“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,
Best of 2024: How “The Penguin” Production Designer Kalina Ivanov Helped Bring Gotham Back to New York City
*This interview was selected by measures having nothing to do with science as one of our standouts from 2024. The creation of Gotham for HBO’s shockingly good series The Penguin fell, in large part, to ace production designer Kalina Ivanov. Here’s how she pulled it off.
Production designer Kalina Ivanov was destined to be part of the HBO spin-off series The Penguin from creator Lauren LeFranc,
Production Designer Nathan Crowley: The Visionary Behind “Wicked’s” Stunning Sets
Before Wicked, British production designer Nathan Crowley worked on eight Christopher Nolan movies, earning six Oscar nominations along the way. Now he’s made the unlikely pivot from dark Gotham City to effervescent Emerald City as world builder-in-chief for Universal Pictures’ Wizard of Oz prequel. Based on the Broadway musical, Wicked topped the box office this past weekend with $114 million, making it Hollywood’s most popular movie musical to date.
“Gladiator II” Production Designer Arthur Max on Rebuilding a Decadent, Debased Ancient Rome
In the first installment of our conversation with Gladiator II production designer Arthur Max, he talked about making Ridley Scott’s sequel on an even bigger scale than the original film and staging a naval battle sequence in the desert of Morocco for the opening sequence. Now, let’s find out what it took to flood the Colosseum to recreate the mock naval battle in the third act.
Did you use mostly local crew on the sequel?
Maximus Effort: “Gladiator II” Production Designer Arthur Max on Creating Colossal Constructions
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, such as the original Gladiator (for which Max scored his first Oscar nod), Black Hawk Down, and The Martian. Despite the impressive body of work between them, Max thinks that the Roman epic actioner, Gladiator II, is their most ambitious yet.
“Here” Production Designer Ashley Lamont on Building an Entire Life in a Single Room for Tom Hanks & Robin Wright
Robert Zemeckis’ new film Here is based on an unusual concept: the entire movie takes place in one location, and the camera never moves. The living room at the center of the film is set in an early 20th-century house in New England, although as the story revisits different eras, the set also transforms into a forest and a colonial-era drive, both of which represent the same site before the house’s construction in 1907.
“Conclave” Confidential: Production Designer Suzie Davies on Recreating One of the World’s Most Secretive Events
“Hell arrives tomorrow when we bring in the cardinals,” quips the fair-minded Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the dean of the College of Cardinals, on the eve of the gathering to elect the new Pope. After the unexpected death of the current pontiff, it is Lawrence’s duty to oversee the titular Conclave, when over 100 cardinals from around the world gather to witness the cutthroat battle of succession steeped in tradition and secrecy.
Lights, Camera, Recreation: “Saturday Night” Production Designer Jess Gonchor on Bringing “SNL”‘s Studio to Life
Production designer Jess Gonchor felt right at home on director Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night, a pulsing recreation of the moments leading up to the first-ever broadcast of Saturday Night Live, which aired on October 11, 1975. Similar to Reitman, who fulfilled a dream of being a guest writer on SNL for a week on Season 35, Gonchor also worked in sketch comedy, so he knew “the inner workings of what this is and what it needed to be.” What that meant for the two-time Oscar-nominated production designer was that everything had to be interconnected.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Production Designer Mark Scruton’s Masterful Marriage of Art & Architecture
“It was going to be a continuation of the first film and not some sort of reboot,” production designer Mark Scruton says about Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the 1988 cult classic that reunites the absurdly talented Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder as everyone’s favorite goth-undead will they won’t they couple.
The story picks up years after the events in Beetlejuice and sees the Deetz family – Ryder’s Lydia,
How “The Penguin” Production Designer Kalina Ivanov Helped Bring Gotham Back to New York City
Production designer Kalina Ivanov was destined to be part of the HBO spin-off series The Penguin from creator Lauren LeFranc, which stars Colin Farrell as the title character, Oz Cobb, reprising his role from Matt Reeves’ The Batman and remaining, once again, utterly unrecognizable.
“The very first movie I saw in the theater after Covid stopped being Covid was The Batman,
“Blink Twice” Production Designer Roberto Bonelli on Crafting the Sinister Façade of Zoë Kravitz’s Thriller
For her feature directing debut, actor-turned-director Zoë Kravitz (Big Little Lies, The Batman) has chosen a visually luscious, sinister psychological thriller, which she co-wrote with screenwriter E.T. Feigenbaum. Exploring themes ranging from trauma and misogyny to sexual exploitation and greed, Blink Twice also shines a light on the vast chasm between the haves and have-nots. Cocktail cater-waitresses Frida (Naomi Ackie) and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) are struggling to make ends meet when they are lured by the seemingly endearing and handsome tech mogul,
“It Ends With Us” Production Designer Russell Barnes on Crafting Visual Contrasts of Love & Control
Director Justin Baldoni’s film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s hit novel, It Ends With Us, in which Baldoni also stars as vicious neurosurgeon Ryle, is a surprise hit of the summer. The movie is a romance suffused with darkness, following Lily (Blake Lively as an adult, Isabela Ferrer as an adolescent) as she grows up and falls into a violent relationship that mirrors her parents (Amy Morton and Kevin McKidd).
As an adolescent in Maine looking to escape,
How “A Quiet Place: Day One” Production Designer Simon Bowles Harnessed VR to Unleash Aliens on NYC
When John Krasinki released A Quiet Place in 2018, the sonically immersive horror film made audiences hold their breath. Three years later, he followed the success of that film with an expansive sequel that saw the surviving members of the Abbott family run from their rural home in Part II. Now, we witness how the dystopian events started in A Quiet Place: Day One,
“3 Body Problem” Production Designer Deborah Riley on Melding Sci-Fi & Period Perfect History
Netflix’s adaption of the first book in Liu Cixin’s hit Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, 3 Body Problem, is more than science fiction. Facing a slew of inexplicable suicides, a group of scientists and friends begin to uncover the future arrival of an alien race, the San-Ti, and learn of the Cultural Revolution-era events in China that set this gradual but hostile takeover in motion.
The series is primarily set in contemporary London and the English countryside,
“Challengers” Production Designer Merissa Lombardo Sets the Stage on Court & Off
Director Luca Guadagnino’s sexy new tennis romance, Challengers, layers a years-long love triangle of three millennial-era players over the highs and lows of their careers. At the center is talented, driven, and stunning Tashi (Zendaya). She first dates Patrick (Josh O’Connor), who plays as well as she does, but doesn’t take his career or their relationship seriously enough for either to work out. After getting knocked out of the circuit with a knee injury,
