Agent Lana Kana cornered Neal Holman in the ISIS men’s room to ask him a few questions. Full report below:
Neal Holman, Art Director and Producer on Archer
1) What is your job on Archer?
I am the Art Director of Archer, so I have my hands in a little of everything. A lot of it is spinning plates, trying to keep the storyboards, backgrounds and character departments all running at the same pace. The other half of my job is gluing those plates back together after they’ve spun off and died.
2) How did you get started?
I was on a sketch comedy show in college (http://www.spidermonkeyfiasco.com) which was where I met Ed Mundy, who also happened to be in the same program as I was. We all sort of learned how to (and definitely how not to) make television on Spider Monkey. Around my junior year, Ed emailed a Space Ghost listserv, asking how he could apply for an internship. Luckily, Adam Reed was on said listserv and brought Ed on as an intern for Sealab 2021. This was big news. I remember Ed emailed us all that a frisbee he drew was going to be on television. Evidently it was a pretty great frisbee because they hired him after he graduated. Anyway, that summer, he recommended Mack Williams (his roommate, also in our program) and I for the internship. I’ve been working for Adam Reed and Matt Thompson in some capacity ever since. So basically my whole career can be tracked down to Ed’s email. Way to go Ed!
3) What do you look toward for visual inspiration when making an episode of Archer?
Anything and everything that remotely touches Mid Century Modern. Some of it is browsing antique websites, a lot of it is watching movies or series either set in the 60’s or filmed in the 60’s. OSS 117, Flawless, Down With Love, any Hitchcock from the 50’s and 60’s, The Prisoner (the original,) any of the Bond films of that era, and of course, Mad Men is like watching an encyclopedia on the 50’s and 60’s. If you google image search “_(anything)_, source: Life” you can browse Life Magazine’s photo archives, which has been a decent hair style resource for us. For background design, I also have a set of architectural magazines from 1962-76 that I look at for inspiration.
For shot composition and sequence ideas, it all depends on the scene/episode. Whatever I’m watching at the moment, in the back of my head I’m breaking it down, trying to figure out if we could do it or something like it. Other times, I’ll see a new plug-in we have or some new camera technique that inspires a sequence idea. I also read a good bit of comics, so I’m sure some of that seeps in as well.
4) What has surprised you the most while working on Archer?
It has flown by. Flown. I can’t believe we’re already storyboarding the last episode. Generally, to meet this schedule, we have three (and sometimes four) episodes in production at a time, all in various stages of the game. We’ve been so busy for so long, the months have blended together, and now all of a sudden, we’re approaching the home stretch. Crazy.
Y’know what else is crazy? 40+ people and two bathrooms. And I don’t mean two large bathrooms with multiple toilets, I mean two bathrooms, period. Burrito day was a terrible, terrible idea.
5) The lady at the McDonald’s drive-thru told me, “No regrets in 2010.” So, Neal, are you gonna go for it this year?
Booking my flight today.
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