Production Design

Just found a very interesting interview with Laurence Bennett, the production designer for the film The Artist. HERE at Pushing Pixels.

It's all the more fascinating because he talks about designing a black and white film about the making of black and white films.  In order to emphasize the difference between The Artist's "real" locations (actually, of course, sets) from the "sets" of the film-in-the-film locations (also, of course, sets), he built the "real" sets using color (filmed in B&W) and the "set" sets using only B&W then filmed in B&W.  Clever!  There have to be subtle differences that I need to go back and stare very hard at.

Sketch by Laurence Bennett of a restaurant scene in The Artist, from the Pushing Pixels site

Just for fun, here's a link to one of my B&W shows, last year's Death is No Small Change.

Animated Set Design

It took a while for this idea to sink in with me but, of course, there is also set design - production design - in animated films.  In animation, in "straight" films with computer CGI backgrounds, and in computer games, virtual, animation settings are a big deal!  For games like World of Warcraft the settings are half the fun.

What joggled this little fact home to me recently was almost simultaneously watching Pixar's Cars 2 - of which the settings are the best, most imaginative part - and reading a terrific book Dream Worlds: Production Design in Animation, by Hans Bacher, who was production designer for Mulan.  Gorgeous illustrations and an interesting back-stage kind of text.  Among his other designs is the iconic poster image for The Lion King.

the Lion King poster, designed by Hans Bacher

Film Fest and Period Decor

Just watched Nowhere Boy, a biopic about John Lennon's teen years, ending just as he goes off to Hamburg for the Beatles' first big gig.  I'm not a huge fan of biography - written or filmed - but this was interesting.  The lead actor did a good job, I thought, as did the actresses playing the two sisters, his mother and the aunt who raised him.  That triangle was the heart of the story... the Beatles really just a by-the-way.

I got a little sidetracked from the story though, enjoying the production design of the two contrasting households: the lively, floral, red-background wallpaper of the mother's house, with its cheerfully clashing furnishings - versus the cooler, grayer, much more controlled and balanced-looking decor of the aunt's house.  (With great '40s period suburban-pseudo-Tudor paneling!  I always think of it as "Pseudor" - a lame joke I bet one interior designer in a thousand might actually catch.  I have a shameful affection for fake Tudor and Gothic.  But I'm thinking about a 12 step program to kick that habit.)