The Report’s Production Designer On Recreating a World of Conspiracy
Find the mental capacity for another deep dive into the darkest corners of U.S. government and policy, but put away the newspaper. We’re winding back the clock to the beginning of the Aughts, when the CIA first implemented its “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or what most regular folks would call torture, at black sites around the world. The average American citizen didn’t learn about what the CIA was up to until after the program was shut down,
How Ford v Ferrari’s Production Designer Rebuilt the World’s Greatest Race Track Piece-by-Piece
James Mangold‘s Ford v Ferrari revisits one of the greatest car races in history. It began back in 1959 when Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) wins the most difficult race in the world, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in France. The problem for Shelby is his crowning achievement is also his last race—doctors tell him a heart condition makes it impossible for him to race again. The ever-resource Shelby decides to become a car designer (he can’t bear to leave the sport he loves) and sets up shop in Venice Beach,
How Last Christmas Production Designer Gary Freeman Got the Rom-Com Look Right
It’s fitting that the season’s first big holiday rom-com, a love letter to a George Michael Christmas song, is as much a testament to London’s enduring charms as it is to holiday-inspired selflessness, love, and cheer. Written by Emma Thompson and directed by Paul Feig, Last Christmas follows shambolic party girl Kate (Emilia Clarke) as she besmirches various charming London corners in permanently smudged eye makeup, dragging around her suitcase (having prevailed too much on exhausted friends,
Motherless Brooklyn Production Designer Beth Mickle on Bringing Back Old New York
Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn is a hugely ambitious adaptation of the seminal 1999 novel by Jonathan Lethem. While it borrows heavily from Lethem’s huge cast of characters—a gumshoe with Tourette’s named Lionel (played by Norton himself) and the folks he calls friends and foes alike—it charts its own path with a more or less completely original story. The era is no longer the late 90s but rather the 1950s New York.
How Joker’s Production Designer Brought New York Back to Its Past
If one thing is certain about Joker, director Todd Phillips’ half-billion-dollars-and-growing grossing dark take on the origin story of Batman’s chief supervillain, it’s that the film means about as many different things to its audience as there are people who’ve seen it. Is the Joker a compelling vigilante or simply a have-not gone mad? Are Arthur Fleck and Batman actually half-brothers? Does Fleck’s never-ending downward spiral speak for incels everywhere? (Absolutely not.) What’s certain is that Arthur is a more than down on his luck middle-aged stand-up comic wannabe working a miserable day job as a clown for hire in a particularly gritty take on Gotham City,
Creating the Landscape & Soundscape of Harriet‘s World
Although her appearance on the $20 bill has been predictably delayed by the current administration, Harriet Tubman is still a recurring presence in American culture. An escaped slave herself, she became, as the New Yorker noted a couple of years back, “the most famous conductor” on the Underground Railroad, which itself became the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes in Colson Whitehead’s alternate history novel of the same name.
Now Tubman arrives in theaters (on November 1),
Jojo Rabbit‘s Production Designer Ra Vincent on Building Taika Waititi’s Anti-Hate Satire
One of the most buzzed about films at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival was Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit. The film earned an enthusiastic ovation from the large audience at its premiere and is currently sitting at an 80% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes. Some compared Waititi’s “anti-hate satire” to Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust drama Life is Beautiful as a high wire act of humor and pathos set during one of the darkest periods in history.
Production Designer Donal Woods on Settings Old and New in Downton Abbey
Picking up a year and a half after the end of the series’ sixth and final season, the crux around which Downton Abbey the movie turns is right there in the trailer: King George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James) are going to spend a night at Downton during a Yorkshire tour. The news comes in the form of a letter announcing their impending visit — it seems royalty is free to invite themselves to stay in aristocratic homes as necessary — throwing the household into a proportionately starchy frenzy.
Production Designer Brent Thomas on Building the Emotional The Art of Racing in the Rain
With a career spanning 25 years in film and television, Brent Thomas can trace his love for the movies to the first time he saw plays as a kid. From that young age, he became captivated by live theatre, particularly the production design involved. In short, he was hooked.
“I went to school for theatre design at the University of Alberta, that’s where I started until movies called out. I think the reason I went into theatre design;
How Mood & Lighting Established Tone in The Last Black Man in San Francisco
The Last Black Man in San Francisco marks the feature debut for director Joe Talbot, an allegory that puts a spotlight on the childhood dream and the effects of gentrification.
Inspired by the real-life story of Jimmie Fails, who plays a fictionalized version of himself, Fails, with the help of his best friend Mont (Jonathan Majors), go on a journey to take back the family home his grandfather built but lost ownership of when he was a young child.
How Rent: Live‘s Production Designer Created a 360-Degree World on Live TV
One of the most ambitious TV projects of this year that didn’t include CGI dragons and battles with ice zombies happened on Sunday night, January 27. This was the moment when Fox aired a live version of the iconic musical Rent. To call staging a live version of Rent on TV ambitious is probably underselling it. The musical, which focuses on seven artists living in New York City’s East Village in 1996,
Sharp Objects & Big Little Lies Production Designer on Creating Signature Worlds
If you had not one but two critically acclaimed HBO series under your belt, you’d be permitted to gloat. If those series were wildly different yet deliciously unforgettable, you might even be expected to brag a little. But that’s not production designer John Paino‘s way. The laidback pro was happy to discuss his work on Sharp Objects and Big Little Lies without any unnecessary braggadocio. With Big Little Lies back for season two,
Production Designer Akin McKenzie on Recreating Reality in When They See Us
When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s four-part series on the 25-year aftermath of a 1989 rape and assault that took place in Central Park, was originally going to be titled Central Park Five. That moniker quickly became the shorthand for the five boys from Harlem — four African-American, one Latino — who were wrongly accused and convicted of the attack. Instead of a name reflecting only how these teenagers were viewed by the media and public,
Building Beasts With Godzilla: King of the Monsters‘ Production Designer
There hasn’t been a film that has lived up to its title quite as thoroughly as Godzilla: King of the Monsters. In director Michael Dougherty’s Kaiju cage match, Godzilla goes clawed toe to clawed toe with some of the biggest beasts on the planet, including King Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon whose provenance is one of the film’s many twists. Every time these monsters clash—and the film doesn’t skimp on these colossal skirmishes—they do so in increasingly inspired locations.
Building Thousands of Years of History in Amazon’s Good Omens
“Corners are where everyone makes decisions. This is the point where you change directions.” And corners are usually located at crossroads, to boot, the very place—especially if you’re a Mississippi bluesman—where it’s said deals with the devil can be struck.
The corner in question, however, concerns an angel, and the London bookshop that he owns—part of Michael Ralph’s production design on the upcoming Amazon/BBC adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens.
How Chilling Adventures of Sabrina‘s Production Designer Creates the Occult
Based on the “Archie” comic book series “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa cast another spell with Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The series takes the source material from the comics and infuses them with equal parts horror and humor. Here Sabrina (played by Mad Men‘s Kiernan Shipka) struggles with trying to reconcile her two very distinct natures—she is half mortal,
The Dirt‘s Production Designer on Recreating Mötley Crüe’s Wild Ride
Netflix‘s The Dirt focuses on the wild, often sordid and ultimately stratospheric rise of the seminal heavy metal band Mötley Crüe. Directed by Jeff Tremaine, The Dirt is based on the band’s 2001 New York Times best-selling autobiography, which detailed how they managed to go from sharing a truly disgusting apartment and booking gigs on the Sunset Strip to selling out stadiums and becoming one of the most infamous acts in the world.
How Color Created Character in Brie Larson’s Unicorn Store
Captain Marvel aside, Brie Larson makes her feature-length directorial debut with Unicorn Store, now on Netflix. First screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September, the fantastical allegory written by Samantha McIntyre follows Kit (also played by Larson), a colorful art student who receives mysterious invitations to visit The Store where she’s granted owning the unicorn of her childhood dreams.
The use of color was fundamental to the story as it painted a metaphor for Kit finding her identity.
Dumbo’s Production Designer on Building Real Sets for a Flying Elephant
Tim Burton’s live-action Dumbo is not for children faint of heart. The iconic baby elephant with his signature oversized ears is ripped just as mercilessly from his mother in this modern update as he once was in Disney’s original 1941 animated feature. This time around, however, Dumbo’s got bigger, better allies. Upgraded from Timothy the mouse we now have the Farrier children, Milly, and Joe (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins),
How Highwaymen‘s Production Designer Recreated the Pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde
Production designer Michael Corenblith has a gift for recreating period films focused on real people including McDonald’s mogul Ray Kroc (The Founder), Walt Disney (Saving Mr. Banks), Davey Crockett (The Alamo) and astronaut Jim Lovell (Apollo 13). Now comes The Highwaymen. Opening Friday [March 15] and streaming March 31, the film casts Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as real-life Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault.
