It’s simply the best way life goes: Once you don’t need snow in your shoot, you’re gonna get it. And while you need it, you gained’t get it.
That’s precisely what occurred for “1923” co-production designers Cary White and Lisa Ward for the Taylor Sheridan present. On Season 1, they had been practically pushed out of Montana by the snowfall close to the tip of manufacturing — and so they weren’t attempting to place any trace of winter climate onscreen. Season 2 was purported to have all of its Montana-set scenes in essentially the most frigid, snowy, brutal winter, and… nicely, you most likely see the place that is going.
“We prayed for snow,” mentioned White, who, together with Ward, supervising artwork director Sean Ryan Jennings, and set decorator Carla Curry, acquired a 2025 Emmy nomination for Excellent Manufacturing Design for a Narrative Interval or Fantasy Program. “And we bought it, however on the final day of taking pictures. That was the one actual snow we had.”
You’d by no means know that many of the snow you see in Season 2 didn’t really fall from the skies: In its second season, “1923” grew to become certainly one of that rarest of issues that Western followers significantly love — a winter Western. “Winter was such an necessary character on this piece, and it actually fought the Duttons all through your complete season,” Ward mentioned. How the manufacturing workforce created it’s proven vividly within the video beneath. Snow could have been exhausting to come back by, however partially that’s as a result of it was virtually too chilly for it to snow. “We had one of many harshest winters on report, I believe, in Montana,” Curry mentioned.
“We knew what it ought to appear to be on display in an actual approach, and we’d make these paperwork that had been principally phases of winter as a result of we wished to the touch upon totally different seems to be and totally different emotions of winter,” Ward mentioned. “And so we had one look that was these chilly white sky days the place the mud is all frozen and tire tracks are frozen and the puddles across the roads are frozen, however there’s not deep snow all over the place.”
“After which we had days that had been simply the deepest post-blizzard snow the place the solar comes out within the morning, and also you get that glitter on prime of every little thing, and every little thing is shapeless and unusual and snowy,” Ward mentioned. “So we actually had form of a full spectrum of seems to be that correlated to the totally different moments within the scripts and the totally different beats and the way that winter setting was interacting with actors and vice versa.”
The particular results workforce bought a exercise.
“There was plenty of paper used on this present as a result of they get on the market with these blasters and blast white mulch paper all over the place,” White mentioned. “It’s a mixture. All of the snow is a mixture of visible results and particular results, aside from that final day when it actually did snow.”
“The true snow really difficult issues as a result of it prevented particular results snow from being laid,” Ward added. “And you then get via two hours of taking pictures, and what you’ve been taking pictures has melted. In order that turns into an enormous continuity subject. And there have been occasions once we couldn’t use paper snow. We had to make use of the mixture of paper snow and show snow; or as a result of the horses had been going to be interacting with it and their hooves slip on the show snow, we would have liked to include salt, which can be used. And we would have liked to take a look at the distinction in how the salt was going to put in with the paper snow. So there’s so many various components and a lot of it’s an actor going to be interacting with this? Is it one thing that we simply see as background? The place can VFX step in and assist us?”
So much is made about Sheridan’s extraordinary manufacturing setup in Texas, however practically all the exterior photographs set in Montana are literally shot in Montana. It’s the little added touches that basically promote that feeling of chilly, although. “I actually wish to say simply how unimaginable our scenic painters had been,” Ward mentioned. “We paid a lot consideration to how the frost ought to look on the home windows and the way the frost ought to seem on automobile home windows.”
White and Ward are really a workforce, although they’re at very totally different phases of their careers. White is an trade veteran of a long time, with certainly one of his earliest manufacturing designer roles being for the 1989 miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” one of the acclaimed of all Westerns, whether or not on an enormous display or small. He’s labored on 23 Westerns in whole and has written a espresso desk photograph guide on the Western style due out within the fall of 2027. (His filmography is awfully various, although, corresponding to additionally serving as manufacturing designer on the unique “Imply Women.”) Ward’s record of credit is way smaller however fascinating in its personal proper: She collaborated with White on “Yellowstone” and “1883” but in addition labored as artwork director on “First Cow” and “Exhibiting Up” — sure, she’s capable of toggle effortlessly between Kelly Reichardt indies and sprawling Sheridan productions.
And on Season 2 of “1923” White and Ward had been a real workforce. Regardless of the plot going down in many various areas, they by no means separated, in order to make sure continuity of imaginative and prescient. “Cary has set such a robust aesthetic actually beginning with ‘Yellowstone’ and transferring via ‘1883’ and ‘1923,’” Ward mentioned. “That’s a world that we each perceive actually deeply. And I believe we wished to seize that and proceed it via this season, although we had been in so many various locations this season.”
If Montana was at all times Montana onscreen, the cities they represented needed to get just a little extra inventive. San Antonio stands in for the wintry New York Metropolis streets Julia Schlaepfer’s Alexandra explores as soon as getting out of Ellis Island. On a soundstage, they recreated the Twenties inside of Grand Central Station — all the way down to lighting fixtures from the interval now not on the precise Grand Central Station, and recreated by Steve Joyner and his fabrication studio in Austin.
These lights are glimpsed for only a second in Season 2. However it’s these little particulars that make the world of “1923” come alive, and its story to have the influence that it does. “Worldbuilding” is a time period normally utilized extra to fantasy or sci-fi properties, however in each sense, it’s what White and Ward have achieved on this sprawling Western epic.
But Western followers have significantly beloved the Winter Western elements of “1923” Season 2. Just because there aren’t that many Winter Westerns. “The Nice Silence,” “The Hateful Eight,” “Day of the Outlaw,” “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” are among the many few snow-blanketed Westerns on the market. They’re all very totally different visually from the style’s typical tumbleweed and sagebrush aesthetic. “The Searchers” affords us a glimpse of Monument Valley in snow, however solely briefly — in no small half as a result of coping with snow and winter at all times means defining plenty of totally different gradations.
“We had been considering loads about phases of winter,” Ward mentioned. “Type of transferring from that deep winter and deep snow, crystal on the bushes and branches via a extra reasonable chilly, muddy, snowy, icy into what feels, in Montana, like doable emergence of spring. The place you’re all of a sudden taking a look at patches of snow and ice relatively than deep drifts and eddies, and simply the nuances of all that.”
Mission achieved. Whereas watching “1923” you’ll wish to attain for a heat blanket.