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“Set is a Pretty Box That Holds Me” | Amanda Kramer, By Design

A woman in a green and blue coat watches as two other women caress a chair.Still from By Design. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why?

There’s a moment in the Cameron Crowe film We Bought A Zoo where the little girl who plays Matt Damon’s daughter says, “We bought a zoo!” and then Matt Damon confirms by saying, “Yes, we did. We did buy a zoo.” These are lines I’ve never forgotten. The plainness alone is too wild to ignore. Those lines wiped the film’s images from my mind—I can’t really remember anything from that movie besides Matt Damon’s haircut—but the words, his specific delivery of the words, are legendary.

“Yes, we did. We did buy a zoo.” When I begin each script, then head into each pre-production, and then production, and then post, I’m entering and existing in the long process of buying a zoo. I’ve read that zoo design can be described as “creating pretty boxes for holding animals.” I work hard every day to create pretty frame boxes for holding these character-animals, and I feel too like set is a pretty box that holds me.

The most significant day for me—and it’s a different day on each project—is always the one when I feel like I’m Matt Damon, making that purchase. On By Design, that moment came while sitting with my collaborators and colorist in a small theatre, watching through our DCP. The end credits were rolling, and I felt it: the sense of an ending. The thing was finally fully mine. I turned to my editor Ben, and said, “Well, we bought a zoo.” and he turned to me and said, “Yeah, we did. We did buy a zoo.”

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