couch?”
“Okay.”
“It’s for a film she wrote with her boyfriend. I just finished reading the screenplay.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to take the job. It’s the most beautiful story. There’s no way you could ever call it stupid. Will you read it?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Please. I know it’s two in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
“I was afraid that it was going to be a bad movie. I mean, me ? A production designer? I thought it would be a joke. I didn’t want to act excited about something that was probably going to be terrible.”
She swings herself out of bed. “Make me coffee.”
“Seriously? You’ll read it now?”
“My best friend has just been offered a really important job for a project she thinks is beautiful. Of course I’m going to read it now.”
So she takes a seat in the orange chair and I make coffee for us both and she reads. She drinks her coffee, she turns the pages. At one point, she gets up to use the bathroom but then she comes straight back. I force myself not to look over her shoulder or ask her what she thinks. Instead, I start gathering my ideas for the sets. We’ll need to have George’s house and Juniper’s apartment; the market; a park. It’s a lot to get together in four weeks, but I’ll only have to work on decorating one location at a time.
A lot of the scenes are in the market, so I make a list of all the markets I can think of, from small produce stores to larger groceries that still have a small-town feel. Most of the work for this part will simply be to find a place that will say yes to letting us film there. George’s and Juniper’s places will be more complex because they need to reflect who they are.
This is what I love about production design. The writers imagine the story, tell us where people are and what they do and say. The actors embody the characters, give them faces and voices. The directors and producers transform an idea into something real. But the art department, we do the rest. When you see their rooms and you discover that they love a certain band, or that they collect seashells or hang their clothes with equal space between each perfectly ironed shirt or have stacks of papers on their desks or a week’s worth of dirty dishes in the sink and bras strewn over brass doorknobs—all of that is us .
The art department creates the world. When you walk into someone’s house and you see all of their things—the neatness or the clutter, the objects they have on display—that’s when you begin to really know someone. Maybe there’s a guy you think is your friend but then you go to his house and discover his walls are covered in taxidermy animals and trophies and you never even knew that he hunted. Maybe it’s creepy, maybe the mounted heads look deranged, not preserved exactly right. Or maybe they’re perfect and you can tell he’s proud, that he’s really good at something. Either way, it makes him more interesting. All of that is important and a lot of the time it isn’t in the script; it’s something the art department gets to imagine.
Rebecca and Theo have described Juniper’s apartment as small and humble and containing many plants, and it will be my job to decide everything else. Is she neat or messy? Are the plants perfectly lined up on windowsills or are they cluttering every surface with dirt everywhere? Does she have art on her walls? The answer is yes. She has art on her walls, maybe something scientific.
I see her apartment in blues and greens, mostly; she’s a little melancholy.
George is melancholy, too, but while Juniper’s apartment needs to reflect who she is, he’s living in a house he didn’t decorate, a place that’s been preserved for a long time. He’s heartbroken over the death of his parents. In one scene he cooks an egg and eats it and washes the dishes right after, which seems like a ritual. Like the way he was taught to do things by his mother.
“Okay.”
“It’s for a film she wrote with her boyfriend. I just finished reading the screenplay.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to take the job. It’s the most beautiful story. There’s no way you could ever call it stupid. Will you read it?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Please. I know it’s two in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
“I was afraid that it was going to be a bad movie. I mean, me ? A production designer? I thought it would be a joke. I didn’t want to act excited about something that was probably going to be terrible.”
She swings herself out of bed. “Make me coffee.”
“Seriously? You’ll read it now?”
“My best friend has just been offered a really important job for a project she thinks is beautiful. Of course I’m going to read it now.”
So she takes a seat in the orange chair and I make coffee for us both and she reads. She drinks her coffee, she turns the pages. At one point, she gets up to use the bathroom but then she comes straight back. I force myself not to look over her shoulder or ask her what she thinks. Instead, I start gathering my ideas for the sets. We’ll need to have George’s house and Juniper’s apartment; the market; a park. It’s a lot to get together in four weeks, but I’ll only have to work on decorating one location at a time.
A lot of the scenes are in the market, so I make a list of all the markets I can think of, from small produce stores to larger groceries that still have a small-town feel. Most of the work for this part will simply be to find a place that will say yes to letting us film there. George’s and Juniper’s places will be more complex because they need to reflect who they are.
This is what I love about production design. The writers imagine the story, tell us where people are and what they do and say. The actors embody the characters, give them faces and voices. The directors and producers transform an idea into something real. But the art department, we do the rest. When you see their rooms and you discover that they love a certain band, or that they collect seashells or hang their clothes with equal space between each perfectly ironed shirt or have stacks of papers on their desks or a week’s worth of dirty dishes in the sink and bras strewn over brass doorknobs—all of that is us .
The art department creates the world. When you walk into someone’s house and you see all of their things—the neatness or the clutter, the objects they have on display—that’s when you begin to really know someone. Maybe there’s a guy you think is your friend but then you go to his house and discover his walls are covered in taxidermy animals and trophies and you never even knew that he hunted. Maybe it’s creepy, maybe the mounted heads look deranged, not preserved exactly right. Or maybe they’re perfect and you can tell he’s proud, that he’s really good at something. Either way, it makes him more interesting. All of that is important and a lot of the time it isn’t in the script; it’s something the art department gets to imagine.
Rebecca and Theo have described Juniper’s apartment as small and humble and containing many plants, and it will be my job to decide everything else. Is she neat or messy? Are the plants perfectly lined up on windowsills or are they cluttering every surface with dirt everywhere? Does she have art on her walls? The answer is yes. She has art on her walls, maybe something scientific.
I see her apartment in blues and greens, mostly; she’s a little melancholy.
George is melancholy, too, but while Juniper’s apartment needs to reflect who she is, he’s living in a house he didn’t decorate, a place that’s been preserved for a long time. He’s heartbroken over the death of his parents. In one scene he cooks an egg and eats it and washes the dishes right after, which seems like a ritual. Like the way he was taught to do things by his mother.
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