Production Designers
Interviews - Production Designers
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Behind Closed Doors: Production Designer Kevin Thompson on Maestro
Isabel Leonard, Rosa Feola and Bradley Cooper in Maestro (Photo by Jason McDonald, courtesy of Netflix)
In making Maestro, his magisterial portrait of Leonard Bernstein, Bradley Cooper set out to explore the life of the legendary American conductor and composer through the lens of his complicated relationship with wife Felicia Montealegre, which lasted from the 1940s… Read more
“450 Resin-Coated Pieces of Plastic”: Production Designer Ethan Tobman and Mark Mylod on The Menu
Ethan Tobman
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. Ethan Tobman… Read more
Reject Departmental Sectarianism: Production Designer Akin McKenzie and Writer-Director Terence Nance
Random Acts of Flyness
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. At the… Read more
“You Provide Everything That’s in Every Shot”: Production Designer Sara K White and Director Susanna Fogel
The Flight Attendant
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. In the… Read more
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“We Had to Row a Kayak to the Camera Truck to Save the Film Cans”: Director Derek Cianfrance and Production Designer Inbal Weinberg
Ahead of the launch of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of meetings between directors and production designers in which they discuss the particularities about their working dynamics as well as how production design can elevate the vision of a filmmaker. Derek Cianfrance and Inbal Weinberg first collaborated on Blue Valentine, which set the stage for exploration and discovery. They continued to experiment with environment and process on such projects as The Place Beyond The Pines and I Know This Much Is True. Here they discuss the delicate balance of artifice and authenticity […]
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“I Become a Better Designer Every Time I Work with David”: Production Designer Jade Healy and David Lowery
Ahead of the first-ever International Production Design Week, the Production Designers Collective has coordinated a series of interviews with directors and production designers, in which they discuss their working dynamics and mutual passion for the craft of storytelling. Below, is the first of these conversations published at Filmmaker, a conversation between production designer Jade Healy and director David Lowery. Their first collaboration had them wearing different hats. Shot in Costa Rica, It Was Great, But I Was Ready to Come Home was written by four friends, among them Jade Healy, an actress, and David Lowery, sound designer and editor. Years later, as […]
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“The Hard Way Every Single Time”: Production Designer Adam Stockhausen on Asteroid City
Though Wes Anderson’s films can be seen as the product of the director’s sharp imagination, the finished work is nothing without those who turn his thoughts into spreadsheet-enabled reality. Most of the physical things on screen—the punctilious graphic design on signs and cards, the actual locations, the trimmed sets and the giant buildings in the distance that exist just to fill up white space—exist thanks to production designer Adam Stockhausen, who has been Anderson’s go-to since 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom. Stockhausen has noted his fondness for planning productions in an old-fashioned, tactile way which likely appeals not only to the very […]
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Houses in Motion: Production Designer Rick Carter on The Fabelmans
Production designer Rick Carter caught the eye of Steven Spielberg when he was art director on The Goonies and first worked with him directly on the pilot of Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories. Spielberg told him the minimal amount of train he needed for the episode; Carter ended up giving him more without increasing the budget. “I think I have an ability to prioritize what’s important so that I can put the resources into [those] elements, whether it’s the set or visual effects or any other aspect of the movie,” says Carter. Starting with Jurassic Park, Carter has served as […]
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“I Was Born in Cinecittà”: Production Designer Dante Ferretti on Collaborating with Pasolini and Scorsese
Saturday, March 5th marks the centennial of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birth, and numerous retrospectives are being held worldwide commemorating the late Italian filmmaker. Tragically murdered at the age of 53, weeks before his infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, was set to premiere, Pasolini’s output continues to attract cinephile appreciation, political discourse, cultural reevaluation and a fair share of controversy. “His movies, influenced by his struggle to reconcile his concerns with Marx, Freud and Christ, often drew him into conflict with the Roman Catholic church and with secular authorities,” reflected The New York Times in 1990. Currently running […]
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After the Curtain: The Tragedy of Macbeth Production Designer Stefan Dechant
Shot by director of photography Bruno Delbonnel in stark black and white using the Academy aspect ratio, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is an impressively lean (105 minutes total runtime) and stylized take. A reserved Denzel Washington stars in the title role alongside Coen’s wife Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, reprising a performance she gave for the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2016. In his first film without his brother Ethan, Coen eschews halfhearted attempts to “open up the text,” instead choosing to embrace its theatricality by filming the entire production on Warner Brothers’s soundstages in Burbank, California before and, […]
