portant aids to production design. Digital pre-visualization enables filmmakers to build three-dimensional computer models of sets and locations. By rotating and reformatting these models, filmmakers can simulate views of the set from different camera positions and with lenses of differing focal lengths. The process enables filmmakers to see in advance how the set will look under a variety of filming conditions.
Based on this information, filmmakers can plan camera setups or, if necessary, revise the design of a set.
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Production Design
DO THE RIGHT THING (40
ACRES & A MULE, 1989)
Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo
Esposito) demands to know
why there are no African-
American portraits on the Wall
of Fame. Brilliant production
design motivates characters,
drama, setting and theme
and stimulates actors to do
their best work. Sal’s “Wall
of Fame” illuminates one of
the film’s core themes, the
role that African-American
entrepreneurs can play in
transforming the city. Frame
enlargement.
During all of this, the production designer also will make trips to scout locations.
These trips are called recces (pronounced “wreckies”), and the objective is to find places that will be economical to use and also will fit with the evolving look and feel of the film.
As the sketches become models and full-scale sets, the production designer supervises a crew that he or she often has hired. These people include the art director (a kind of second-in-command who oversees the translation of sketches into sets), the set decorator (who dresses a set with curtains, lamps, furniture), the prop master (who supervises the design and construction of props, such as a cigar lighter or walking stick), the scenic artist (who supervises matte paintings and other backdrop portions of a set), and the costume designer (who designs what the characters will wear).
Creating a Unified Design
The production designer thinks about the visual statements made by the layout of sets, architectural styles and building materials, coloring and texture of buildings and costumes, and the interplay of all design elements in the frame. The goal is to use these elements to make a unified and coherent design statement or series of such statements.
Chinatown (1974) was one of the best-designed films of the 1970s, and it is instructive to hear how its production designer, Richard Sylbert, conceptualized the different details that went into that film’s highly distinctive mise-en-scène. The film takes place in 1937 in a drought-stricken Los Angeles and follows Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), a private eye investigating the death of Hollis Mulwray. Sylbert insisted there be no clouds visible in the sky because clouds suggest rain; that buildings be colored white because white denotes heat; that glass windows on office doors be cloudy and opaque to make it hard to see through them and enhance a sense of mystery; and that the color green, because it denotes lushness and moisture, be used only in significant scenes where the viewer feels something important is about to happen.
As Sylbert’s design suggests, each element in a well-designed film has a reason for being there, some contribution that it is making to the story, theme, or style of the production.
Throughout cinema history, films have been designed in this fashion, even though the title
“production designer” is of relatively recent vintage. While the title is commonly employed in contemporary productions, during the studio era of the Hollywood period the title barely existed. During the 1930s and 1940s, each studio had an art department that employed illustrators, model builders, set decorators, prop men and prop women, and costume 99
Production Design
CHINATOWN
(PARAMOUNT, 1974)
Detective J. J. Gittes (Jack
Nicholson) and the mys-
terious Evelyn Mulwray
(Faye Dunaway, pictured)
grapple with murder and
deceit in 1930s Los Angeles.
The film’s unified produc-
tion design evokes the
period setting with excep-
tional concentration and
metaphoric suggestiveness.
Frame enlargement.
designers, all of whom worked under a given production’s unit art director . (The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, still employs this older ter-minology, giving the award for “Best Art Direction.”) The head of the art department who oversaw all the films in production was the supervising art director . At MGM, this individual was Cedric Gibbons. At 20th Century Fox, the equivalent figure was Lyle Wheeler.
Producer David O. Selznick first employed the term production designer on Gone With the Wind (1939) as a tribute to the importance of William Cameron Menzies’s design sketches. These sketches and storyboards provided the unifying visual structure that helped give Gone With the Wind its stylistic coherence. This contribution was especially important in light of the fact that several different directors worked on Gone With the Wind . The man who gets screen credit as director is Victor Fleming, but during production Selznick changed directors several times, and it was Menzies’s design concept that furnished a unifying visual structure. Menzies was a brilliant visual artist whose work has inspired generations of production designers. For this reason, he is sometimes referred to as the “father of production design,” although, as we shall see, imaginative set design extends well back into silent cinema. As a director, he made one of the classic early science fiction films, Things to Come (1933), notable for its flamboyant and imaginative futuristic sets.
FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Henry Bumstead
Henry Bumstead was one of Hollywood’s most
at Toko-Ri, 1954), comedy ( My Friend Irma, 1949)—
successful production designers. He worked at
and moved quickly from one architectural style to
Paramount Studios from 1937 to 1960, during the
another. “One day you might have to do something
great era of studio filmmaking, then at Universal
Gothic, next day, art nouveau,” he recalled. He
Pictures, and then as an independent. He formed
learned how to break down a script into locations and
lasting partnerships with directors Alfred Hitchcock,
set designs that would include key character details
Robert Mulligan, George Roy Hill, and Clint
and a color scheme suited to character and situation.
Eastwood, leaving an enduring visual imprint on their
He met Hitchcock while at Paramount through
films through the sets and locations that he created.
Hitchcock’s cinematographer, Robert Burks, who was
Bumstead described Paramount as being like a
shooting a picture— The Vagabond King (1956)—for
miniature city, bustling with creative people under
which Bumstead was doing the art direction. On
long-term contract. He worked in many genres—
Burks’ recommendation, Hitchcock asked to meet
Westerns ( Run for Cover, 1955), war films ( The Bridges
Bumstead, and they then collaborated on four films,
( continued)
100
Production Design
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958),
on Bumstead’s studio sets. In designing the sets,
Topaz (1969), and Family Plot (1976). Bumstead’s
Bumstead used the period photographs of Walker
memorable designs for Vertigo —which included the
Evans as inspiration, and he created a dominant pal-
church bell tower where the climax occurs—helped
ette of red and brown to set mood and tone.
provide
the film with its singular visual power.
Bumstead’s longest relationship was with Clint
At Universal Studios, Bumstead designed five films
Eastwood, for whom he designed twelve films begin-
for Robert Mulligan, of which the most important was
ning with High Plains Drifter (1973) and ending with
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), based on the Harper Lee
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima
novel of a small Alabama town in the 1930s. Bumstead
(2006). Eastwood is noted for working very fast and
created a believable town built not in Alabama but on
efficiently, and Bumstead’s training during the studio
the Universal back lot. Even the trees on the set were
period enabled him to adapt to the fast schedule of
built. So real did the sets seem that numerous art di-
an Eastwood shoot. In Unforgiven (1991), for example,
rectors asked him where in Alabama he had found this
Bumstead created the Western town of Big Whiskey on
town! It was Bumstead’s attention to detail—dressing
a location in Calgary, Canada, in 43 days. It was one of
the sets with period décor, including porch swings
many Western towns that he had created for the mov-
and a house with brick pillars elevating its foundation
ies, and he always ran the main street on an east-west
above the flood plain and creating a little crawl space
axis so that cinematographers would have backlight
underneath—that made the sets seem so real.
available for dramatic framing. Toward the end of his
Bumstead designed eight films for George Roy
life, Bumstead planned to retire, but Eastwood kept
Hill, which included Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), Slap
coming by with new scripts, and “Bummy,” as he was
Shot (1977), The World According to Garp (1982),
affectionately known, found each new collaboration
and their Oscar-winning film, The Sting (1973). For
with Eastwood to be irresistible. When Bumstead won
this Depression-era story set in Chicago, Hill wanted
the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of
to shoot on location, but Bumstead persuaded him
Motion Picture and Television Art Directors, Eastwood
to build the sets in the studio, and Hill later said
paid him a high compliment, saying “Dear Bummy,
that the best-looking stuff in the film was that shot
you take the BS out of filmmaking.” ■
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (Universal, 1962)
Bumstead built the sets for a Depression-era Alabama town on the back lot at Universal Studios, and the sets looked so authentic that many people believed the film had been shot on an actual Alabama location. Frame enlargement.
101
Production Design
GONE WITH THE WIND (MGM, 1939)
William Cameron Menzies’s design sketches helped provide a unifying visual structure for a production that frequently changed directors. Menzies’s architectural visions brought the novel’s settings memorably to life. Ashley Wilkes’s Twelve Oaks plantation is the stage for several critical scenes in the film’s first act. The sumptuous sets and costumes provide a vivid backdrop for the drama, and the filmmakers take care to display them in a luxuriant fashion. Frame enlargement.
BASIC TOOLS OF PRODUCTION DESIGN
Filmmakers design the visual environments of a film by using a set of tools that have remained essentially the same over many decades of filmmaking, although today they are augmented by digital effects. These tools are costumes, sets, matte paintings, and miniatures. Costumes , of course, are worn by performers on the set in front of the camera.
Period films use historical costuming whose style and fashions designate a particular time period. The sumptuousness of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) is evident in the lavishly detailed costumes (and sets) that evoke the early modern world of 1912.
Sets are the physical locations on which the action occurs. These locations can be outdoors or indoors in the studio. At times, an indoor location may masquerade as an outdoor location. In Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1998), scenes that were supposed to be taking place outdoors in the courtyard of a New England prison holding African slaves actually were filmed on an indoor set. The filmmakers hung a giant silk shroud from the ceiling of the stage and lit it brightly from behind so that it would “burn out”
on film. To the camera—and the viewer—it looked like a bright, cloudy sky.
Matte paintings are printed into the shot in the laboratory or, more often today, are digitally composited as a part of the background of a setting. Mattes very effectively extend the scale and depth of the represented scene. Matte work can be exceptionally sophisticated and subtle and, when done well, is virtually impossible for the 102
Production Design
casual viewer to spot. Digital mattes, created on the computer, are employed in many contemporary films.
Miniatures are small models that stand in for a portion of the set. Filmmakers often need miniatures when a very large set, such as a castle or, in the case of the Batman films, the entire city of Gotham, is required for a scene but cannot be built on its true scale. In the opening, pre-credit sequence of Goldeneye (1995), James Bond blows up a poison gas factory. While the effect is spectacular, it was executed using a small-scale model surrounded by a replica of the Swiss Alps. Let us now examine each of these tools in more detail.
Costumes
Costume design performs several functions. It furnishes details of period or setting appropriate to the story. Second, it provides opportunities for color and spectacle. Third, it provides a commentary on the characters, suggesting or revealing essential aspects of their personality or function in the story. Let’s consider some examples of these functions.
Costume designers typically research the clothing styles associated with a film’s period or locale because these styles can vividly evoke time and place. On the Civil War film Glory (1989), the filmmakers wanted to be as authentic as possible and used Matthew Brady’s documentary photographs as guides and relied on a large community of Civil War re-enactors, buffs who had designed their own uniforms with exacting historical precision, down to the salt stains on their jackets and the scuffs on their boots.
In contrast to the historical realism of Glory , the costume designs Cecil Beaton furnished for the classic musical My Fair Lady (1964) are considerably more flamboyant. They demonstrate the way that costuming creates opportunities for spectacle.
Audrey Hepburn plays an uneducated, working-class woman who, by learning to
speak proper English, is transformed into a beautiful and poised epitome of high fashion. Note the extraordinary hat that Beaton has furnished her with, as pictured on the next page. As an article of clothing, it is impractical and dysfunctional. But as a visual design, it is sumptuous and magnificent, commanding the viewer’s attention and suggesting the gorgeous butterfly into which the drab character has changed.
The costuming in Planet of the Apes (2001) provides one of the film’s main attractions, and makeup designer Rick Baker improved on the ape designs used in the 1968 version of the film. In the earlier film, the actors in ape makeup could not move their lips and teeth independently because the teeth were glued onto the prosthetic lips. Moreover, their masks were relatively inflexible, so they couldn’t show much facial expression. Baker designed masks that were much more flexible and made the teeth and lips as separate rigs. This enabled the actors to move their lips over their teeth and to convincingly simulate ape speech.
Costuming also provides a way of revealing character, creating subliminal messages about the person wearing the costume. In The Graduate (1967)
, an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Ann Bancroft), makes a habit of seducing young men, and when she sets her sights on the film’s hero (Dustin Hoffman), a recent college graduate, she wears a predatory costume, a leopard-print coat. The costumes worn by Satine (Nicole Kidman) in Moulin Rouge (2001)—red dress, black top hat, garters, and stockings—link her to the famous movie temptresses, and the actresses who played them, on whom she is modeled.
In Titus (1999), director Julie Taymor shows the growing weakness and vulnerability of Rome’s General Titus (Anthony Hopkins) using costume changes, taking him from dark colors, armor, and hard fabrics early in the film to light colors and soft, revealing fabrics later on. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), costume designer Eiko Ishioka reserved the color red for Dracula. He is the only character in the film to wear this color, except when the plot foreshadows his next victim, who then also appears in red.
103
Production Design
MY FAIR LADY (WARNER BROS., 1964)
When Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) makes her high-society debut, her effect is electric, due in no small part to the eye-catching attire costume designer Cecil Beaton provided.
Her hat is beyond words. Frame enlargement.
Sets, Matte Paintings, and Miniatures
Using sets, matte paintings, and miniatures, production designers have an opportunity to create extraordinary visual statements that become an essential part of a film’s mise-en-scène. Viewers remember not only what happened in a movie but how a given film looked . Memorable screen environments, achieved through set design, can be an indelible part of the film experience.
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (RSO, 1977)
John Travolta’s famous white suit became an enduring emblem for this movie. Production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein had something very specific in mind: “We wanted to make a world where people came alive on Saturday night, lived for Saturday night, expressed their true selves on Saturday night (the rest of the week was putting in time).”
The flamboyant suit expressed the dreams and desires of Tony Manero (Travolta), a working-class kid who lived to dance. Frame enlargement.
104
Production Design
THE
GRADUATE
(EMBASSY
Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition Page 18
