In the criminal justice system, courtrooms are used to arbitrate and settle unlawful accusations - in our case (pun intended), it's used as an apartment. For our episode "Father's Shadow," we had a tense situation between a confused son and the now love-struck Olivia Benson. So instead of scouting the City of New York, we scouted our very own courtroom. From top to bottom, our fantastic construction crew, set dressers and art department put together a life-like recreation of a SoHo loft. Most everything is real and usable, from the iron rod staircase to the wood paneled floors and from the restaurant stovetops to even the children's drawings in the corner - if we are trying to make a highly emotional scene seem real, we need our set to feel real as well.
Here is a picture of the blueprints. You all know what the original courtroom looks like so watch the episode to see how well we did hiding it.
Hint: The backdrop you see in the windows is the same backdrop behind the judge's bench in our courtroom.
