The areas that make up the material of early English Shaker life performed out in The Testament of Ann Lee really feel like hand-me-downs—the primary massive steps of a bunch branching out from one other (the Quakers), creating their very own, devoted house. “When it came to the meat of it, anything Shaker you saw was built by our amazing set dec fabrication team there,” says Bader. “Lauren Doss, our lead decorator, was able to find a fantastic recreation of the chair we were looking to make: the Niskayuna Albany chair. That was serendipity.” We additionally get a have a look at a darker variety of early-English minimalism when Ann is arrested for public preaching—piles of straw for sleeping, iron bars, and the smallest of cell home windows. Later on, Budapest additionally served as a surrogate dwelling to the Cunningham House, a residence that homes the group as soon as they attain New York City after a protracted sail from Manchester.
Moving stateside: New Hampshire and New York
The staff had a neater time sinking into the Shaker world within the stateside filming periods. Much like Ann Lee had been tasked with founding and rising a Shaker group from nothing in what’s now often called Upstate New York, Bader and the crew needed to turn out to be—or discover consultants—centered on a bunch recognized for his or her humble manner of residing (enjoyable reality: they by no means named any of their furnishings designs after a particular designer). The staff went with the latter, sourcing those that knew extra concerning the area’s historical past to ship them in the fitting route.
One of the biggest collaborations was with the Hancock Shaker Village, a group within the Berkshires area of Massachusetts. “They have a 360-degree fluid, fully interactive Shaker village,” says Bader. “Much of what’s there is original, and some of it is immaculately recreated.” This collaboration was a gradual burn, leading to a deep belief that introduced a mandatory layer to the movie. “Layla Stover, our American set decorator, has such a phenomenal bedside manner when it comes to handling historic spaces,” Bader continues. “We built a lot of shorthand to the point where they ultimately really did unlock some of the stanchions and let us go in and shoot some of those stunningly preserved rooms, which are usually not spaces they let people into.”