Stephen J. Lineweaver

Stephen J. Lineweaver
Role	Production Designer
Date of birth	1955
External Links

Stephen J. Lineweaver is a production designer on The Orville.

Background

Lineweaver began his career in 1984 as a producer for A Bit of Bad Luck, a construction coordinator Old Enough, and an art director on Alphabet City. He held various posts in television and film art departments until landing the job of production designer on the 1988 television series Great Performances, a position he has kept on projects ever since.

Lineweaver first worked with creator Seth MacFarlane on his 2012 film Ted, and the two re-assembled for the 2014 movie A Million Ways to Die in the West.

The Orville

Shortly after MacFarlane completed a draft script for the third episode, About a Girl, he set to build his production team. Stephen Lineweaver was enlisted as the head of production design just after MacFarlane hired his executive producers and writing team.

His first day on set, Lineweaver met up with producer Howard Griffith and construction coordinator Tony Lattanzio to survey the empty studio where the USS Orville would be built. The previous show to use the studio, American Horror Story, left a large, two-story spiral staircase that workers were preparing to remove. The trio suddenly realized that the Orville could be built as an immersive two-story set.

Lineweaver hurriedly approached MacFarlane with their ambitious plan, an idea MacFarlane loved. As primary architect of the ship's set, Lineweaver lead a team of artists to sift through over 140 different concept designs of the ship before settling on its final version. Lineweaver wanted soft curves with a warm color pallet to give the ship an organic touch, and compliments of steels and grays to give the ship is requisite futuristic feel. Lineweaver also made sure to save the old spiral staircase that gave rise to the two-story set.

Lineweaver explains his work process:

We almost do a feature a week here. It’s a very ambitious show, and you cannot go out and shop for it. It’s created down to the toothpick. That’s what’s exciting, and what’s challenging about it. I do everything through illustration—you have to, for the future. It doesn’t exist. You have to draw it, and that’s the way we’ve worked together for a long time.

Lineweaver's work is varied and rich. He worked with visual effects supervisor Luke McDonald developing concept art for digital set pieces, such as the commuter pod, and with artists Brandon Fayette and Kit Stølen on physical sets, such as the bridge of the Yakar.

MacFarlane was highly pleased with Lineweaver's work, later saying, "What I liked what [Lineweaver] did with the set is that he doesn't come out of a science fiction background. This is his first spaceship." He praised the production designer for avoiding the familiar tropes of dystopian science fiction, instead building an "aspirational" version of the future that audiences would aspire to.

Trivia

• Assistant Science Officer Jack Lineweaver of the Orville is named after him.
• He plays a rebel fighter in the Resistance in the episode The Road Not Taken.
• Doctor S. J. Lineweaver, chief architect of the Union fleet in the late 24th century, is named after him.

External links

• Interview with Deadline
• Official video of Lineweaver's set in progress and completed
• Article on the production of the show written by Lineweaver and art director Robert Strohmaier

See also

• The World of the Orville, pages 11, 27, 30, 44, 76, 106, 110, 158