“Boston Strangler” Production Designer John Goldsmith Recreates a City’s Nightmare
There’s an entire film genre known as Boston movies, many of which are lampooned for their mangled accents. Good Will Hunting and The Town are two of the best, owing in large part to homegrown talents Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Boston Strangler, which debuts March 17 on Hulu, can be added to the short ...
“The Fabelmans” Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Rick Carter Gets Personal With Steven Spielberg
Veteran production designer Rick Carter art-directed the first Avatar, won an Oscar for his work on Forrest Gump, designed two Star Wars films, and collaborated with Steven Spielberg on ten movies ranging from Jurassic Park to Lincoln. Last month, Carter earned his fifth Oscar nomination for designing Spielberg’s autobiographically inspired The Fabelmans. In contrast with ...
“The Last of Us” Production Designer John Paino on Building a World in Ruins
“I’ve noticed an uptick in mushroom articles,” production designer John Paino jokes. So have I, actually, but it might be a case of being suddenly aware of the ubiquity and centrality of fungi to the living world ever since HBO’s The Last of Us premiered. The series, based on the critically acclaimed video game by ...
“Sick” Production Designer Jenny Möller Builds the Lake House From Hell in Peacock’s Peak Pandemic Slasher
Slashers don’t take sick days, even during a lockdown. Leave it to Scream writer Kevin Williamson to give us more to fear than the virus in Peacock’s Sick, which takes us back to the peak of the COVID pandemic. Best friends Parker (Gideon Adlon) and Miri (Bethlehem Million) quarantine together at a luxury lake house, ...
“Babylon” Production Designer Florencia Martin Conjures Hollywood’s Decadent Early Days
She designed Paul Thomas Anderson’s flashback to 1970s-era L.A. in Licorice Pizza and shaped the fifties look inhabited by Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. Now, production designer Florencia Martin takes viewers back to 1920s Hollywood in Oscar-winning writer/director Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, which immerses Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy and Brad Pitt’s Jack Conrad in the gloriously decadent ...
Best of 2022: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Production Designer Hannah Beachler Reveals Her Guide to Talokan
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. When Chadwick Boseman died unexpectedly after leading the cast as the title character in 2018’s Black Panther, it shocked and saddened the world. There was, understandably, some doubt as to whether a sequel could ...
Best of 2022: Getting Sea Sick With “Triangle of Sadness” Production Designer Josefin Åsberg
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Satirical black comedy Triangle of Sadness, writer/director Ruben Östlund’s first English-language feature, debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. The Swedish auteur is known for 2014’s Force Majeure and The Square, which ...
Best of 2022: How “Nope” Production Designer Ruth De Jong Built & Bloodied the Haywood Ranch
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. There was a moment when writer/director Jordan Peele and production designer Ruth De Jong realized they were going to shoot Nope practically. Tucked in the Agua Dulce area of California’s Santa Clarita Valley is ...
Getting Sea Sick With “Triangle of Sadness” Production Designer Josefin Åsberg
Satirical black comedy Triangle of Sadness, writer/director Ruben Östlund’s first English-language feature, debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. The Swedish auteur is known for 2014’s Force Majeure and The Square, which in 2017 also won the Palme d’Or and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Triangle of Sadness, like Östlund’s previous ...
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Production Designer Hannah Beachler Reveals Her Guide to Talokan
When Chadwick Boseman died unexpectedly after leading the cast as the title character in 2018’s Black Panther, it shocked and saddened the world. There was, understandably, some doubt as to whether a sequel could succeed without him. What director and co-screenwriter Ryan Coogler did with Wakanda Forever, however, honored the actor’s legacy while balancing the ...
How Three-Star Dominique Crenn Chef & Production Designer Ethan Tobman Served Up “The Menu”
Ralph Fiennes stars as a brilliantly deranged chef Julian Slowik in The Menu, but he’s periodically upstaged by gorgeous close-ups of his culinary co-stars, beginning with compressed and pickled cucumber melon, milk snow, and charred lace. That’s the “amuse bouche” served to unsuspecting foodies (including Anya Taylor-Joy, John Leguizamo, and Nicholas Hoult) who gradually find ...
“Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities” Production Designer Tamara Deverell’s Twisted World
As the afternoon light waned in Toronto, production designer Tamara Deverell recently found herself sitting on the floor of an abandoned psychiatric hospital on break from the new Sofia Coppola movie she’s working on. With dusk approaching, she joked, “I’m getting scared because it looks like I’m in this spooky Guillermo del Toro room right ...
“Shantaram” Production Designer Chris Kennedy on Building the Bustling World of India—in Thailand
“It was a total restart,” production designer Chris Kennedy tells us of the Apple TV series Shantaram, which follows the daring life of an Australian prison escapee named Lin (Charlie Hunnam) as he hopscotches his way to Bombay to avoid being captured. While filming portions of the first two episodes in Bhopal, India, production halted ...
“The Midnight Club” Production Designer Laurin Kelsey on Creating a Haunting Hospice
Facing the end is not always the scariest part of a person’s story. The terminally ill teenagers in The Midnight Club meet to entertain each other with spooky tales, but the stories may actually be clues to a secret cure or even a glimpse at life after death. The Victorian mansion serving as a hospice ...
Let “Hellraiser” Production Designer Kathrin Eder Take You To Hell With The Cenobites
The Cenobites are back and seeking new victims for their blood-letting games. This time, they have the perfect playground for their sadistic mission. Hellraiser production designer Kathrin Eder created a lavish and indulgent new environment for the inter-dimensional pain-seekers to explore. Time doesn’t bind The Priest (Jamie Clayton), more commonly known as Pinhead, and their ...
How “Nope” Production Designer Ruth De Jong Built & Bloodied the Haywood Ranch
There was a moment when writer/director Jordan Peele and production designer Ruth De Jong realized they were going to shoot Nope practically. Tucked in the Agua Dulce area of California’s Santa Clarita Valley is the Firestone Ranch, which would become the setting for the Haywood home where OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Keke ...
How “Where the Crawdads Sing” Production Designer & Cinematographer Captured Nature’s Challenging Splendor
After delighting in the alluring visual tapestry throughout director Olivia Newman’s adaptation of the beloved novel Where the Crawdads Sing (in theaters now), you might find it hard to believe production faced a crippling onslaught of rain. So much so, that it flooded the practical set of protagonist Kya’s (Daisy Edgar-Jones) home. Production designer Sue ...
“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” Production Designer Liz Toonkel Appreciates the Little Things
If you closed your eyes, could you picture the hardware on your kitchen cabinets? The knobs on your bathroom sink? When is the last time you stopped to notice your surroundings? Marcel the Shell (Jenny Slate) appreciates all the small things because to him, they’re very, very big. The star of the viral videos, created ...
“Maid” & “Under the Banner of Heaven” Production Designer Renee Read on Building Trust
Production designer Renee Read is responsible for the look of two of TV’s most successful adaptations over the past two years. For Maid, Read was tasked with helping showrunner Molly Metzler Smith and the rest of the crew adapt author Stephanie Land’s 2019 best-selling memoir “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.” The ...
“Severance” Production Designer Jeremy Hindle’s Dystopian Office Space
“Large room, four desks.” That’s the only description production designer Jeremy Hindle had to work with when he came up with this TV season’s most spookily immaculate office, as seen in Apple TV + series Severance. The high-concept sci-fi thriller, partially directed and executive produced by Ben Stiller from a script by first-timer Dan Ericson, ...
