The Plantation of the fictional Coleridge Family

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Concept Art

Illustrating the fictional Coleridge Plantation posed two distinct problems: creating an environment that is recognizable as a plantation while avoiding the conventions often used in movies about slavery, and understanding what that environment looked like relative to the socio-economic conditions of the early 1800s.

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Research

The animation team was able to create a realistic composite based on the descriptions of several Maryland plantations. The team drew heavily on the scholarship of William G. Thomas III and a document titled Antebellum Plantations in Prince George’s County, Maryland, which describes most of the plantations in the state in order of size.

The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Antebellum Plantations in Prince George’s County, Maryland (2009), 106.

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Final Animation

The team chose an aerial view of the plantation that tracked down to enter Anna's world via the slave quarters of an average-sized Maryland plantation circa 1800.

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Final Animation

The aerial view tracks down to the quarters of the enslaved inhabitants of the Coleridge Plantation.

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Final Animation

There were a few brick Federal structures in Prince George's County, including Gabriel Duvall's Marietta, but we decided to portray Coleridge as a middling planter, one who perhaps aspired to but had not achieved the wealth necessary to construct a brick mansion. Instead, his dwelling, while still substantial, was a more modest wood frame house.