“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”’ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
This is the time of year for spirals. They twirl in red around candy canes. Lights encircle on trees. Ribbons are curled into decorative ringlets. We entertain moments from the past, spiraling stories and memories. We take new family photos as we review past holiday cards. We embark on traditions, both old and new, that we hope might continue in our holiday loops.
The spiral, too, is key to “Silo.” It is the structural key to both “Silo’s” set and the story. “That governed the whole look of the Silo,” Production Designer Gavin Bocquet shared by phone. “That’s the highway through the Silo. If we got that right, that would give us the kick off point.”
While the world around the Silo spiral features primitive and simple technology, or at least that is the illusion, the staircase itself is void of technology. Concrete, cracked, tall, oppressive, the spiral is used to help to tell the Spiral story because, as Bocquet shared, “There’s no mechanical aids. The founders of the Silo wanted to control people in the Silo.”
Relics, outlawed and banned in this Silo world, are also elements of control. These are items from the world before the creation of the Silo, and while relics are unrecognizable by the Silo’s inhabitants, they are recognized by us. This is the trick, and the endearing memorable viewing experience, and another spiral of the Silo. We instantly connect with the relics: a video camera with a flip out screen. A Pez Dispenser. Old unrecognizable hard drives, a unit reminiscent of the storage of yore but not specifically identifiable. Even the computers, while not deemed relics and therefore allowed in the Silo, feel like relics to us: monochromatic, boxy, and retro, featuring an old Power-Mac-esque design. I felt ready to jump in front like I did when I was four years old, large floppy disk in hand, ready to type in A:\Disney.exe. See, a relic of my own.
“A lot of that storytelling side is based on what the audience will perceive,” Bocquet shares. As demonstrated, these items that we recognize spiral up again from the bottom of our memories to the top of our minds. Handheld VHS cameras. Sharing candy with friends by opening the head of a Pez (still the weirdest design). To the characters of the Silo, these are just things with no backstory. They do not carry memories, unless they were made by their new owners. But to us, they are “the things that we grew up with.” “It’s part of our youth, I suppose,” shared Amanda Bernstein, Set Decorator for “Silo.”
“You wanted the audience to understand that they were in a world that they know, that they could see in the relics,” Bocquet adds. He explains how this played out with the video camera in particular: “If we had a video camera from today, they don’t really exist anymore. It’s a phone. So we almost had to go back to a piece that people could recognize as being a camera. They’re all things we can recognize from our period.” In this way, Silo feels extra special to those of us who are attached or familiar with the relics themselves.
These elements, relics, props, and more are driven by character and by story. “Our job is to really help move the story along and help define the characters as much as we can,” Bocquet shared. “The actors also told me how much they loved going into the space because it gave the character a life outside their own ,” Bernstein adds. And the center of our character’s worlds, meticulously created and designed, lies the central staircase which spirals into the recycling center at the bottom of the Silo; a fitting end and description, too, for several of the set’s decorations and props. From eBay to antique stores to fairs, Bocquet, Bernstein, and their team spiraled in a new way: recycling second hand pieces and gave them a second life. “That’s how the Silo lives as well,” Bocquet reminds me. “Everything is recycled.” These elements have “histories” behind them, Bernstein adds, and including them create a “new life.” “Everything has a story, and a price,” Bernstein shared, referring to a set of tarpaulin pieces from World War II not initially for sale at a fair but deemed perfect for a Silo scene. A “second life.” A spiral.
Consider your own memories and relics. It could be that box of cords you still keep in your garage (side note: I found a use for Firewire the other day, so you never know!). It could be be the Christmas memories formerly kept on a VHS tape but now digitized for you. Consider their histories. Consider how many you have kept in order to give them second lives. Their past, present, and future.
Earlier this year, a student asked me how to film on a Digital8. They liked the look of the past. And I, unlike the Silo character Walker who manages to fix relics, managed to destroy my old Digi8 on a mission to improve it. So alas, a relic gone. Silo for me, hits among my Museum of Old Technology I kept in my classroom, the memory of Christmases captured on tape, and what we do to keep our personal stories alive. It reminds me of the role of relics, and their importance.
How would you define the word relic?
Here is how Amanda Bernstein would define it: “I would say it’s something that is rare and precious, not necessarily monetarily…it doesn’t have to be diamonds and rubies, but a relic is something that has to be old, I think, and precious and that you treasure because that makes it special.”
So, here’s to our treasures, and our worlds, and the things we grew up with. Here’s to our Relics.