Other Titles • The Santa Clause 2 • The Escape Clause: The Santa Clause 2 (2002) • The Mrs. Clause: Santa Clause 2 (2001) • SC2 (2002) • The Santa Clause 2: The Escape Clause (2001) • The Santa Clause 2: The Mrs. Clause (2002) • Santa Clause 2 - Eine noch schönere Bescherung (2002)
With colorful and incredibly detailed sets, "The Santa Clause 2" gives audiences a glimpse of the North Pole as it’s never been seen before. "The overall design concept can best be described as elaborate, whimsical, and ornate," says production designer Tony Burrough. "It’s inspired by the turn of the 20th century’s Art Nouveau movement. It’s a very decorative sensibility, with lots of curves and swirls and embellishments."
The two largest, most impressive sets in the movie are the Elf Village and Santa’s Toy Workshop. "I wanted to create a world that could accommodate enough elves and enough activity to make it plausible that this is the place where toys are made for all the children of the world," Burrough explains. "The Elf Village that we see is only a small part of the Elf world. I did drawings of the rest of this world so that when that extended world is created digitally in CGI, the architectural shapes will link through. It’s also implied that the two levels of Santa’s Workshop that we built on the set, are only two of many levels that exist in the Workshop," Burrough continues.
The 34,000 square foot Elf Village set houses a bakery, a shoe shop, a town hall, the exterior of Santa’s workshop, and a town square complete with a functional skating rink. The construction crew was comprised of 250 craftspeople including carpenters, plasterers and painters. "No two doorways or windows are alike," says construction coordinator Craig Henderson. "Each piece of plywood had to be cut individually using full-size, computer generated, paper templates. There was never the luxury of 50 of these, or 20 of those."
"I wanted the exteriors of the buildings in the Elf Village to be very decorative, ornate and textured," Burrough points out. "We decided to use plaster as opposed to foam for the exterior finishes. We set up a plaster workshop and created a variety of molds for decorative tile work, stone work and other finishes. Once we got the system up and running, we realized the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the process," Burrough notes. "Although rarely used these days, it allowed us to decorate all of the buildings with different surface treatments."
"We literally went back to school to pick up an old trade that allowed us to achieve an incredible level of architectural detail in the sets," Henderson marvels. "There was a huge sense of pride amongst the crew working on these sets. People got to show their talents. Everyone was interested and engaged in the job at hand."
Lighting a 34,000 square foot set was another challenge, but in the hands of veteran cinematographer Adam Greenberg, it was elves’ play. There were 799 lights of various shapes and sizes, including custom-made box lights, each of which housed 10 x 9-lights, each nine light containing 9 x 500 watt bulbs. These oven-like lights were hung on chain hoists and moved around the set to add fill light. The set was lit from above and all of the ceiling lights were concealed beneath a silk spread over a 200 square ft. area. Lights were turned off between takes and massive air conditioning units were turned on, since temperatures in the ceiling area could reach 300- 400 degrees in a matter of minutes. The amount of power required to light this set was equivalent to one entire city hydro grid, delivered through eighteen miles of electrical cable.
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