Last year for the special LAMB Devours
the Oscars series (where members dive into each of the Oscar categories) I
chose the Production Design category. Since I found it so interesting
last year – and it really gave me another reason to look at the nominated
movies – I chose the same category for this year! So welcome to your Production Design/Set
Decoration breakdown.
The Academy Award
for Production Design recognizes achievement for art direction in film and
combines both production design and set decoration, which are two different
jobs that work hand in hand on any film or TV set. A production designer is responsible for the
assembled sets and overall visual look of a production. The set decorator is responsible for
furnishing interior and exterior sets.
If a movie has a scene set in a bedroom, the production designer comes
up with the plan for the bedroom setup and layout, and works with the set decorator
to fill it with the necessary items to enhance the story. Those items can assist with character
exposition, or can distract from the scene set inside the room if the job is
done poorly. It is a very fine skill that is developed over many years, and
that is why a director will often work with the same production designer and
set decorator over many movies. Which is
also why all but one of the pairs of nominees this year have multiple
nominations already. The five nominated
movies are Beauty and the Beast, Blade Runner 2049, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, and
The Shape of Water.
Beauty and the
Beast:
Sarah Greenwood (Production Design) and Katie Spencer (Set
Decoration) are a formidable team with this being their sixth nominations (Anna
Karenina, Sherlock Holmes, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice), not to mention,
they are also the team behind Darkest Hour – another nominee this year! In this movie, Belle takes her wrongfully imprisoned father’s place
in the castle where he is being held. She stands up to the castle's lord, the
Beast, but as they spend time together, the Beast reveals his inner prince,
inspiring Belle to return his love. It
certainly is a daunting task to take something so familiar as an animated
Disney classic and transform it to live action sets.
While
Greenwood and Spencer did an incredible job recreating the look of the cartoon
and making the sets lush and vivid, they lose just a few points in my book, as
they had the animated film as a reference.
Darkest Hour:
Greenwood
and Spencer are also nominated for Darkest Hour, which tells the story of
Winston Churchill during the early days of World War II faced with the choice
of continuing to fight or try to settle with Hitler. This one should easily win the makeup
category as it takes the very Gary Oldman-y looking Gary Oldman and transforms
him into Winston Churchill, but what about the production design? Once again Spencer and Greenwood do an
amazingly detailed job of recreating Churchill’s office and surroundings from
the time.
But
again, since nothing needed to be invented or created originally, it seems that
the true skill here is in the team recreating sets from research on hand.
Blade Runner 2049
The
production design on Blade Runner 2049 is by Dennis Gassner, and this is his sixth
nomination (Into the Woods, The Golden Compass, Road to Perdition, Barton Fink,
Bugsy). The set decoration is by Alessandra
Querzola, and this is her first nomination.
This is a movie set three decades after the original Blade Runner
Deckard went missing. LAPD replicant
officer K is tasked with eliminating older, rogue replicants that have a
tendency to be less controllable. In the
process, he learns something shocking, and needs Deckard to uncover the truth
about the history and future of replicants.
Here we have a movie with stunning, incredible, original visuals that
absolutely assist in telling the story.
Yes,
the team had the original movie as a reference point, but the stunning sets and
landscapes of this desolate future are beautiful and heartbreaking. I loved the huge statues as K walks into
Deckard’s Vegas lair. The farm in the
beginning as K is carrying out his job essentially conveys the backstory of
Dave Bautista’s character living there.
K’s apartment and office help to convey his own inner turmoil while
Jared Leto’s office conveys his isolation and elitism. The look of this movie is incredible, even if
I wasn’t completely drawn in by the story.
Dunkirk
Nathan Crawley is the production designer on Dunkirk, and this
is his fourth nomination (Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Prestige). This is also set decorator Gary Fettis’s fourth
nomination, but for different movies (Interstellar, Changeling, The Godfather
Part III). This movie tells a story from
the spring of
1940, when hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are trapped by
German forces on the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France. Christopher Nolan
movies have a distinct look and this one is no exception. Again, the design is
done to expertly mimic the look of the actual time, and has the added puzzle of
having a lot of scenes outside.
The
movie looks good, but again, as a faithful recreation, even the stylized sets
are reflections of what was. The bleak
coloration and stark realism add to both the hopefulness and helplessness of
various characters.
The Shape of Water
Paul
Denham Austerberry is the production designer for the Shape of Water, and he
worked with two set decorators, Shane Vieau and Jeff Melvin. Where the desolation and hopelessness of
Blade Runner is conveyed in its set design, this movie really uses the
additional aspect of color and creativity to help tell the story of the 1962
government scientific lab in Baltimore that houses a fish-man and the mute
janitor who falls in love with him. Director Guillermo del Toro himself
clarified the use of color via his twitter feed: Elisa's world: Cyan and Blue (underwater), everyone
else's homes (Giles, Zelda, Strickland) in goldens, ambers and warm colors
(Day/air), red for cinema, life and love. Green is everything about the future
(pies, car, lab, uniforms in lab, gelatine, etc.) Using these guidelines from the director, the team
translated it into amazing sets.
Like
other del Toro movies, the sets are incredibly designed and almost hyper-real,
very much in line with his “adult fairy-tale” aesthetic. The lab is filled with
interesting shapes and lines, and bits of things on shelves and carts that you
almost want to stop the movie to look at more closely. Elisa’s apartment is above an old movie
theater, and is filled with items that help to tell the audience about her.
Every part of the movie is carefully crafted to appear not real, but almost
surreal, in perfect alignment with the story.
According
to my meager research, Blade Runner 2049 is the predicted winner, and that
makes sense, because that movie looked amazing. I loved the look of Shape of
Water, but honestly, for me, there were a few movies that didn’t make the
list. There’s this prejudice against
giving big-budget superhero movies Academy love, but the look of Thor Ragnarok
and Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 were both mind-blowing. Think about the throne room on Sakar where
Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster holds court, or the Hulk’s quarters in
Ragnarok. Even more so – the sets on
GOTG2 are phenomenal. Ego’s room of
storytelling orbs, the Sovereign’s throne room, even the Ravagers’ ship were
all visual masterpieces.
I
also feel that Star Wars Episode VIII, the Last Jedi, deserves a mention. The look of the bridge on the rebel cruiser,
the casino on Canto Bight, Snoke’s throne room with his incredible red curtain
which is very not-fireproof, and Luke’s quiet place of isolation on Ach-To are
all incredible sets that enhanced the story through color and design.
While
Star Wars might be my pick for a winner, that does not help your office Oscar
pool choice. Go with either Blade Runner
or Shape of Water – they are the safest bets!
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