Russian Doll

Nov 16

One of my first big gigs was developing an Emmy award-winning surreal universe for Netflix’s series Russian Doll. Back in 2014, the show’s creators, Natasha Lyonne and Leslye Headland, approached me with a strong series pitch they’d been working on for ages but needed a bit of help convincing networks could work aesthetically.

This deck needed to make choices: Should the show be film noir, neorealism, or neon noir? Shooting primarily at night, should the show exploit neon signs or the more subtle and draining fluorescent? What best reflects the tone of the show? A show which is both funny and eerie?

After months of collaboration, we finally came up with a killer pitch deck and character lookbook. A few months into production, Natasha and Leslye reached out and asked me to create a lookbook incorporating my pre-production concepts with those developed by the show's production designer, cinematographer, costume designer, etc. This was distributed to all the department heads, producers, and subsequent visiting directors, etc. Below is the result.

Production Lookbook

Usage

This lookbook is private and the intellectual property of the project’s creators, myself, and a bunch of other entities with scary lawyers. Only a hand full of folks are authorized to distribute this lookbook (one of which is myself—Inga Headland—the designer), and I do so for portfolio review purposes only.