Tuesday, July 28, 2009

True Blood behind the scenes: Fellowship of the Sun filming

'So much love comes flowing out ...' Steve Newlin

The amazing SkyRose Chapel at Rose Hills Memorial Park near Los Angeles ( Whittier) served as the stand-in for the FotS church in Dallas.

The chapel is one of the famous buildings designed by Arkansas native architect Fay Jones and it's gorgeous.

This was a "Go ask Dallas" question- I'll tell ya Sunday who asked

It is described on its website as:

This is The 10.6 acre chapel site has been transformed into a picturesque landscape of gardens, groves and colorful terraces with the planting of approximately 90 trees that include oak, jacaranda, sycamore and pepper.

The chapel's surrounding churchyard features a reception garden and exclusive burial property which will include the use of the upright monuments. A variety of memorialization options is available throughout the area; some sections will be reserved for exclusive family interment sites. SkyRose is the largest chapel Fay Jones and Maurice Jennings have designed to date.

The chapel is constructed of fir, Oregon redwood , bouquet canyon stone and glass and combines the beauty of Jones' unique inverse Gothic architecture with spectacular scenic views to create a site for funerals and other of life's celebrations that are remembered and shared.

Three levels make up the chapel - the mausoleum (11,200 square feet) is on the lower level, with approximately 942 crypts and 556 niches, the sanctuary (11,500 square feet) is on the ground floor with 332 fixed seats and the availability to add seats as needed and the triforium on the upper level (3,790 square feet). The roof's steep approximately 45-degree pitch and the building's height, 90 feet at its peak, made construction difficult and dangerous. Another difficult challenge was installing the chapel's skylight along the roof's ridge, which measures 24 feet wide by 105 feet long. One of the finishing touches to the chapel was the integration of a Quimby pipe organ which was custom built for SkyRose. The organ consists of 3,937 pipes ranging in height from four inches to thirty-two feet.

Fay Jones, who has had more that 200 projects to his credit designed only six chapels prior to SkyRose. His first chapel Thorncrown, was built in 1980 in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and was selected in 1991 from among all the buildings built in the country since 1980 as the best by the American Institute of Architects.

http://www.rosehills.com/ MAP

You can see tombstone behind the director.

** William Hopper, among many other notable folks like Richard Nixon's parents are buried there. He was Paul Drake from Perry Mason show and is son of actress and gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper.



1 comments:

Brent & Jamie said...

Check out the Marty Leonard Chapel in Fort Worth. It was also designed by E. Fay Jones, and I actually thought for a minute that they filmed it there granted the recent shoots in Dallas. However, the wide shots showing the surrounding area made it clear it wasn't shot at the Marty Leonard Chapel--definitely the SkyRose, at least as far as the outside shots go.