Carnivàle ()Per several DVD audio commentaries by the producers is an American television series set in the United States Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The series, created by Daniel Knauf for HBO, ran for two seasons from September 7, 2003 to March 27, 2005. In tracing the lives of disparate groups of people in a traveling carnival, Knauf's story combined a bleak atmosphere with elements of the surreal in portraying struggles between good and evil and between free will and destiny. The show's mythology draws upon themes and motifs from traditional Christianity and gnosticism together with Masonic lore, particularly that of the Knights Templar order.
Nick Stahl starred as Ben Hawkins, and Clancy Brown as Brother Justin Crowe. Knauf also served as executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore and 3 Arts Entertainment's Howard Klein. The show was filmed in Santa Clarita, California, and nearby Southern California locations.
Early reviews praised Carnivàle for style and originality but questioned the approach and execution of the story. The first episode set an audience record for an HBO original series and drew durable ratings through the first season. When the series proved unable to sustain these ratings in its second season, it was cancelled. An intended six-season run was thus cut short by four seasons.
In all, 24 episodes of Carnivàle were broadcast. In 2004, the series won five Emmys out of fifteen nominations. The show received numerous other nominations and awards between 2004 and 2006.
Episodes
The two seasons of Carnivàle take place in the Depression-era Dust Bowl between 1934 and 1935, and consist of two main plotlines that slowly converge. The first involves a young man with strange healing powers named Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), who joins a traveling carnival when it passes near his home in Milfay, Oklahoma. Soon thereafter, Ben begins having surrealistic dreams and visions, which set him on the trail of a man named Henry Scudder, a drifter who crossed paths with the carnival many years before, and who apparently possessed unusual abilities similar to Ben's own.
The second plotline revolves around a Father Coughlin-esque Methodist preacher, Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), who lives with his sister Iris (Amy Madigan) in California. He shares Ben's prophetic dreams and slowly discovers the extent of his own unearthly powers, which include bending human beings to his will and making their sins and greatest evils manifest as terrifying visions. Certain that he is doing God's work, Brother Justin fully devotes himself to his religious duties, not realizing that his ultimate nemesis, Ben Hawkins, and the carnival are inexorably drawing closer.
Production Conception
Daniel Knauf conceived the initial script for the show between 1990 and 1992 when he was unsatisfied with his job as a Californian health insurance broker and hoped to become a screenwriter. He had always been interested in carnivals and noted that this subject had rarely been dramatized on film. Knauf's experiences of growing up with a disabled father who was not commonly accepted as a normal human strongly informed the story and its treatment of freaks.
Knauf named the intended feature film script Carnivàle, using an unusual spelling for a more outlandish look. Knauf had plotted the story's broad strokes as well as several plot details from early on and knew the story destination until the final scene. However, the resulting 180-page long script was twice the length of a typical feature film script, and Knauf still felt that it was too short to do his story justice. He therefore shelved the screenplay as a learning experience. In the meantime, Hollywood studios rejected all but one of Knauf's other scripts, often for being "too weird."
In the mid-1990s, Knauf met a few Writers Guild TV writers who encouraged him to revise Carnivàle as a TV series. Knauf turned the script's first act into a pilot episode, but, having no contacts in the television business, he was forced to shelve the project again and return to his regular job. A few years later, after realizing that his insurance career was not working out, he decided to give his screenwriting efforts a last chance by offering the Carnivàle pilot on his website. The script was subsequently forwarded to Howard Klein by Scott Winant, a mutual friend of the two men. After several meetings and conversations, Klein felt confident that Carnivàle would make a good episodic television series that could last for many years. Klein brought it to the attention of Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss of HBO, who were immediately receptive. The network deemed Knauf too inexperienced in the television business to give him full control over the budget, and appointed Ronald D. Moore as showrunner. (Knauf replaced Moore after one season when Moore left for the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.)
The pilot episode, which was filmed over a period of 21 days, served as the basis for additional tweaking of intended story lines. Long creative discussions took place among the writers and the network, leading to the postponement of the filming of the second episode for fourteen months. One major change was the addition of extra material for Brother Justin's side of the story. Brother Justin was originally conceived as a well-established preacher, and as a recurring character rather than a regular one. However, after perusing the preliminary version of the pilot, Knauf and the producers realized that there was no room for Justin to grow in a television series. Hence, it was decided to make Brother Justin an ordinary Methodist minister in a small town, setting him back in his career by about one or two years. Expanding Brother Justin's role opened new possibilities, and his sister Iris was created as a supporting character. Little was changed on Ben Hawkins' side except for the addition of the cootch (striptease) family; a Carnivàle consultant had elated the producers by calling attention to his research about families managing cootch shows in the 1930s.
Format The Carnivàle story was originally intended to be a trilogy of "books", consisting of two seasons each. This plan did not come to fruition, as HBO canceled the show after the first two seasons. Each season consists of twelve episodes.
Airing on HBO benefited Carnivàle in several ways. Because HBO does not rely on commercial breaks, Carnivàle had the artistic freedom to vary in episode length. Although the episodes averaged a runtime of 54 minutes, the episodes "Insomnia" and "Old Cherry Blossom Road" were 46 minutes and 59 minutes, respectively. HBO budgeted approximately US$4 million for each episode, considerably more than most television series receive.
Historical production design Carnivàle 1930s' Dust Bowl setting required significant research and historical consultants to be convincing, which was made possible with HBO's strong financial backing. As a result, reviews praised the look and production design of the show as "impeccable", "spectacular" and as "an absolute visual stunner." In 2004, Carnivàle won four Emmys for art direction, cinematography, costumes, and hairstyling.
To give a sense of the dry and dusty environment of the Dust Bowl, smoke and dirt were constantly blown through tubes onto the set. The actors' clothes were ragged and drenched in dirt, and Carnivàle had approximately 5,000 people costumed in the show's first season alone. The creative team listened to 1930s' music and radio and read old Hollywood magazines to get the period's sound, language, and slang right. The art department had an extensive research library of old catalogs, among them an original 1934 Sears Catalog, which were purchased at flea markets and antique stores. The East European background of some characters and Asian themes in Brother Justin's story were incorporated into the show. Aside from the show's supernatural elements, a historical consultant deemed Carnivàle historical accuracy to be excellent regarding the characters' lives and clothes, their food and accommodations, their cars and all the material culture.
Filming locations Carnivàle interiors were filmed at Santa Clarita Studios in Santa Clarita, California, while the show's many exterior scenes were filmed on Southern California locations. The scenes of fictional California town of Mintern, where the stories about Brother Justin and Iris in Season 1 were based, were shot at Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills. The carnival set itself was moved around the greater Southern California area, to movie ranches and to Lancaster, which were to replicate the states of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. The permanent filming location of the carnival in Season2 was Big Sky Ranch, which was also used for Brother Justin's new home in fictional New Canaan.
Opening title sequence
Carnivàle opening title sequence was created by A52, a visual effects and design company based in Los Angeles, and featured music composed by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. The opening title sequence won an Emmy for "Outstanding Main Title Design" in 2004.
The production team of A52 had intended to "create a title sequence that grounded viewers in the mid-1930s, but that also allowed people to feel a larger presence of good and evil over all of time." In early 2003, A52 pitched their idea to Carnivàle executives, who felt that the company's proposal was the most creative for the series' concept. The actual production included scanned transparencies of famous pieces of artwork, each scanned transparency being up to 300 MB in size. The resulting images were photoshopped and digitally rendered. A last step involved stock footage clips being compiled and digitally incorporated into the sequence.
The opening title sequence itself begins with a deck of Tarot cards falling into the sand, while the camera moves in and enters one card into a separate world presenting layers of artwork and footage from iconic moments of the American Depression era; the camera then moves back out of a different card and repeats the procedure several times. The sequence ends with the camera shifting from the "Judgement" Tarot card to the "Moon" and the "Sun", identifying the Devil and God respectively, until the wind blows away all cards and the underlying sand to reveal the Carnivàle title artwork.
Music Carnivàle features instrumental music composed by Jeff Beal, as well as many popular or obscure songs from the 1920s and 1930s, the time when Carnivàle story takes place. However, "After the Ball", which was a major hit in the 1890s, is used to prominent effect at the close of season 1, episode 2.Music log from season 1, episode 2, "After the Ball Is Over"
The main title was written by The Revolution members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, and was released with selected themes by Jeff Beal on a Carnivàle television soundtrack by the record label Varèse Sarabande on December 7, 2004. Beal released tracks of Season2 on his personal website. A complete list of music credits is available on the official HBO website.
Jeff Beal's score is primarily acoustic sounding electronics, but mixes themes of bluegrass as well as atmospheric rhythmic sounds. Bigger groups of strings support smaller ensembles of guitars, pianos, violins, cellos, and trumpets. The music sometimes uses ethnic instruments such as banjos, harmonicas, ukuleles, and duduks.
Because HBO does not break individual episodes with commercials, Carnivàle music is paced similar to a movie, with character-specific leitmotifs from as early as the first episode. Characters are musically identified by solo instruments chosen for the character's ethnic background or nature. Some characters whose connections are only disclosed later in the series have intentionally similar themes.