Inside ‘Fallout’: When a video game’s science fiction becomes a tangible Hollywood blockbuster

To reach the hidden soundstages where Fallout is filmed, you have to leave Los Angeles (which is hardly a small city) far enough behind that you start to see open countryside. So much so that the studios call themselves The Ranch, with a faint Old West flavor and a sense of grandeur. They have both in spades: their vast grounds make the famed Stage 8 one of the largest shooting stages in the industry, at nearly 5,200 square meters. Fallout deserves no less: you need room to find shelter and comfort in its vaults, the bunkers where part of the action takes place.

Since Fallout premiered almost two and a half years ago, expectations have been high. The video game it’s based on was already a huge global hit, and the series was too: its first season made it the fifth most-watched series on streaming platforms in the United States. That’s why they went all out for the second season, and will continue to do so for the third, which is expected to premiere next year. Everything is being, and will be, filmed on this vast location that creates a world you can touch and feel, entirely realistic — or as realistic as a post-apocalyptic dystopia populated by androids and outlaws can be.

In the basements, as you’d expect, beneath Stage 8 north of Los Angeles, lies the world of Fallout, and there also are its stars: Ella Purnell (Lucy), Aaron Moten (Maximus) and Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, although on this June day he looked happier and smiled more than his character does. He spoke informally with EL PAÍS — invited on the tour by Prime Video — to praise Madrid, his favorite city, which he had just returned from and will visit again soon, he said, and to praise the work of the creators of this world: artisanal, hands-on and meticulous. He was talking from a corridor in one of the vaults, between an office and a dormitory, alongside Jonathan Nolan, the show’s executive producer, and Howard Cummings, a veteran production designer with some 50 titles to his name.

What those behind the Emmy-winning series explain is that fans always want to compare it to the video game, but they also want to know where the story is headed. “But our writers are very clever, because we’re not doing the actual game story,” Nolan says (yes, he is the brother of Christopher Nolan — acclaimed director of Oppenheimer and The Odyssey — with whom he regularly collaborates). Fans are the biggest supporters but also the toughest critics: if something doesn’t fit, they won’t hesitate to say so plainly. “I verify things, I don’t want to do something that doesn’t fit within their world, but they also give me great freedom to mix and match and do what I want,” Cummings adds.

One example: screws. A seemingly small detail. “I remember the first review that came out, it was like, they did the triangular bolts that are in the hallway,” recalls the production designer and the person responsible for the vault’s flawless look. “And I looked at them and thought, these are weird. But I just said, ‘it’s so weird, let’s just do it.’ So I found out later, they did that because when you’re building the game, it uses more memory to use a five-sided bolt than a double or a four-sided one. So they wanted a triangular bolt. I didn’t know that, I just did it. So there’s really fun things that I learned,” he admits.

During the visit, a few meters past the offices and the school classrooms, a deathclaw, a hideous monster over two meters tall, appears: in the Fallout universe it belongs to a species that’s a mix of highly capable soldiers and chameleons and other animals. Fast and deadly, viewers might assume they were created with visual effects — post-production — but they are there physically, with sharp claws, scales, and pointed teeth, taking photos with journalists. They are what are called animatronics, a kind of hyperreal puppet.

Obviously, they receive additions in post-production, where their movements are scanned and visual effects are added, the team explains. But for the most part they are controlled by technicians operating their arms and lower parts, like a giant puppet. “Basically, you can see that there’s a performer in the suit, those two puppeteers, and then another one kind of controlling the facial expressions that Carrie and her team at Legacy put together, [for] this amazing deathclaw, as well as the power armor suits, which are fully practical,” explains Casey O’Neill, stunt coordinator. Because, yes, there are many of them in the series. “We have stunt performers in those too, that do all the stuff, whether it be wire work, falling down, all the things you’ve seen in the episodes so far on season one and two. And then it’s just bringing those two things together: The realities of what this is capable of doing and then choreographing how that all works and what looks the most dynamic, obviously taken off the page, based on Gen’s [Geneva Robertson-Dworet, creator, also present on the visit] creative writing. Bringing the script to life and bringing action to the screen is the goal.

In a school classroom, young actress Ella Purnell and costume designer Dayna Pink told this newspaper they have only two or three months to create the garments for all the characters and that, above all, what matters to their team is “hoping to keep the spirit in everything that we do,” Pink says. Sometimes, for example, the challenge isn’t making many costumes but a single one: for the second season, there was only one dress for Purnell. “The pressure, you know what I mean?” she laughed. “It has to say everything is so important, this dress meant so much.” So she chose a classic cut, high-necked, one that evoked the era, and a striking yellow tone with careful embroidery. “Yellow won for several reasons. You know, it looked the best, but also I love that it’s sunshine; to me that was sort of perfect and then it had to also make her feel a certain way when she put it on. And that’s part of our job, when we’re putting an actor into an outfit, and then you zip someone into something, they stand a little differently, you put shoes on, they walk a little different.”

In fact, for this dress — although several options were tested — the team opted for boots. “It had to be the boots,” Purnell says. “But for me the dress really symbolizes just how much Lucy has changed; it slightly reminds me of her wedding in the first episode of season one. What great adventures she’s had.” The costume creator agrees and feels her work is fully integrated with storytelling.

In the end, as they explain, it’s about building “a collaborative, creative process that we all get to come together and create the sequence together,” sums up O’Neill, the head of stunt doubles. “We’ve been working together for so many years, that’s one of the other things that’s super gratifying,” he adds. For the actors, stepping into that world, sitting in those chairs, wearing those costumes, fighting those beasts — having it all be real — helps. Or putting on a robotic suit, like the T60, another classic of the series that’s not easy to handle, but is real. As Aaron Moten, who plays Maximus and has worn it, laughingly says, “people sort of move out of your way when you’re walking by in it.” “It does a lot for your imagination without having to work too hard for it,” he reflects. “I think it was like maybe three weeks before I was ever on set with a deathclaw; they brought me in look at it and even just being able to know that this is what I get to play with it’s so much better than a person on stilts with dots on their face.”