strangest kind of deja vu, I guess, right rhyming that which is built in shot with that which has been conceived. And it's almost too much like another day of work at the studio, watching it again, having seen all the dailies and all the other ones.

Greg Staffa: 22:26

Now, oftentimes, with creative people, you'll see them, they'll leave their mark, or like an artist might put his initials in a drawing or, you know, a director might have a certain use of lens flare or use of pigeons in their, in their films and stuff like that. As an architect, is there something that you do that leaves your print that you can say,

Evan Spence: 22:56

I'm not trying to sneak anything onto a set. For instance, don't feel that I have any specific one talks that I would put on a staff in order to make my marks I feel, I'm just trying to do the thing that delivers the thing that the story is right, I feel that my mark is on the physical drawing that I printed out and hand to the guy, all my drawings have a certain uniformity of presentation, and annotation that I would contend is unique to me. And unique to me by way of being architect by training.

Greg Staffa: 23:37

Now,that you designed and built and everything like that. If a director has a problem or an issue with a door being somewhere or does that go back to you then to re kind of designer? Or can they have the the builders that are building and say, Hey, we want this move to here?

Evan Spence: 23:55

if we're close enough to the day that directors pointing out something that's not going to work and need species that's going to be mentioned by them, and then taken care of by construction construction coordinator, or if it's on the day, it's going to be taken care of by the onset carpenter to move the thing. It's great if I can find out what changed. Sometimes I catch it in the dailies. Or someone will let me know or Hey, have you got this wrong? They'll feel seen and updated on the drawing. Just to have the record set be right again. Go back there we're using that again. Or if I'm updating for the next episode, something like a director's plan. I provide very simplified copies of my construction drawings. I boil them down into really black lines for walls and simple door swings and stuff that people can look at him understand them easily and write all over them. And those packages go out there every for every episode or every block of episodes that's been built, and directors can do so. So I like to have those caught up to the actual thing that's on the stage, or at the location. If something changes. Yeah, I want to hear about it by hook or by crook. But usually, if it's early in the process, I'll issue a revision to the drawing, and the carpenters will make the change. But if it's getting close enough that filmmakers are making the changes, usually at Castle,

Greg Staffa: 25:27

You have done stuff like Fraggle Rock, kid, one is a real environment and one is fictional. Is there a challenge between doing real or fictional which which do you find more creative, liberating, and which do you find more of a challenge?

Evan Spence: 25:42

Well, the challenge with the sort of the recreations stuff is I get to talk to folks like you who are fans of the actual thing, and sort of have to post rationalize and justify why it's not literally a historical thing, right. So there's that, I would say, balance between historical recreation and storytelling, which is a pretty nice thing to be worried about. I did a Disney film togel Wonderful. diphtheria diphtheria, diphtheria run dog sled movie. And we had great drawings of all of the road houses, that cupola would have stopped out all the way along the way. In the 30s, American government paid a bunch of our unemployed architects to go document all these buildings as sort of a make work project. So there's really great drawing all these buildings. And I was very mindful of the drawings that I had in hand from the sources of these roadhouses. I was gonna recreate. There's lots of moviemaking reasons, we didn't do them exactly like that. But for sure, historical record informed some portion of the look and feel that we delivered for that Fraggle Rock. By contrast, I mean, it was a reason. So we had some, I guess you would say historical precedent to well, docks place should look like the docks place a little bit from the 80s, we did that we delivered that we changed the aspect ratio of the windows that you look through and one of the title cards, we change the aspect ratio from four to three to 16 to nine, that sort of mirrors the changing so that people screen, but we're pretty, we did a pretty good recreation of boxplot. All the sets and Fraggle got a lot bigger for our reboots. So it was, okay, we have a look and feel, but we just want more, more more. The gorg set, for instance, was was was enormous as was a great home, but project like Fraggle Rock, you kind of have a lot of blank white page to stare at, you know what I mean? I mean, that that was taken care of very clearly, by production designer and Tyler hair. He led the way with, okay, it's gonna look like this. And he provided models and sketches done by himself into illustrators to communicate the look and feel of things. So we had that to work from, and you could just about not make a wrong move, because, one, it's actually going to its puppet show, right?

Greg Staffa: 28:25

You might have been doing this long enough to notice the difference. But over the last 1012 years, he has really come more and more common. I remember TVs 10 years ago versus now the attention to detail that what the TV camera can pick up is hugely different. Have you noticed a change in in some of your drawings that you can't get away with certain kind of, I don't want to say cheats, but things that you could have gotten away with with the camera 10 years ago, now has to have more detail in it. Is that something that you noticed or no?

Evan Spence: 29:01

Absolutely true. worries me sometimes that's all these HD TVs are gonna make my job impossible. But the funny thing is, I came to this Yeah, I guess, kind of late in that transition. And I came to it from a world where I was always drawing the thing that was literally the thing that I wanted. So I had one art director looking through my drawings and talking to him about the next show. And yeah, if you stopped on one drawing from Oregon, how do you think your tiles look like tile or tile, whereas we had put down actual tile and one of the washrooms whereas in previous years you might have gotten away with cutting dadoes into 10 tests and painting it with a glossy paint to make them look like tile. It just The vote doesn't work like that anymore. So in a lot of ways we're doing the literal construction thing as as a means to address getting the right look for the thing, rather than rather than sheets. That said, we've had some really great cheat in just the last couple of years of my life with the Walter boys, we were doing school, high school interiors. Those shows, those building types often have exposed concrete block, we're not going to build something out of concrete block. So we're making concrete block out of MDF and scenically painted to look a certain way. Or I saw a really great treatment done by construction coordinator elf art, where he took acoustic ceiling tiles and sculpted those into the copper sheets to get the module for a concrete block. And paint does miraculous thing as a department. So if it is possible to cheat materials or other materials, absolutely, we do it all the time. But we would only do so very, very carefully, like it's got to be the cheat has to be good enough that you can walk up to it and still believe it because otherwise, I feel the cameras gonna pick it up. But I am I am pretty literal, we build a lot of stuff with with real framing real drywall rather than Luan plywood. One by three,

Greg Staffa: 31:36

I just remember hearing nightmares about like new stations had to all redo their sets, because for years, they could get away with certain paint touch ups and stuff like that, that the camera just didn't focus in on but now with HD. Everything has to be more

Evan Spence: 31:54

clean and cotton. I've heard stories, yes. Quick and Dirty sets and they wouldn't have to bother painting the drywall painting in the background. Because it wasn't just wasn't gonna get picked up as close enough to the color on the walls, and things like that. But it hasn't been my experience. As recently as 2014. When I started,

Greg Staffa: 32:21

What has been your biggest challenge as far as designing something, Mr. Something in particular, that was kind of your great whale or

Evan Spence: 32:29

I want to say one of the sets of the the opening scene for Fargo Season Three that was to take place in the headquarters that will have a lot of work. We we got it built and then and then show run or wondered if this is good. We want it twice and beat. And so there is a whole bunch of work done to extend the depth of that of that room. That seemed like a big deal at the time. It doesn't sound so bad when I say it now. But it was a very elaborate set. For that one opening scene that seemed it seemed like the most work for what amounted to very square room with a hallway out of it a little bit early and across the way pretty successful at issuing a bunch of drawings and going on to the next day.

Greg Staffa: 33:29

Now do you still have those drawings? I mean, you have I'm sure you have like a portfolio but you would like to smaller drawings. Is it something that you save and I just think that'd be fascinating to have all those different drawings from all those different shows to be able to show your kids down the line and

Evan Spence: 33:44

if only they were interested, right, I have a few piles of sketches. I used to do a lot of small gestural sketches for any particular detail I was working on you do it on a little sticky note and I would jam that sticky note after I got it into the computer. After I drafted a note on the wall and in the wall was lost in the sticky notes. I stopped doing that after a couple of shows because the wall of yellow was kind of oppressive and I didn't want to become sticky note guy are known as sticky note guy. And I started doing my little pads of paper. I did that for a couple of shows. And then I just went back to doing all my noodling in. Little sketchbooks. I keep those like to my skeptical of those around everything that I'm thinking of or working on is sort of chronologically available in the sketchbooks and then of course I keep I keep copies of all the large format drawings I don't. I used to print them out or half scale and truckloads around to show us a portfolio. I stopped doing that just because the volume was getting too large. So I've got I've got digital copies of them and every drawing I've ever drawn is on the way website. So I just point production designers and art directors at the website and you can look at them.

Greg Staffa: 35:06

Is there a genre that you like doing

Evan Spence: 35:08

I love doing Western. It's just nice and reinsure reassuring to always be able to draw true to buy for framing. And with good looking, drop or metal siding or something. It's just nice to do the old timing stores and building as well. I love being able to build out the collection of buildings that we use for filming and calendaring very often a building gets to stay and then be repurposed for something from the next guy. And I think that's pretty valuable. I like it a little painful when you redraw all these great buildings and they get shot and then removed after the show. For for, you know, removed for legitimate reasons, Disney for liability reasons required us to remove all the components we added to co manage to make them look like Alaska. So the really great church we put at the end of the street, which had a meticulous amount of detail on it. That came down. That kind of sucked. I liked that thing. Got a really good people on it. Oh,

Greg Staffa: 36:33

I wish some of these sets would stay on Saturday kind of built in the middle of nowhere, muffed up just for fans and viewers to come and see I remember I was traveling I can't remember what state it was. But Tim Burton did a movie called big fish. And that's a set the ignore visit today.

Evan Spence: 36:53

You can picture a roomful of lawyers know just imagine someone got hurt. We have very good reasons not to allow that if we still had the Ghostbusters mansion upside down, right, there would be Ghostbusters fan crawling all over that time. And maybe in a not safe way. So okay, I guess I do understand why some go in a place they feel ranch rel Bertina? Those are controlled locations. Yeah. If I can get extra buildings put into those fantastic. And they tend to stick around? Get us get one.

Greg Staffa: 37:31

So you kind of fell into this job? Is this something that you continue to see this? Is it this is my career for now on? Or is this something that's, you know, going good? Well, Calgary has become a film hub? Or how do you see this going?

Evan Spence: 37:46

Yeah, happy to be doing exactly what I'm doing. I like the people I'm working with, I think we have a great team, most of which will sort of roll forward as an art department as a cohesive art department to go to the next show and be the next year together, we get along really well. And when you've worked with the same crew, for a little while, you start to develop a shorthand that makes you more efficient. I like that as well. I love doing exactly what I'm doing. I've certainly resisted the temptation to move on to being an art director, for instance, I would rather be the guy putting the dimensions on the sheet than necessarily being the project manager style director. So if I'm working in film, I want to work in film set designer. That's what I'm good at. And if I can't work in film, because of reasons, because of labor reasons, or I guess maybe political reasons relating to film funds, and things like that, that I don't particularly then I would have to be busted back down to being an architect, I guess.

Greg Staffa: 39:02

So finally, Billy Kidd comes out during the first four episodes. Can you give us a quick rundown of some of the sets that you had your fingers in on?

Evan Spence: 39:12

I don't think it's a going to be a secret or any surprise to anyone that you're building up to the Lincoln County War in the history of Billy the Kid. And so you're gonna see a reprisal queens and Tunstall store, for instance, location stuff and location in the story. I'd say. I've seen a lot of big sweeping Calgary Alberta western Canadian scenery show up I think they've done some really cinematic Oh, beautiful. You mentioned it right riding horse racing the horse there's been a lot of really,

Greg Staffa: 39:53

a lot of great drone use this season from one little I've seen.

Evan Spence: 39:59

like If it is great when you can kind of step back and open it off and look a long ways and not see any, any obstructions, any modern cell phone towers and telephone wires, right, no bogeys out there and spoiled with you, I want to say they've managed to do most of it without having to be next. There are giant VISTAs around here, where you can point a drone and not see too much that makes you that way. And down by Turner valley to the south and west of Calgary, in pretty, pretty stunning territory. So that gets to be a pronounced character, as well. I

Greg Staffa: 40:44

I get why they filmed that. I mean, it has that feeling. And like I said, as someone that loves that area, and the history and all that stuff, just for me to see it kind of expanded from the movies, which are quick and quick cuts, and, and you don't have time to really watch a guy on a horse ride for a minute. And just appreciate that openness.

Evan Spence: 41:09

he didn't live too long. So we have to fill up the story with things that are not necessarily just,

Greg Staffa: 41:15

ya know, there's a lot, especially season one where so much little was known. But I think it did a great job of setting up why he became who he was, I wish you'd gotten more. When she got more love out there. I don't think it's on the best networks, at least here for us to fully appreciate. It's not one of those big things that you're seeing commercials for ads for. Yeah.

Evan Spence: 41:40

Although I want to say it seems like Tom bleh things become a bit of a recognizable name. So that was a feather in our cap to have him have some success elsewhere and come back and reprise his role and see, ya know, he does a wonderful job.

Greg Staffa: 41:56

I appreciate your time. I sincerely enjoy the work that you do. I think it's a critical part and filmmaking I think people like you and stunt directors and prop masters don't get enough attention on love. And so that's kind of what I'm doing and kind of sharing a little insight of what else goes into these things other than just the actors and actresses. So I appreciate you coming on and wish you the best of luck.

Evan Spence: 42:21

Thank you. I appreciate the love.

Greg Staffa: 42:23

That does it for this episode. Thank you for listening to the Stafford corner