Hallway set for Gryffin's "OMG" music video ft. Carly Rae Jepsen

For people out there that are wanting to explore set designs for film/photo I thought I'd do a behind-the-scenes thread on creating this hallway set for the Gryffin music video I produced last year (ft. Carly Rae Jepsen).

Ani Acopian, the director, knew that she wanted a long white hallway with a DJ booth in the center. We had a very tight budget so we first tried to find a location or standing set but there wasn't anything out there (in LA) that fit the vibe. The proposed solution was to build a 3-walled set on top of a white cyclorama wall and cover the ceiling with bleached white muslin. Cyc walls are white so that would make up the floor and we would shine lights through the muslin ceiling to light the hallway.

Sets are typically made out of wall flats and they come in a standard variety of panel sizes. I created a scale mockup in After Effects and estimated that we would need an 8x10 flat in the back and three 8x10 flats on each side (7 flats in total). It was an incredibly stressful project but two days before the shoot I was able to source a cyclorama wall that would work with our budget and a company in LA that rented out recycled movie sets. They had an entire acre of sets from theatre shows, movies, and television series.

The day before the shoot the flats were set up on the cyclorama wall, screwed together, and the seams were filled and the flats painted over. The morning of the shoot our DP, Tehillah De Castro, had her grip and lighting team set up lights on the light grid and a 30x30 frame of bleached muslin above the set. Once the lights were up we added in the DJ booth, midi instruments, and used a thick white cable to hide the seam between the flats and the cyc floor.

There are two shots in the final video where I extended the hallway with a matte painting but everything else was a practical shot. You can see the full music video here.