James Pearse Connelly Quotes

Producers are looking to me to concept full worlds for subjects to compete, play a game show in, win an award, blah blah blah.

I don't even know of a room that doesn't have a flat-screen TV in it. These are things that just come in environments these days. And if you were going to walk into a space, where did you come from? Was there a bathroom around the corner? These are things that are authentic, and that's what makes successful television. It's not pre-produced garbage. It's believability and connection. The environment has to tell that story.

To me, Los Angeles and California and executive power are about big, open warehouse buildings. Tech companies are buying oversized buildings, because they project growth immediately.

If you can give your walls history, it supports the action that's happening in front of them.

I'm 36, and sometimes I'm working so hard I don't realize how much I've gotten done.

In New York, it's a little bit more formal, a little bit more decorated, and there's a real appreciation for traditional style. Out here, it's casual, fresh, new, and almost humble.

I was a gay kid in high school in the late '90s, and I was in theater club. I was never a thespian. I was much more of a lighting guy or a backstage guy. Because I wanted to do something easy for the rest of my life, I thought, "Maybe I'll go and apply to colleges that specialize in theater set design. I'll do that. That's what I want to do." With theater, really, I'd be around the gays.

I treat every show, every production, like its own individual human organism that's grown up in a certain way, and they all have crazy habits and do different things.

My approach is to 100 percent get the concept and the visual right. Get the client to love the space. Once they love the space, everything's possible.

If the person or artist doesn't touch it, and if the camera stays relatively far away from it, it doesn't really have to be real.

If you look around anywhere, layers are an important part of, not just the story and the concept, but the world you're in. If you just turn around and look at your office door, there's a door, and there's something behind it.

Just to give the audience a breath of fresh air is important.

I'm being totally honest, but I really do get chills every time I see something that I designed, painted on the biggest stage in Universal, standing proud there among all the other stages. I think, "That is so amazing that I did this."

These big Silicon Valley companies that are popping up are projecting growth skyrocketing in a few years. So they need a space they can grow into. Not so much in New York. Super conservative, super small.

You take for granted the details that make something look real. It can still look fabulous, but if you add a light switch, a vent, or the notion of air conditioning, it can look real.