MICHAEL PETERSON:
To
And to the ones we miss.
ALL:
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
I'm Michael Shaw, production designer for
And this is the Peterson house, and we're gonna go on a tour.
This was based on the existing location
where the events happened.
(SIRENS WAILING)
DISPATCHER:
MICHAEL SHAW:
was sent a team down and survey the house.
And so, we actually got one day in there,
and we measured everything.
And it was very important that certain things,
like the grand staircase and the back staircase,
were very, very accurate.
Is it strange for you to be in the house
where she died?
MICHAEL:
SHAW:
is that we have sight lines into every room,
which is similar to what the actual house was like.
So there really wasn't a huge amount of privacy
until you get upstairs, through the back staircase.
This is the living room into the dining room,
where the family would gather for Christmas
and all the holidays.
Merry Christmas.
SHAW:
there's lots of entrances, lots of openness.
You can see into other rooms.
A lot of scenes played out here.
This way is Michael Peterson's office,
which has a very different look from the rest of the house.
We wanted this to feel a little bit darker,
which it was a wood-paneled room in reality.
But we wanted this to have a feeling
of all of his eccentricity and interests, he's a writer.
The set dec department spent a lot of time
adding a lot of layers.
But because there's a documentary,
and because there's a lot of research,
we could really get detailed into the kinds of things
he would have.
So one of the things that's very important,
if you look down this hallway,
is the connection from this room to the kitchen.
-What's going on? -DA's got nothing.
(SIGHS) Dad, this is great!
SHAW:
It's very different, in some ways,
from the original house, as a lot of things are.
But we wanted to keep the spirit of it.
And the spirit of it is: this is where the family gathers.
This is kind of the heart of the house.
And C only mark.
CREW MEMBER: And background. Action!
KATHLEEN PETERSON: That looks great, you guys.
So just through to the dining room.
WAITER:
Coming around here, we have this great depth
and we get a peek of the back staircase.
And this is a recreation, very faithfully, to the inch.
Another thing you'll notice is that we built a second story.
A lot of times in film, you won't do that.
But we wanted to be able to have continuous motion
from both the back staircase and the front staircase.
It never was lost on us that this is a tragedy,
and we see more of Kathleen in our show
than really anybody ever saw in the doc.
We get to know her in this.
So that was a unique opportunity.
MICHAEL: Surprise! Got you a massage.
SHAW:
This is bigger than it really was.
We needed to have a lot of area for them
to do-- improvise and do their scenes.
And this is the larger-than-normal bathroom.
We make these larger because the crew has to shoot in here,
and it's harder to move walls, and we can make it feel smaller.
Thank you for coming on the tour of the Peterson house.
ALL: Ooh.
MICHAEL:
We're not perfect, God knows, but we stick together.
And we love each other.
-And so... to us. -ALL: To us.
-To the Petersons! -The Petersons!