A Backdrop Trio for “Verity”
Updated Post from March 25th, 2025
The Devil’s Pool, Wissahickon Valley Park
“There is no biz like show biz and once the train starts moving it doesn’t stop to wait for vendors,” or so I was once told by a seasoned art director. Budgets can be tight, but deadlines even more. So when we were called about providing three wintry backings for Verity in January 2025 with only a notion of what the production needed, but delivery by March 10th, we got moving on concept and location ideas, photography, editing and printing.
In the Last week of January 2025 we were contacted by Lisa Myers, a production designer in NYC, who was brought in by Amy Williams, the production designer for Verity, for concept design. Verity was being filmed in Connecticut at the time with the main scenes taking place in a house overlooking a lake surrounded by rocky outgrowths. Given the story has a claustrophobic feel, the design team wanted to take artistic liberties with two of the sets by placing them within rocky gullies. Unfortunately no such views were available at the filming location, so we were approached to see if we could create (at first) two backings to match this art direction.
As Lisa was describing this scenic design, I could not help but think of the Devil’s Pool in the Wissahickon Valley Park, a 30 minute walk from my house, being ideal for Verity’s office. Upon googling the location, Lisa agreed.
A few days later I was on a hike to photograph the Devil’s Pools along with a few rocky out growths on the Forbidden Drive, an old carriage road in the park, for the other set. While hiking to the pool, I came upon an overlook of the Wissahickon Creek, a view that did not fit the art direction but I was particularly excited to stumble upon and add into our catalog. (It’s a great landscape view for a backing given the opening in the forest, and I have since captured multiple seasonal variations throughout 2025 that you can see below.) I just so happened to include this view in our proof sheet and production liked it as well. Now it was three backings.
It also turned out the time of year I photographed these views matched that of the story line, which was a great help too.
By February 17th production approved the final selections with AD Joe Fernandez providing the crops and retouching notes. Retouching included replacing the skies, editing out the sun and blows outs from, and removing a significant amount of graffiti from the Devil’s Pool image along with the barrier on the aqueduct bridge above. The graffiti removal is what gave me the most concern, but given the new tools added to Photoshop we spent not even two hours removing it whereas a couple years ago this would have taken an entire day. We also increased contrast and saturation, and added an overall coolness to the rocks.
All this took place over the next week and the images were approved for prepress February 26th. All three backings were then printed, seamed, edged, off-gassed and delivered by March 7th, three days ahead of deadline.