Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Production Designer on Building a World of Mayhem
The sixth installment of Mission: Impossible premiered last Friday to critical praise and a series-best opening at the box office. Among the numerous elements that made MI6 a standout was the continuation of outlandish, death-defying, and yet quite scenic stunts, mostly performed by Tom Cruise himself, in the role of Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt.
Hunt’s nemesis, Solomon Lane (played by Sean Harris),
Skyscraper‘s Production Designer Elevates the Mythic Subtext to Insane Heights
Production designer Jim Bissell faced a 226-story challenge when Skyscraper writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber enlisted him to create Hong Kong high rise “The Pearl.” Oscar-nominated for his work on Good Night, and Good Luck and experienced in the ways of architecture-driven action through his contributions to Tom Cruise’s dizzying skyscraper stunts in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Bissell needed to come up with a tower every bit as dramatic as the movie’s human star Dwayne Johnson.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s Production Designer Takes on the Indoraptor
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom boasts more dinosaurs than any previous film in the Jurassic franchise—combined. While prehistoric mayhem set in the present is precisely what Jurassic fans expect, it’s a major challenge for the film crew. This was especially true for production designer Andy Nicholson, who was tasked with creating a literal house of horrors for director J.A. Bayona. With the action in Fallen Kingdom moving from Isla Nublar to the mainland,
Production Designer Ralph Eggleston on Creating the World of Incredibles 2 – Part 2
After a fourteen year interlude, director Brad Bird’s second installment starrring Pixar’s beloved animated superhero family, Incredibles 2, came out this week. As Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), and their children Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dashiell (Huck Milner), and baby Jack-Jack attempt to navigate a comeback, a first love, math, and a wild array of newfound superpowers (respectively), the audience is treated to a seamless retro-futuristic setting for the endeavors.
Production Designer Ralph Eggleston on Creating the World of Incredibles 2 – Part I
Fourteen years after Pixar’s The Incredibles anticipated Hollywood’s wave of superhero titles with the charming, animated, crime-fighting Parr family, director Brad Bird revisits the Parrs right where he left them — undercover, in a 1950s-era strip motel. At the beginning of Incredibles 2, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), Mom and Dad Parr, have messily and unsuccessfully taken on a bank villain, and their superhero program is getting the axe.
Ocean’s 8 Production Designer on the Art of the Con Artist
Alex DiGerlando made his reputation as a production designer when he conjured the gritty swamp vibe for 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. DiGerlando followed that stunning achievement with his spooky evocation of rural Louisiana subcultures in the first season of True Detective. Heist movie Ocean’s 8 represents a radical shift in milieu for the NYU-educated production designer. Working with director Gary Ross,
Westworld’s Production Designer Breaks Down Season 2
Production designer Howard Cummings’s thirty year career has encompassed an incredible range of varied and stylized work: from the fantastical designs showcased in Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightening Thief, to the grounded realism seen in such films as Francis Coppola’s The Rainmaker, to the expressive realism seen in his 20 year stint working with director Steven Soderbergh on movies like The Underneath,
Hereditary‘s Production Designer on Building the Scariest Movie of the Year
This is no exaggeration: Hereditary is the scariest movie in years and sure to become a horror classic. Writer/director Ari Aster brings a horrific tale of how we might just be unable to escape our familial bonds. He tells this through the Graham family—when Ellen, the mother of Annie Graham (an Oscar worthy Toni Collette) dies her private presence begins to haunt the whole family through her things, her secrets and perhaps even her spirit.
How The Voice Production Design Inspires Musical Creativity
Tonight, Spensha Baker, Britton Buchanan, Brynn Cartelli or Kyla Jade will be crowned the newest winner of The Voice. Whether you’re Team Blake, Team Alicia, Team Kelly, or even Team Adam, The Voice is always an inviting place to spend time every week. The talent is astonishing, the rivalry is riotous, and the environment is electric. Production designer James Pearse Connelly is responsible for transforming a singing competition into a glamorous music haven where dreams are born.
Avengers: Infinity War‘s Production Designer on Helping Build the Film’s Heartbreaking Drama
By now, audiences have gotten to know the newly complex Marvel villain Thanos (Josh Brolin), thwarter of the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Wakandans, the soulful psychopath who has haunted the Marvel Cinematic Universe practically from its inception. The third film in Disney’s Avengers franchise (and the 19th in the MCU), Avengers: Infinity War, is setting both box office records and (spoiler alert) records for how many beloved main characters can be killed off — at least seemingly so — in one 2.5 hour stretch.
Nailing the “Regular People Look” on Tully
For Jason Reitman’s new movie Tully (opening Friday), Charlize Theron gained 50 pounds to play Marlo, the bedraggled mother of three. By design, Marlo’s unkempt house reflects a character who’s way too exhausted to keep the place looking neat and tidy. Canadian production designer Anastasia Masaro explains the backstory. “Marlo’s home is meant to feel like she and her husband bought the house when their first kid was on the way and they really meant to fix it up.”
Tully‘s Production Designer Anastasia Masaro on Finding Magic in Life’s Mess
It’s been seven years since Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, the creative forces behind Juno and Young Adult, last collaborated. Now, with Tully, the pair close out a thematic trilogy of sorts – stories that have, at least in some way, been autobiographical for the pair of creatives. “They have this kind of connective tissue between all of them,” Reitman said at the New York premiere of the film.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Production Designer Recreates 1958-era Manhattan
Production designer Bill Groom doesn’t remember much about 1958. After all, he was just eight years old when the feisty and fictitious Midge Maisel roamed the streets of New York. So when Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan Palladino asked him to conjure mid-century Manhattan for their Amazon period piece comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which started streaming on Amazon earlier this month, Groom did what he always does: research. Lots of research.
Unsane‘s Production Designer & Set Decorator on Perfecting Paranoia
On the surface, the most notable thing about Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane is that the ever-experimental filmmaker captured the frenzied 90-minutes with the assistance of a handful of iPhones, a down and dirty technique that nevertheless gives the film what Soderbergh calls a “velvet” smoothness. It’s a daring choice from an ever evolving filmmaker, but Usane’s greatest strength isn’t all in its technical wizardry. It’s the film’s ability to send any viewer veering off kilter nearly as soon as the action onscreen begins – it’s all unsettling angles,
Production Designer Paul Harrod on Building Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs
Wes Anderson’s latest caper, Isle of Dogs, premieres today after a warm reception last month as the opening night film at the Berlinale. The film sees Anderson making a return to stop motion animation, following The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and working in both Japanese (the human characters) and English (the canines, who are presumed to be speaking translated dog). A complex set involves a past-futuristic fictional Japanese city, called Megasaki,
How Billions‘ Production Designer Created the World of the Insanely Rich
Three years ago production designer Mike Shaw needed a change of pace from the lowdown penitentiary aesthetic he created for Orange is the New Black. In Showtime series Billions, Dash went the opposite way by designing the deluxe milieu inhabited by super-rich hedge fund shark Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis). “One of the biggest challenges in designing Billions is that a lot of people know what a millionaire’s lifestyle is like,
How the Black Panther Production Designer Rooted the World’s Most Advanced Nation in African Culture
Everyone on the set of Black Panther felt the weight of being a trailblazer. Realizing Wakanda for the screen meant reclaiming a painful history, honoring a rich heritage, and imagining the hope of the future right now. It also has the potential to confirm the demand for more diverse storytelling. It was a challenge that would require the greatest talents of our time to come together. Miraculously, it seems they did.
How Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri‘s Production Designer Fire-Proofed an Entire Location
By the time Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri production designer Inbal Weinberg joined up with Martin McDonagh, the writer-director had already spent months traveling the south in search of a title town. He found it in Sylva, North Carolina. Hired over Skype on the strength of her Americana-themed designs for Frozen River and The Place Beyond the Pines, Weinberg met McDonagh in person for the first time at the Asheville airport,
The Production Designer Who Recreated the Famous Kaczynski Evidence for Manhunt: Unabomber
Mentions of the Unabomber immediately call to mind the deadly postal packages containing explosives and that famous police sketch of the suspect in a hoodie. While working on Manhunt: Unabomber, production designer Erik Carlson realized, however, that the case actually hinged on hundreds of handwritten documents. The eight-episode Discovery Channel miniseries delved into the infamous FBI investigation that eventually resulted in Ted Kaczynski’s arrest. Carlson painstakingly recreated all 17 of the homemade bombs,
Set Decorator Rena DeAngelo Recreates a 1970s Newsroom in Steven Spielberg’s The Post
The Post, Steven Spielberg’s latest film opening December 22nd, recounts the Washington Post’s part in bringing the Pentagon Papers to light, on the heels of the New York Times. For the first time, Spielberg is working together with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, playing the newspaper’s first woman publisher, Katharine Graham, and its editor, Ben Bradlee. Set in the early 1970s, with much of the action taking place in the paper’s colorless newsroom,
