3x3: great examples of production design (that aren't fantasy or sci-fi)

Movies
1

This is a tough one. And a potentially boring one if you’re not a film wonk. But when you consider the physical space in which a movie exists – the set, the set dressing, the props, and so forth – have there been any movies that really impressed you?

Fantasy and sci-fi have it pretty easy. And certain directors have a very distinctive style that applies to production design. And, of course, period pieces, war movies, and movies set in other countries have a very specific appeal. So what are some movies where, for whatever reason, you’ve noticed the production design?

Here are our picks, with sci-fi and fantasy ruled out just to make it more difficult.

Kellywand
3. Citizen Kane
2. Quest for Fire

  1. Safe

Dingus
3. Seven
2. Miller’s Crossing

  1. Titus

Tom Chick
3. Chupacabra Terror (as a great example of bad production design!)
2. In the Loop

  1. 21 Grams

For details on our picks, listen to the Horrible Bosses podcast starting at the 43-minute mark, shortly after the stuff about Jennifer Aniston being naked and clueless people lining up at box offices.

2

  1. Hard Rain - not a very good movie, but the huge flooded area and constant rain was amazingly done.

  2. Backdraft - a very silly movie, but as somebody who was once a firefighter, I just love those fires (even though they are so unrealistic they make The Hurt Locker look like a documentary) especially the big warehouse fire - interestingly enough the same cinematographer as above.

  3. O Brother, Where Art Thou - The Coens always have a keen eye on production design and cinematography and the dreamlike look of this with all the browns and washed out colours is just great… and hey, another lood.

… and talking of the Coens, perhaps Fargo is a better choice. The snow and all the white, white, white really sets the tone. And talking of white and bleak I just thought of The Thing, 30 Nights of Day (HAH, you didn’t say anything about horror) and A Simple Plan.

3

Good call all around, Hans! Particularly on the snow movies. I wasn’t thinking of the elements when I thought of the topic, but that’s definitely a key part of production design. There’s a Kate Beckensale murder mystery at an Antarctic base – I forget the name – where the setting and the production design of an isolated base cut off by the elements figures prominently and I seem to recall a pretty neatly presented location. And, of course, Eight Below starring Paul Walker*.

I remember a review – I want to say Time Magazine – referring to Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter as movies about simple people dying in the snow. Simple Plan and Fargo definitely qualify.

 -Tom
  • Not really**
    ** Well, maybe really
4

White Out.

5

Ah, right. Man, that’s a terrible name. No wonder I forgot it.

-Tom
6

ok, it looks like I am watching only Greenaway movies (it is almost true), but I can give you a 3x3 using just Greenaway stuff.

  1. Prospero’s Books.

Greenaway started to use CG in his feature films here. But there are many, many real-world objects like the books, the island, dioramas. It is packed with strange creatures, costumes, masks, water (best use of water in a movie), props in exuberance. There is material for 3,4 movies in this

  1. Drowning By Numbers.

Does the english landscape count as production design? Well, whatever.

  1. The restaurant in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

It is a microcosmos of the world in red, green, white. So many details in every frame of that setting. I really want to be in that restaurant, but not at the Thief’s table …

runner up: Baby Of Macon. Either the film was shot in a real cathedral or it is all stage illusion. I can’t tell the difference …

7

My cinematography lecturer used to tell me that there are three things that make a good cinematographer stand out, and those are LOCATION!!, LOCATION!! and a good production designer.

For my picks, I’d go with.

Russian Ark
Because man. How can you not mention this movie in any discussion about production design. Sure a large part of the production design was the museum itself, but it just goes to show you how actual production designers can learn from the guys who have to set up museums.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Michel Gondry entire schtick is his production design, which makes him not so different from Burton. Where it does, is that he’s actually pretty good at tying the design into the emotional state of the characters in his film. I suppose you can rule out Sunshine as it’s loosely a sci-fi movie, but when your team is building a giant sink for Jim Carrey to swim in, it’s kinda sad not to give it some props.

Jarhead
It would have been just another war movie for me except the final scenes during the night and the oil fires raging across Iraq. That scene alone, and the horse trotting through covered in oil was enough to convince me that the movie had some merit beyond Jake Gyllenhaal trying to look all soulful as a lost warrior poet. (Ok… to be fair, Peter Skarsgaard was pretty good in that movie too.)

8

I’m not a huge movie geek and my knowledge of film isn’t very wide, so this is probably pretty obvious, but I think you have to mention Fincher’s Zodiac. I see that Seven was mentioned, so maybe that film gets discussed in the podcast as well (I haven’t listend to it).

The recreation of 70s San Francisco in that movie is so loving and detailed and obsessive in a way that few films (or directors) can match. For me, largely in part because I wasn’t alive when those events took place, that film is as transportive as any fantasy or science fiction film.

9

3: Man On Fire. Part of the entire theme of the movie is the pervasive corruption surrounding the protagonist, which is emphasized well by the set design with crumbling walls, grime-smeared windows, the only “clean” things you see in the movies are in the scenes with the little girl (who represents the protagonist’s hopes for redemption/salvation) - every other scene is almost like it’s filmed through a dirty lens.

2: Bubba Ho-Tep. It’s set in an old folks’ rest home, but the decor is almost more akin to a funeral home, which just pounds home the message that all these characters are on death’s door and mostly forgotten. Don Coscarelli, however, loves to use the long shot everywhere he can, almost like an homage to the old western movies that he’s aping the tone of.

1: Sucker Punch. Ooh, I’m gonna get eviscerated for this one but let me explain. If you look at the movie as having three layers (ooh, Inception-style!), it’s obvious how they’re differentiated. The “real world” (as seen in the prologue and scenes not involving Baby Doll directly) is shot in a slightly-grungy manner, with realistically-worn clothing, hairstyles, and props. Then you have Baby Doll’s perception of the asylum which uses more saturated colors and stylized imagery, reflecting how her mind is creating its own perception filter to isolate her from the situation. And then there’s her flights of fancy while she’s dancing, which go immediately into the unrealistic and ridiculous, to really hit home the point of “This is not reality”.

Sure, the plot was full of more holes than a Mormon diaphragm, but within the strictures of the story, the set design and production did a good job of conveying what little content there was quite well, I thought.

10

Sucker Punch and Bubba Ho-Tep, not fantasy? Hrm.

11

Oh, I just ignored that little part. After all, they put Titus and Quest For Fire in there.

12

The sets they built for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari really made the movie what it is and created this very eerie and disturbing atmosphere.

13

What was so fantastic about Quest for Fire? That movie always struck me as one of the more realistic depictions of prehistoric man set to feature film.

14

I consider all prehistoric stuff to be fantasy, since it’s all speculative. Not having actually been there, I can’t comment on the “realism” of it.

15

That doesn’t count. It always looks like that around there at that time of year! Where’s the production design?

Anyway, the whole no sci-fi/fantasy thing really takes a lot of great options off the table, but I’m sure we can think of some good ones.

In no particular order:

  • The Elephant Man. I just watched this one, so it’s fresh in my mind, but David Lynch and company really bring the grime and squalor, and the more polished bits, of Victorian England to life. From the circus to the hospital to the theater, it just looks right. A lot of that may be owing to the black-and-white photography, though. And the omnipresent gaslights.

  • The Godfather. I suppose one could/should go with both Part I and Part II, as they’re often televised together as “The Complete Novel,” or something like that. Either way, Coppola and his guys bring several periods and regions together and infuse each with a feel all their own, from the leather and mahogany of Don Corleone’s study, to the parched earth of Sicily, to the sun-kissed decadence of Havana and Miami. Not to mention Michael’s pad on Lake Tahoe, and the old New York storefronts. Few films have inhabited a place and time as well as these.

A third one is a bit hard to pick. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World really got the nautical look down pat. Kingdom of Heaven was generally terrible but had some excellent set design. Quantum of Solace (from out of left field!) had that interesting fuel cell hotel in the desert, and the opera house.

How about Letters from Iwo Jima?

16

So many great choices! I tried to steer away from period movies from the nineteenth century or older, as those are typically fancy costume parties.

3. Michael Corenblith, for Apollo 13

“We need to make this … fit into this … using nothing but this.”

The underlying theme of Apollo 13 for me was always about how something amazing was done using old computers that were basically tin cans and bits of string. There’s that famous scene where Jim Lovell needs some arithmetic checked, and all the dudes down at mission command pull out their slide rules. Or the scene where Ed Harris tries to use marker on an overhead projector, but it doesn’t work so he kicks it out of the way and just uses chalk on a blackboard instead. I loved the production design of mission command, from the sixties-style panels of slate-gray computers to the ashtrays and binders and cups of coffee and american flags. The period details contrast so well with the realism of the spacecraft, which of course was terrific production design in and of itself.

Michael Corenblith has done a lot of Ron Howard’s movies since then, such as Ransom and Frost/Nixon.

2. Dean Tavoularis, for The Conversation

I love the chain-link fence in Harry’s warehouse workshop. I love that it had a concrete floor with brick walls with plain wooden shelves crammed with surveillance equipment, and power outlets at the end of the work bench. It’s the ultimate in a pre-computer hacker hangout. I also love his apartment, how spare and spartan it is. This is one movie where the cinematography and the production design worked so well to help establish the mood and mental state of the main character.

Dean Tavoularis also worked on Copolla’s other films. I think he’s almost retired now, but IMDB tells me he did the prod. design for Polanski’s next movie. Speaking of whom…

1. Richard Sylbert, for Chinatown

I think production design for a movie set in the 30’s is actually harder than it looks. You need to do more than just put your actors in fedoras and have them drive the right cars. So often, it can look like some costumed affair, but not so with Chinatown. The world of 1930’s LA in Chinatown just looks “lived in” somehow. Everything looks like it belongs, and even the cars have dust on them, as they would in a summer of drought. I also love how the typical noire tropes are adhered to, like the shadows of venetian blinds falling across Jake Gittes’ face when he sits at his desk.

Richard Sylbert died in 2002, but before then he worked on a wide variety of films including, interestingly, Mulholland Falls, which surprised me because I don’t remember it having half the realism of Chinatown’s production design. So perhaps it was more Polanski’s influence that made the design on Chinatown so great? I’m not sure.

17

Don’t agree on the snow. There’s snow and then there’s cinematic snow - being from Scandinavia I know the difference.

Good call on Letters… War movies are certainly a great example of movies outside the fantastic genres where cinematography really has to shine. I’d point to Apocalypse Now which has some great set pieces… like the plantation in the Redux version. It’s not a great or important scene, but the left behind plantation in the middle of nowhere is a great piece of cinematography.
And to mention a war movie that isn’t as new or well known I’d go with Hamburger Hill - the hill itself is magnificent.

18

Fair enough. Having lived in that area, though, it looked pretty darn authentic to me. Almost documentary like.

I agree with you on Apocalypse Now, but I never bothered watching the Redux, so I can’t speak to the plantation scene. Everything else was quite well done, though. What the hell happened to Coppola after that, anyway?

19

Rear Window. That set is amazing!

20

My three picks: Amarcord, Roma and Satyricon* by Fellini.

Fellini was the king of production design. Embedded in his post 8 1/2 period is the idea that shooting, say, the actual Coliseum in Rome is inherently lying to the audience, because Fellini’s Coliseum has little to do with how it actually looks in real life. Rather, his movies of this period are about how to use film, and the artificiality of film, to show his perception of reality, which is closer to an emotional truth than the real thing.

There’s a scene of intense magic in Amarcord where the townfolk row out to see the passing of the SS Rex, a titanic Italian ocean liner. Watch the scene closely and you’ll see that the ocean is made up of stitched-together garbage bags, the ocean liner a cardboard cutout, the rain from a machine. And yet, the impression of the ship on the townsfolk comes through.

  • Strictly by the letter of the law, Satyricon isn’t a fantasy movie - it’s based on a real (unfinished) text by Petronius, and therefore qualifies as a historical piece.