‘Mad Men’: Production designer Dan Bishop

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

For Dan Bishop, the South Pasadena-based production designer of “Mad Men,” every frame of TV that we absorb in a post-work haze on our couches has the potential to be beautiful photography.

One of Bishop’s favorite examples in “Mad Men” happens near the end of the ninth episode. Betty Draper sits in her kitchen smoking a cigarette. Minutes later, she steps outside in her nightgown with a BB gun and shoots her neighbor’s pigeons.

Why does it work? “It’s the pattern of the wallpaper, the costume she’s wearing, the actress herself, her hairdo, the cigarette smoke,” Bishop said. “And it’s very much the position of the camera and the framing.”

TV is a humble medium, committed all too often to reinforcing mostly boorish cultural ideas. But given half the chance, it can transcend with exquisite details.

Bishop, who is involved with every visual decision of “Mad Men,” including set design and costumes, took over from his friend Bob Shaw, the Emmy Award-winning designer for “The Sopranos.” Bishop has his own Emmy for the dusty, mystic look of HBO’s “Carnivale.”

Shaw had already created the coolly conservative Sterling-Cooper office, but pretty much everything else was open to interpretation. All the “Mad Men” sets are built at LA Center Stages, a 1959 building downtown that comes in handy for its on-period lobby and hallways.

The 1960 represented in “Mad Men” is a pastiche of looks gleaned from contemporary Sears catalogs and many a foaming-at-the-mouth retrospective on Mid-Century Modern. Sometimes if it supports the drama of a scene, Bishop will stray a bit from faithful re-creation. He’ll add a pop of primary color, for instance, to the office of a competing advertising firm.

Other times he breaks away because the time was flawed. “It’s moving away from the restrained and fairly sophisticated sense of color from the ’50s and towards the intense, bright look of the ’60s. Some of it is horrific.... For a while, a lot of designers lost their way.”

Now that “Mad Men” has been picked up for a second season (and it’s hard to imagine it stopping any time soon), Bishop gets to dress the show for the turbulent mid ’60s and hopefully beyond.

Creator Matt Weiner hasn’t figured out yet how the show will advance, but it definitely will. Expect the “flip” hairstyle, frosty lipstick and fluorescent floral fabrics.

If Roger Sterling is having a heart attack now, just wait until he sees what his daughter Margaret will be wearing.

-- Margaret Wappler