The Young and the Restless promised a Valentine's Day to die for in its recent promo video, and from the looks of the plane crash set to wreak havoc on the canvas early next week, it's a promise they'll be living up to. Not only will pretty much all of the Winters family be involved in the killer crash, it appears as if the soap spent a lot of time (and money) on the elaborate crash set. So what went into the making of such an epic on-screen disaster?
Y&R production designer David Hoffman, who's worked on the show for over 15 years, told Yahoo! TV that upon hearing about the storyline, his first thought was, "How are we going to get something of that size into our sound stage?" "The plane is very large, and that was a big challenge, physically getting it onstage and locating wrecked plane pieces that would be appropriate for our storyline."
Though that wasn't the production team's biggest challenge. In addition to forklifting in huge pieces of plane wreckage, installing over 300 platforms of varying heights, and bringing in snow equipment and trees, the set needed an airplane -- which Hoffman says led to a dizzying selection process. "Finding the airplane that was going to suit our needs [and] that was a private jet that we could also do an interior of as well" wasn't easy, he says. "There was a bit of a challenge... locating those pieces. The other part was just trying to set up in such a way that we could get camera angles, because we shoot multi-camera, and being able to get up into the crash site, into the wreckage, which was sort of one of the things we really wanted to do, as opposed to just being down in front of it, like a lot of shows are shot. We wanted to be able to push our cameras up into the set, find interesting views and angles so that we'd be able to give the directors a lot of different opportunities for new and interesting shots."
To read more about Y&R's epic plane crash set as well as read a tease from Hoffman about some other disasters set to hit Genoa City, check out his full Yahoo! TV interview here. Also, be sure to check out Soap Central's interview with Mishael Morgan (Hilary Curtis), who spills even more behind-the-scenes tidbits about the plane crash set to destroy the Winters family.
What do you think about the work Y&R put into their plane crash set? Is it money and time well spent, or would you rather see the soap explore other avenues? Share your thoughts in our Comments section below, on our message boards, or by submitting Feedback..