How Apple TV’s Silo built that giant staircase

When you ask, Silo star Rebecca Ferguson how many stairs she walked up during production — well, it’s too many.

“30,000 a day? I don’t know,” she laughs. “The team — the amount of stairs everyone’s climbed is just bonkers. We’re in good shape!”

This would have been considered an overstatement for another show and another set. But on Apple TV Plus’ Silo, the adaptation of the Silo book series by Hugh Howey, the central staircase and its thousands of stairs is more than just “one of the main characters really.” They’re the things that define the life and look of the entire world.

Where else? The series takes place in (where else?) The silo has hundreds of floors, with all transportation done on foot. That’s one thing when you’re just going down a few floors a day, and something else entirely when you have to traverse dozens of floors, or even the entire thing top to bottom. Traveling the whole thing can be a days-long pilgrimage, which also makes it a very rare feat; it’s enough to silo (ayyyyy) whole parts of the community from each other, and perfect for conspiracy to fester.

Apple

In the show’s universe, the design of the silo is very particular (and, predictably, a mystery left by the enigmatic “founders” that will be untangled over the run of Silo). These first few episodes were crucial in establishing the world of an entirely vertically-built universe for viewers. Graham Yost was determined to make sure that this reorientation of audiences is done correctly.

“It was incredibly arduous to build,” Yost says, crediting production designer Gavin Bocquet with coming up with the design of the silo, the first thing they “really embarked on” when making the show. “We knew that there would be some blue screen involved, and you could move blue screen in to sell it [and]You can dress the hat in such a way that it looks just like one part of the Silo. It would take days or even weeks to redress the silo.

“But the stairs themselves never change. […] And this design was fantastic.”

The set’s design is surprisingly intuitive: There’s three levels of stairs, built in a refrigeration warehouse about an hour outside of London. The stairs themselves stand in for any of the various floors the characters find themselves on as they try to unravel the intrigue they’re caught up in, and having so many stairs allows the actors to really descend and ascend as they need to. Howey says that it’s a matter of fact. huge. “You walk onto this set, and it’s like, Why are you building this? Why do you build this?”

Apple Image Courtesy

Apple Image Courtesy

Apple TV Plus

Yost and Howey, however, wanted to ensure that the world of their silo and all its characters felt plausible and not just a tiny bit unrealistic. You can also read more aboutLike something that people might really experience.

“We would be thinking: how would this really work? How would you build that?” Yost asks. That meant that there were little details everywhere, often ones the camera wouldn’t even linger on. “Alleyways where people live — would it just be smooth walls? And it’s like no, they’d want parts to punch out and be recessed and have separate levels within a level, because they wouldn’t want people to go insane immediately; you need some variation in the form so it’s not all just smooth lines.

“And so that ended up becoming a more attractive looking design. And yet it’s also a little claustrophobic — well, that works because we want that sense of claustrophobia at times. So in a certain way, form did follow function.”

The following are some thoughts on how to get started: Silo’s first two episodes barely have time to get into it — there’s a conspiracy afoot, a murder, and maybe even more nefarious forces at play in the subterranean society — the stairs are the feature that comes to define every part of the show’s world. The stairs are the feature that defines everything, including transportation, peril and more. New York is a great example. Sex and the City, Silo’s stairs are a bit of a character unto themselves, and one that tests each of the players in the show’s mystery. They’re a concrete behemoth, always at the center of the action. And like the silo’s citizens, you’re gonna be seeing a lot of them.

First two episodes SiloApple TV Plus is now offering streaming. Every Friday, new episodes are released.