Decorating Pages

On this episode I speak with Production Designer Helen Jarvis about the amazing limited series Shögun. The series is a massive undertaking with intense research, diving into historical texts, paintings, and archival material. She discusses that the goal is to not just recreate 17th-century Japan in the “Shoin-Zukuri” style but also make it visually compelling for a modern audience. Filmed on location in Vancouver, Shögun enlisted expert consultants from Japan to work with the Canadian crew in what became a seamless collaboration between Eastern and Western talents in service of telling a truly authentic Japanese story. Committed to being authentic to the era, the sets, locations, décor, props and construction builds for Shögun were designed to make the viewer - and cast - believe they stepped into 1600 feudal Japan. Helen describes how the sets were spread across two expansive exterior backlots, a remote mountainside location and two massive sound stages, which housed all the interiors of Osaka Castle, garde