Name: CREATING THE WORLD OF SEVERANCE
Uploaded: 2025-05-21
Duration: 17 min 25 s

Jeremy Hindle, the visionary production designer behind the cultural phenomenon Severance, will discuss how his designs bring the TV show’s haunting exploration of workplace identity and corporate control to life. From the jarring retro-futurist feel of Lumen Industries’ office to its fluorescent-lit hallways and minimalist break rooms, learn how every design choice reinforces the psychological and emotional landscape of the modern workplace. This behind-the-scenes conversation offers a rare look into the creative collaboration required to create the unsettling beauty of Severance’s corporate world.  

CREATING THE WORLD OF SEVERANCE

Conferences

Future, the show's production design is as much a character as the people on screen. It enhances the show's themes of control, identity, and disconnection and adds to the company's eerie vibe. It's a master class in how design can shape mood and narrative. We're excited to welcome welcome the creative force behind the strike in visual world, Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle in Conversation with Fortunes with Kristen Stoller. All right, um, because I have been known to spoil things, I'm gonna quickly ask who here has seen severance? Raise your hand. OK, so I will try not to spoil it, but I am going to ask a lot of good questions. Why not? I can. All right, I got permission from him. You'll spoil one thing and then they'll maybe it'll be interesting. Yeah, OK, so Jeremy, because not everyone is as much of an IMDb pro nerd as I am, I'm just going to brag about you for a little bit. You were nominated for an Emmy for your work on Severance, and our audience might also know you for your work on movies like Zero Dark 30 Top Gun Maverick. So very. Impressive career, but I do just want to talk about severance. So what I love about the show is that it feels frozen in time. It's like part 60s office park, part tech dystopian startup. What was the initial spark that unlocked this aesthetic for you? I mean, the script when I first read it was really, it read like The Office. It was written like The Office. It was budgeted to shoot in a like just a regular location. Ben said it to me and I was like, I don't want to do this. And I said and then I thought, you know what, what if I, what if I just took 2 days and I, I, I'm gonna make, let me see what I can do in 2 days and I'll, if I come up with something, let's meet and I kind of had this idea that it it reminded me of Twin Peaks, there was something strange in the script. The words were weird, it was playful, but it was, it was just an office environment, which was nothing for me to design. So I thought, what if I just create this world that I want to make. And I did in like 2 days, I had this, I just had this lookbook that I loved and we met and I said, look, I'll do the show if you want to do this. And he's like, great, let's go. And then we had the battle of how to do it and how much money, much more money it's going to cost, and then everything exploded, but everyone really supported it and um it's became this sort of entity and I think it was interesting because I wanted the show to be timeless. It was, I didn't want anyone to really know where it was, when it was. It's, it's especially underground when, you know, the MDR, the main set. We wanted the technology to really be quite confusing. It, it's all functional, but if you were if any was to escape to the outside world and could describe it, it would make no sense. Like my son doesn't know what a trackball is. My daughter, then they don't know what this tech is, but now it's kind of funny. They're all fascinated. Now they all want these damn keyboards and it's kind of fun and it's, it was just, it was also to make it really playful like it's, there was a movie Playtime that I love from the 60s and it had, I kind of threw that a band like what if we just make the show playful along with this really Interesting story that Dan wrote, which is really about the work-life balance, which is a huge problem right now, like how do you go to work and go home and because of this damn iPhone we all have our technology, it's 24 hours a day and how I think that's kind of it was like how do we make this fun to also talk about something that's really important. How to set boundaries. I like that you say playful when it's such a dark show. That's the thing there are elements of it because the idea is it's really totally dark. It's like, and people say like, oh, I, I would do that. It's like, really just for work or just for the dentist or just like you. It's like you people don't want to live experiences anymore. They just wanted to be always happy, and you don't know what happy is unless you're sad. You don't know severed yourself. Never. OK, why not? Uh, because I love, I love all the emotions and I liked, you know, like I'm 2 weeks ago I did conflict this conference. I I did this, but in front of 10,000. People, which I don't do. Like I stood on the Muscone alone for 35 minutes talking and I didn't take what are the what what's the drug a lot of people take when they speak propozole or there's something that people take all these tech guys said you didn't take it. I'm like, I didn't know what it was. I'm like, no, I was just like going to vomit the entire time. But we have a bucket, but I, but I wanted that experience. I want to, I like to be terrified because once you're terrified, you can do something really interesting, you can be really honest, and then you, then you, that's living and I don't know. I want to live. Speaking, I love that. And speaking of terrifying and vomit inducing, I want to. Pull up on the screen here something that terrifies me about the show, which is the hallways. They are so iconic. Uh, the season two opener is just running through these empty hallways with Adam Scott. How did you create this? Is this one set and, and what was your thought or inspiration behind it? It's funny because this is a drawing. This is one of the original concepts. Um, it was trying to create. We needed to create like a maze for people to get lost in like the innies are not allowed to escape, but they feel free. So they can rebuild so many hallways and obviously in visual effects we extend them, but as I told you, you know, people get lost. John Turturro and Christopher Walken did get lost and you can, so I was trying to create something that was like it felt. Um, aesthetically pleasing, but also like really void of like, like it made you feel uncomfortable trying to create for me it was always trying to create an emotional response to the script and when people are watching it, that you're doing something that's either counter or it helps infer the story as opposed to just the dialogue of the actors telling the story. It's like, how do I tell the story and put these, put them in these environments that they feel real in because they're doing something that's quite absurd. And make it feel believable at the same time. And this hallways particularly like we tested 25 whites on camera to come up with which white it was. And Ben and Ben said he's like, why are we testing 25? And I was like, because we won't know until we see it. Like you'll see and we all sat in this room after we did them. They, it was about 10 of us and We came down to two colors. 23 of them were so wrong, and it's because emotionally it was like that didn't make me feel what I should feel like they just didn't emote something in, in, in what your brain and in what your heart wanted, and it came down to 2 and then that that's, it was, but we it was learning how to be that particular to tell a story um how how much of the actors themselves like Adam Scott influence what you designed for each of the episodes? Not at all. Oh really? OK. No, honestly, Mil this last season, um, no, because they're kind of like we're all, especially the first season was during COVID, like zero interaction almost at all, um, but mostly they, you know, we're all, it's an interesting show the scripts, it's not like a regular TV show. Most shows you get a script and you really shoot the script like Law and Order that you just shoot the script. Um, we, I get a script and I completely alter so many ideas and then I present, oh, what if there was this set? What if we told the story this way visually, then they rewrite it. Jessica, the DP does. Ben, we all have a lot of ideas and we fight and argue and there's zero egos. Like it's insanely collaborative. What's the biggest disagreement you've had with them? It was always actually was Ben and I on the ceiling of the next 10, OK, let's go to it. It was this one. It wasn't an argument. It was I wanted it to be insanely claustrophobic, but in a really big space, which really the scripture said 4 desk large room, and I, and then I came up with this bonkers thing, and I, I wanted the ceiling to be 7'6, which I could touch. I wanted to be able to touch it with my finger and For when you're in a room that big, it's just the presence it feels and how it makes actors like John Turturro hated it because he's really tall. So for him it was, it was really claustrophobic and it made him really uncomfortable, which I think you see on screen. Yeah, like you start to feel like these things can create, we all feel these things and if I create spaces like this, it's no different than real life. Um, but Ben and I, so we had, we built a chunk of the set and we had the ceiling on hydraulics so we could raise and lower it, and I had 76 and he wanted 86, and I think we got to 79 and then I I was like that's it. And we agreed that was literally our biggest argument and that wasn't, you know, it was, it was more we just push each other to make it perfect. It's a show that um it's really hard to get people to understand, even when you're working on it to train the crew to. That there's nothing that isn't perfect. Every detail is we don't, Ben won't shoot it if it isn't perfect. I won't let them see it unless it's perfect. It's every little prop, everything is like camera tested and Well, that I wanna ask on the camera testing before we come to the audience for questions is my brother and I always talk about how do you decide what is color in the show because like you have the green here microdata refinement you have, you know, these blue balloons and you have, you know, different colors in mostly a very gray white 25 white tested world. How do you decide what. and what doesn't. I mean, the two, the two colors are the two colors we look at the most. They're grass and sky, and they basically I wanted they're, they're the innies are children like when Dan said, I said, why are they, why is she lying on a boardroom table? Like what, how does this show open? He said, Well, it's kind of obvious it's the birthplace of the office. It's, it's the womb and I'm like, that's that obvious. And so I was like, so I'm like he said, so they're children, like they're, they're, they're children, and I was like, so I made this like a playground, like it's grass, the desk is interactive. In the second season I made it it can spin like like honestly like a merry go round in a park. Like it started to become all those things that I could play with, that you don't really know why I'm doing that, but you, but it's, it's not only just entertaining, but it, it's uncomfortable, it's engaging. You know, it's funny because when you ask me now and I remember my original idea for this was Steve Jobs when he was he didn't do the iPhone. He was so particular about the paper and the box, and I'm sure some of you know the story that he sent people around the world until they found the perfect paper and I think it was in Sweden, and then they bought the company to manufacture the box. The box was more important than the phone. And I was like, wait, what if I'm like Steve Jobs? What if I, because it's kind of godlike. What if I what if I'm obsessive like that with everyone on the show that they have to do it exactly like this in the same way in the same tone, it's kind of became really. The crew loved it. They loved the rules. They loved working on it, and it became really addictive to everyone. And now people watch the show and I, I think it's why it works. It's that same kind of like Steve was right. People really want the best. And when you do the best, it's like it's like an Apple store. It's not that different. Yeah, absolutely. I think we have time for one question. Does anyone have one? Oh, I see right up here, Chris. One's coming to you. So a big, big fan of the show. Thank you for all your work. So my question for you is, I mean, we spent a lot of time, I think in business thinking about the environment that we create for people to work. So you created an environment that was deliberately claustrophobic and create. What is your work environment? What do you require in order to do the kind of creative work that you do? But you know it's funny, film offices are usually really crappy. Because they're always like, you know, it could, it's not, it's could be a warehouse, who knows? um I like. I love, honestly, I'm a big, it's what's happened in the last few years has been really hard for all of us, and I don't know if it is for you, but for creative people, COVID was terrible. I hate Zoom. I hate all of that stuff. It's functional for some stuff, but I like to be interactive with everyone I work with. I need to see them. I need, you can tell immediately like if someone in a day might be good for what you're going to give them, like the painters, that you kind of have to. I have, I have hundreds of people that work for me and I have to read them all day long. How are they, is this the right person to give this task to? You can tell the look in their eyes. I need that to know who I can deliver things to and so you kind of just, I, I have a huge desk in my office that I had built. I always have it built for every show I work on and every meeting is basically on in my desk in my office and it sometimes has 30 people crammed around it. And it's always the same and I have all these hidden shelves underneath where I hide everything. So everyone comes in and it's nothing, and then I slowly pull things out and I always have a monitor and I rehearse all my, all my meetings for everyone for band, I rehearse them, I rehearse them, and then everything slowly gets slipped out and slipped out. So it feels and you know, you're like you change things as you're presenting, you can tell what's going to work or not going to work. If it's, if you get the vibe, don't show like I, it's, you have to be. A little bit of controlling and reserved on what's the right time to show something and will they respond to it, especially, you know, um, studios or directors particularly like it's, it's that environment is really important to me that I have. Everyone around me and then I used to actually put it in the middle of the room so I would work around, everyone would work around me and they could see what I was doing, but on Severance it became really, it's such a long show, like it was 2.5 years for me this last season. So I kind of needed my own office and I've also realized a great technique that I really started about 6 years ago was every day at 2 o'clock I take a 22 minute nap. And I have a sofa and everyone knows the entire show knows. Do not knock on my door because at 2 to 2:22, I don't really nap or I might, but I wake up with a billion more ideas. If I don't, I might as well go home. I don't have anything left and you just like shut down, no nothing, just no tech and just daydream and then I wake up and I'm like, oh my God, there's so many more ideas. And then so starting to, that's how I started to learn how to really work in command like this is how I need to work in an office environment was that. And I think everyone's kind of different, but I can I ask Jeremy because um you've said before that you your critique about you know the workplace today is it's too home like there's too many like benefits perks, pictures, um, uh, but Lumen is like is is the opposite of one thing when you said it was based on the John Deere building, which is a real life building, can we end with any, you know, thoughts you have for company leaders, uh, workforce leaders, designers about anything they should or should not take. So, so when I realized with the, you know, in the 60s you basically had a pen, a Rolodex. You had four things. You had no family photographs, you didn't have family life, you didn't have a phone. There was no, your kids don't text you all day. I hate school. You just went to work and I think it was way more productive. I personally do. I think office spaces were designed well, so you, you felt like you were in a in a place that was respected, that you could be creative. And I think trying to get back to that and keep a little bit of, you know, If people, if you're trying to make people work for 16 hours, you need to have their home life in there. But I think people are only productive for 8, 10 hours max anyway, so just make it work. And I've started to notice the young people really want the work environment. They want to have their home environment separated and I know it was blended for a long time and probably the 90s, 2000s, but maybe it's just, you know, and I've worked a lot of advertising too, and advertising agencies love the fun stuff. They've got the draft machines and all the and I'm like, well, because they want them to work 18 hours a day. And I, I, I, I I don't. I think that's terrible. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. All right. I know we're out of time really fast. What character do you most identify with? 20 seconds or less. On the show? Oh, Hallie Hall, why? Um, because I think I, you know, it's fun to have those kind of personas like hers. I think she's the fun, she, she is the funniest person on the show to me. Because she's, you know, she's running the company, but underneath she's, she's got this warm heart. Um, it's like she's playing the game and because she knows all the rules. Yeah, that's it. Well, thank you so much, Jeremy. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, well thank you all so much for coming. Thank you to our speakers. We appreciate all of your insights and your expertise. A giant thank you to our founding partner indeed and our partners Calm, Guild, and McKinsey and Company. Thank you for helping bring all of this together and thank you to all of you, the delegates who traveled far and wide to join us for all of these important conversations. I encourage you to please check out Fortune's website for upcoming events, uh, for you and all your other C-suite colleagues. We have the COO summit coming up in just two weeks in June, uh, Brainstorm Tech, uh, in September and the Fortune Global Forum in October. Now I invite you all to please join me for our closing reception, which is getting underway right outside on the Pacific Terrace. Thank you all.