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Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin PD Neil Patel on Horror Inspirations

To say that HBO Max's Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is a love letter to the golden age of slashers with the horror genre would be an understatement. It's something that production designer Neil Patel (Dickinson, The Village) sought to recreate by working with creators Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring's visions to life for the spinoff. Speaking with Bleeding Cool, Patel broke down what horror classic inspired the look of the series and discussed finding the balance between practical and CG effects.

Bleeding Cool: So how did you get involved with "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin"?

Patel: I know one of the producers, Caroline Baron, and I have a lot of common colleagues with Roberto. They called me in to interview for the job when they were crewing up, and I met with them. I did a lookbook of what I thought was an interesting direction for the show, and we got into the same mindset. We got along really well with it, and they invited me to join them.

Can you tell me a little bit about like which horror films you isolated for inspiration for the series?

We zeroed in on the ones from the '70s- '90s, like 'Halloween,' 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' and 'Carrie.' There was a lot of [Brian] De Palma camera camerawork, and a lot of this filmmaking was inspired by that along with 'The Shining' and the original 'Suspiria,' a lot of [Dario] Argento stuff. All of those horror films, which range from the original 'Halloween,' were made with a very low budget.

'The Shining' had a very high production value, but what they all have in common is this incredibly finely tuned craft, production design, and cinematography to create suspense and something scary. Our goal was to create something that worked in the genre, able to really scare the audience and keep them intrigued. This story is set in a working-class Pennsylvania steel town. The characters don't have a lot of money, so it's not one of those shows where everything has to be the latest fashion or look. Everything's back-dated. Most of the residents' furniture was inherited from their parents or grandparents.

Can you break down how period accurate you want the set pieces to be?

There's something in all of those movies, especially in 'Halloween,' 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' and others, where there's a kind of idyllic 'American street,' everything from the neighborhood where these people live to our choices for locations and builds. We didn't want to get specifically nostalgic for any particular decade, but it's a timelessness. It could be anywhere from 1978 to 2002 in terms of the cars people drive and the way their houses look inside. It's that period of American pop culture we were going for. The thing about what works in all those films is it does look like a street you're really familiar with, feel comfortable with, safe, and of course, it's not.

That's something important in the look of it in the types of houses, facades, the feeling of the neighborhood where it's that middle town America safety that's violated with our masked terrorist. That was definitely really important, and there's something interesting about decay which works well with the genre. The schools are all falling apart, and that movie theater hangout is crumbling on the edge. Nothing is slick and new, except when we actually go to Rosewood in episode six. That's the only time in the show where we're somewhere that's conventionally nice at The Radley Hotel and the locations in that particular part of that episode. Otherwise, we're always trying to knock down the look to something that's rough around the edges.

What went into recreating an authentic look for those genre films? What discussions were had about CG versus practical effects?

We generally wanted to shoot everything that we could practically on camera. There were certain things we had to lean on visual effects for, like we were shooting the winter in April, and so we needed to have snow enhancement. The scene where Noa (Maia Reficco) jumps over a parapet, as is usually done for safety, the void between the buildings is green screen, and we put it in post. There were certain things that really had to be done that way. In general, we wanted everything to be practical. Anka [Malatynska], the DP and Lisa [Soper], our pilot director, used a split diopter. They use a lot of cinematic techniques that were popular in the '70s and '80s, [but] not so much now.

What was the most difficult scene in the 'Pretty Little Liars' to capture & can you break that down sequence?

Maybe not difficult, but the discovery of Davie (Carly Pope), Imogen's (Bailee Madison) mother was the most important one early that established the rules that what would be our technique. That was because they live in a modest house that was built in the 1920s, which is very middle class, working class. When she goes out in that hallway, in reality, it would be eight feet away in the bathroom, right? We went in early on the design with Lisa, and that hallway is almost 40 feet long. It's not realistic that that hallway would exist in that house.

When we get to the bathroom, the way it was designed, it's definitely borrowing from 'The Shining' with its layout and the bathtub as a centerpiece. It's very symmetrical, but not realistically what would be in that house. The idea is that it all stitches together in a way the audience isn't thinking that hallway's too long. They're brought along by the suspense and that long walk is what makes that reveal the bathtub creating suspense and anxiety to the viewers. We revised that several times in the beginning, and we have the ability now to put these things in three dimensions, trying to approximate the fly-through and how it's going to feel on camera. It was interesting that it always needs to be exaggerated more, not less. That really influenced how we designed a lot of things to be bold about not worrying too much whether this is architecturally correct or works with the continuity, but making all the decisions towards creating that that tension.

Season one of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is available to stream on HBO Max.

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