{"id":8205,"date":"2015-09-10T08:02:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T14:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=8205"},"modified":"2015-09-11T09:20:49","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T15:20:49","slug":"from-billings-to-art-director-for-orange-is-the-new-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/09\/from-billings-to-art-director-for-orange-is-the-new-black\/","title":{"rendered":"From Billings to art director for ‘Orange is the New Black’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Smoke\"<\/a>

Ava's Possessions Production Photograph<\/p>

Working last summer on “Ava’s Possessions,” a movie he designed, Billings native James Bolengaugh ran the smoke machine\u2014suit and all\u2014when no one else was available.<\/p><\/div>\n

James Bolenbaugh may not have known it at the time, but growing up in Billings would prove to be an instrumental factor in determining his career choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cBillings was a great community to grow up in because there was so much beautiful scenery to grow up around,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cI think that was one of the things that led me to design scenery for a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bolenbaugh is now in the midst of one of the biggest jobs of his seven-year career: being the art director for the upcoming fourth season of Netflix\u2019s Emmy-nominated series \u201cOrange Is the New Black.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s quick to acknowledge that his successful career was influenced by the many people he knew while growing up in Billings, most notably his grandfather Ted Beringer, a local guitar designer and electrician.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather was a very big influence on me and a lot of my design essentials came from him,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cHe got me thinking about design in a way that was very essential and humble. \u2026 He taught me a very important outlook on design: Never try to do too much. Just try to think of what you need and do your best to meet that need. Don\u2019t try to make something into something it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from Senior High School in 2001, Bolenbaugh attended Bennington College in Vermont. There he met another individual who would put him on the path to being who he is today.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cIn college, I was a bit aimless and I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do and I was bad about finishing things that I started,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cA good friend of mine named Elissa Sullivan really kind of kicked me in the pants and told me, \u2018You need to finish things. You need to figure your stuff out.\u2019 \u2026 After she said that to me, I started to analyze what I was doing and started finding a path.\u201d<\/p>\n

That path has been winding at times\u2014including a brief foray into stop-motion animation\u2014but Bolenbaugh eventually found his sweet spot working on the production design teams of various TV shows, including \u201cMad Men,\u201d \u201cRoyal Pains,\u201d \u201cElementary,\u201d \u201cGotham,\u201d \u201cHalt and Catch Fire\u201d and \u201cOrange Is the New Black.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to explain his roles and responsibilities on those shows, Bolenbaugh said it’s necessary to discuss the responsibilities of the other members of a production design team, since each member of the team depends on the others.<\/p>\n

\"Orange\"<\/a>

Actress Taylor Schilling, left, appears in a scene from the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.” Bolenbaugh is the art director for the show’s upcoming fourth season.<\/p><\/div>\n

The head of the department is known as the production designer and is \u201cresponsible for the visual look of the film or series,\u201d according to Bolenbaugh. Serving under the production designer are the art director and set decorator, who are tasked with bringing the production designer\u2019s vision to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked for a guy who described it best,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cIf you turned the set upside down, everything that would fall out would be under the set decorator\u2019s purview and everything that stayed would be under the art director\u2019s purview.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, Bolenbaugh\u2019s current job on \u201cOrange\u201d involves making sure that the sets\u2014such as the series\u2019 Litchfield Prison\u2014meet the production designer\u2019s expectations. He also takes care of things like budgeting and hiring so that the production designer can focus exclusively on the creative side of the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of moving pieces related to the production design of a film or show,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cThe art director\u2019s really got his finger on the pulse of all of that\u2014he knows what everybody\u2019s doing. \u2026 Production designers frankly don\u2019t have the time to know that, and they shouldn\u2019t have to. They don\u2019t need the extra stress. \u2026 So the art director is a very important person because he just takes the ball and rolls with it. He\u2019s the one who makes it all happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to his current job on the fourth season of \u201cOrange,\u201d Bolenbaugh worked as an assistant art director during the show\u2019s first three seasons. In that role he spent the majority of his time sketching what pieces of the set would look like.<\/p>\n

\"Circuit\"<\/a>

Christopher Brown<\/p>

Working as an assistant art director on “Halt and Catch Fire,” Season 2, Bolenbaugh cooked a circuit board to remove all of the chips so he could re-create the design of the circuit layout on some props.<\/p><\/div>\n

When the show\u2019s previous art director, Jordan Jacobs, had to take a month of leave during the production of the third season, Bolenbaugh stepped in for three episodes. This temporary job proved to be permanent when Jacobs left at the end of season three.<\/p>\n

Bolenbaugh is midway through production on \u201cOrange\u2019s\u201d fourth season and should wrap up work in December. The season will likely premiere on Netflix next summer.<\/p>\n

In between seasons of \u201cOrange,\u201d Bolenbaugh pursues other projects that continue to stretch his abilities. For example, between the show’s second and third seasons, he worked as an assistant art director on the now-Emmy-nominated production design team for the pilot episode of Fox\u2019s Batman-themed series \u201cGotham.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking on \u2018Gotham\u2019 was really a breath of fresh air for me because there were three other assistant art directors and all I really had to do was focus in on the details,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cI went from working on a really massive scale with \u2018Orange\u2019 to focusing on little things like the railings in the police station or a clock window in one of the apartments. It was really fun to do that kind of fantastical detail when I had been working on a bunch of cinderblock prison walls for months on end.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his television work, Bolenbaugh has worked on occasional independent films including the Harrison Ford film \u201cParanoia\u201d and the horror comedy \u201cAva\u2019s Possessions\u201d starring Carol Kane. However, he says that, unlike many of his colleagues, he prefers to work on television.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think your design work gets a lot more presence on television because you see it so much more and it becomes much more integral to the plot lines,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cFor example, in \u2018Orange is the New Black,\u2019 Litchfield Prison is as much a character as any other character on that show. You can even see that phenomenon going back to something like \u2018Cheers.\u2019 The bar on \u2018Cheers\u2019 is an integral part of that show while a bar in a movie is usually just a bar. It\u2019s there for five minutes and then you\u2019ll never see it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Bolenbaugh says he\u2019s proud of all the work he\u2019s produced during his short but productive career. He\u2019s also grateful that he\u2019s played a role in what many critics are calling television\u2019s \u201cGolden Age.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally, television has been seen as a lesser medium by the people who work in it, but I just think that is so untrue,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cEspecially in the last 15 years, TV has gotten to this really high-quality place. It often has a really beautiful cinematic look to it. It\u2019s no longer your laugh-track-driven sitcom of yesteryear\u2014it\u2019s really become a high art and I\u2019m so glad to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Bolenbaugh may not have known it at the time, but growing up in Billings would prove to be an instrumental factor in determining his career choice. \u201cBillings was a great community to grow up in because there was so much beautiful scenery to grow up around,\u201d Bolenbaugh said. \u201cI think that was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[3073,3072,741,3070,3071],"class_list":["post-8205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-orange-is-the-new-black","tag-bennington-college","tag-billings-senior-high","tag-james-bolenbaugh","tag-ted-beringer","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}