“Murderbot” Production Designer Sue Chan on Building the Brilliant World Around Alexander Skarsgård’s Conflicted Robot
Growing up in New Jersey with immigrant parents who ran a Chinese restaurant, Murderbot production designer Sue Chan didn’t even know the job existed when she first laid eyes on the futuristic movie that would inspire her journey into show business. “I basically decided to be an architect after going to see Blade Runner,” she recalls. “When I walked out of that movie theater with my family, I was like,
Meet Nikkolas Smith: The Artist Who Painted the Soul of Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther” and “Sinners”
In creating one of the year’s most talked about movie sequences, Sinners filmmaker Ryan Coogler assembled his de facto repertory company including Michael B. Jordan, production designer Hannah Beachler, costume designer Ruth Carter, DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw, composer Ludwig Göransson, and a lesser known member of his team: concept artist Nikkolas Smith. Smith previously worked on Black Panther and Wakanda Forever.
“Duster” Production Designer Jonah Markowitz Brings 1970s Arizona to 2025 New Mexico
The moment writer-director-producer J.J. Abrams saw actor Josh Holloway pull up to a pay phone in a vintage mini-muscle car, he knew what his next show would be. Duster, co-created with LaToya Morgan and streaming on HBO through July 3, casts Holloway, revered for his role in Abrams’ ABC hit Lost, as fast-driving rogue Jim Ellis, whose entanglement with drug dealers in 1972 Phoenix warrants the attention of Rachel Bilson’s Phoenix FBI Agent Dana Hayes.
Inside the Bone Temple: How Designers Carson McColl & Gareth Pugh Crafted the Pagan-Apocalyptic World of “28 Years Later”
Serving as both production designers and costume designers for director Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later was a groundbreaking career moment for Carson McColl and Gareth Pugh.
Not only is the post-apocalyptic coming-of-age horror film the first film they have worked on, but the married couple, known as Hard and Shiny, is best known for their high fashion and for having worked with such icons as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.
How “F1” Production Designer Ben Munro Built Real Racing Garages That Traveled the World
Architect-turned-director Joseph Kosinski knows how to build action movies modeled, more than most, on analog reality. Following on Top Gun: Maverick, Kosinski has re-teamed with producer Jerry Bruckheimer to put Brad Pitt in the driver’s seat for F-1 (now in theaters). The filmmakers, deploying cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s ingenious camera rigs, worked with producer/ex-driver James Lewis to secure cooperation from the Formula One organization so that Pitt and co-star Damon Idris could get behind the wheels of real cars in front of actual crowds and speed down raceways in UK,
Building the First “Black Mirror” Sequel: How Production Designer Miranda Jones Upgraded the USS Callister Universe
Back in Season 4 of Black Mirror, an enthusiastic programmer, Nanette (Cristin Milioti), gets trapped in a virtual-reality game by its creator and her boss, Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons). Shy and self-minimizing in real life, Nanette’s in-game clone is creative and confident enough to lead the rest of her colleagues, also trapped as crew by Daly on the starship USS Callister, out through a wormhole. Black Mirror picks up the thread with a sequel in Season 7,
Crafting Continental Studios: How Julie Berghoff Built Seth Rogen’s Fictional Production Powerhouse in “The Studio”
In The Studio, the fast-talking movie executives who make and sell motion pictures to mass audiences might use “on the nose” as a pejorative. But sometimes, the obvious solution can’t be denied. For show creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, there was only one place to set their behind-the-scenes look at how cinematic sausage gets made: Warner Bros. Studios.
The Burbank, California backlot serves as headquarters for the fictional Continental Studios.
Designing Dance: Production Designer Bill Groom’s Meticulous Ballet World-Building in “Étoile”
In the world of ballet as dramatized in Étoile, prickly personalities throw tantrums one minute and dance with exquisite grace the next. Created by former dancer Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan Palladino, the Amazon Prime series (now streaming) follows imagines a contentious talent swap between New York and Parisian dance companies desperate to create buzz about their new seasons.
It doesn’t go well.
The quarrelsome characters include Cheyanne (Lou De Laâge) the world’s best ballet dancer and eco-activist who publicly denounces the company’s billionaire arms-dealer benefactor;
“Sinners” Production Designer Hannah Beachler on Conjuring Ryan Coogler’s Supernatural Stunner
Warning: Contains spoilers
Ryan Coogler’s latest film, Sinners, made history with a second-weekend box office tally only six percent lower than its opening weekend. Just past its fourth weekend, it crossed the $200 million mark at the domestic box office. Both audiences and critics adore this Southern Gothic vampire thriller, starring Michael B. Jordan as identical twins Smoke and Stack. The pair has just returned to the Mississippi Delta after fighting in World War I and then getting involved with the Chicago mob,
Lost in the Labyrinth: Production Designer Jeremy Hindle on Deepening the Designs in “Severance” Season Two
Season two of Severance managed to do the impossible—it justified the historic wait that fans had endured. It delivered a deeply satisfying mind-bender that answered plenty of season one’s pressing questions while leaving more than enough mystery for season three. In the frighteningly real sci-fi show created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, the scale of drama, conspiracy, and fear spreads across a range of new environments, much like a disease manufactured by Lumon Industries.
Emergency Realism: Production Designer Nina Ruscio’s Blueprint for “The Pitt’s” Immersive Medical World
Producer John Wells and creator R. Scott Gemmill took a big swing with The Pitt and hit a home run that would have cleared the 410-foot deep left-center field wall of Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. The riveting series, which has garnered the kind of collective enthusiasm we usually associate with dark comedies set at fancy resorts, is powered by gruesome surgical procedures, arcane medical terminology, and volatile personalities. The high concept: each episode constitutes one hour in an emergency room over the course of a 12-hour shift,
The Architecture of Espionage: Maria Djurkovic on Designing Rami Malek’s Revenge in “The Amateur”
Bohemian Rhapsody Oscar winner Rami Malik switches it up in The Amateur to play buttoned-down CIA analyst-turned-warrior Charlie Heller, who goes rogue in Europe to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the murder of his wife (Rachel Brosnahan). Tough-as-nails CIA handler (Laurence Fishburne) spearheads the Agency’s efforts to squash Charlie’s self-appointed mission, but he soon learns he’s dealing with a determined, lethally intelligent, and remarkably savvy operator who isn’t above blackmailing his own agency to get the revenge he seeks.
Forging Feudal Japan: Emmy-Winning Production Designer Helen Jarvis Bringing “Shōgun” to Stunning Life
The ride is nearly complete. Four years ago, Helen Jarvis, who resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband, actor Robin Mossley, took on her first project as a production designer on the historical drama Shōgun, set in 1600 feudal Japan. The series went on to become a cultural phenomenon, breaking Emmy records for its intimate character-driven storyline, visual beauty, and moving performances, which gave us the phrases “Why tell a dead man the future,” “Flowers are only flowers because they fall,”
“Mickey 17” Production Designer Fiona Crombie Creates a Playful Pattinson-Verse for Bong Joon Ho’s Black Comedy Space Epic
The underdog hero of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 is sweetly naive everyman Mickey (Robert Pattinson), a failed macaron shop owner on the run from a bloodthirsty creditor in the year 2054. Mickey finds a way out of his predicament, but it’s bleak—he signs up as an Expendable, a human test subject for a space mission whose sole purpose is to die in not one but many gruesome experiments, having turned over the rights to his DNA to be infinitely reprinted for any and all of the mission’s needs.
“September 5” Production Designer Julian Wagner on Recreating the 1972 Olympic Attack From the Inside Out
Named after a day that will live in infamy, September 5 (in theaters now) recounts the terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics, as told from the perspective of ABC Sports broadcasters led by Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and Geoff Mason (John Magaro). Confined largely to their studio control room, purpose-built just a few yards from Olympic Village, journalists watched the attack in horror, scrambling to capture the tragedy with now-antiquated gear yoked to then-new satellite technology.
“The Brutalist” Production Designer Judy Becker on Designing Fictional Mid-Century Modernist Masterpieces
A World War II refugee architect and a robber baron meet in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and modernist design history is made. The premise of The Brutalist, a 3.5-hour critical darling and Golden Globe winner from writer/director Brady Corbet, is as American as apple pie. But from the moment Holocaust survivor Làszló (Adrien Brody) pulls into New York Harbor, the film was shot in Europe. Working primarily in and around Budapest, production designer Judy Becker (Carol,
How “Anora”‘s DP & Production Designer Brought a Deconstructed Cinderella to New York
Halfway through Sean Baker’s Anora, there’s a scene where exotic dancer turned newlywed Ani (Mickey Madison) is tied up and gagged with a red scarf. The dilemma is a response to her breaking the nose and slap-boxing two men questioning her marriage to a silver-spooned Russian rich boy named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). The scarf (and its color) can easily be overlooked during the unfolding chaos that plays out as a real-time home invasion lasting for roughly 25 minutes and sees Ivan run away from his bride.
“Nosferatu” Production Designer Craig Lathrop on Creating Count Orlock’s Gothic World
Writer/director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu continues his streak of delivering singular, stunning cinematic spectacles that have ranged in scale from the terrifyingly intimate (The Witch) to psychotically intimate (The Lighthouse) to the rousingly epic (The Northman). With Nosferatu, Eggers has found perhaps the perfect material for his sensibilities—rich in detail, steeped in myth,
“The Room Next Door” Production Designer Inbal Weinberg is the Architect of Pedro Almodóvar’s World
Production designer Inbal Weinberg perfected her meticulous eye over years of collaborations with filmmakers who “are serious about every detail,” including Derek Cianfrance, Luca Guadagnino, and Martin McDonagh. However, meticulousness took on a whole new level when Weinberg worked alongside renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar on his first English-language feature, The Room Next Door, which opened in Los Angeles and New York on December 20 and expands to select cities on January 10.
Best of 2024: Maximus Effort: “Gladiator II” Production Designer Arthur Max on Creating Colossal Constructions
This interview was selected by measures having nothing to do with science as one of our standouts from 2024. Arthur Max was absolutely crucial to Ridley Scott’s vision of creating a completely unhinged, dementedly decadent Rome. To that end, Max delivered, creating not one but two Colosseums for Scott’s epic.
Oscar-nominated production designer Arthur Max has worked on 16 of Ridley Scott’s films. These include some of American cinema’s most indelible cinematic spectacles,
