Production Designer of ‘Poor Things’, ‘The Marvels’ and ‘Barbie’ on Creating Fantastic New Worlds Through Innocent Eyes

In most fantasy films, the production team’s job is to create a stunning new world that amazes the viewer. But there’s a new trend this Oscar season: stories that take the characters themselves on a journey of discovery and adventure.

In Poor stuffA young woman named Bella is brought back to life by a mad surgeon and goes on a sightseeing tour of Europe. In The wondersThe new worlds of the MCU are seen through the formidable eyes of Kamala Khan, Captain Marvel’s protégé. And in BarbieThe Mattel superstar leaves her perfect life to enjoy the unknown joys of the real world…

Poor stuff

For Yorgos Lanthimos’ film adaptation of Poor stuffThe director was interested in the premise of making a 1930s-style film using today’s technology. This meant that production designers Shona Heath and James Price were tasked with designing each set, with the idea of ​​creating a bespoke world that no one had ever seen before. “It’s like looking through a child’s eyes through kaleidoscopic lenses,” says Heath.

“He wanted it to feel handmade, but not photorealistic like you would want,” says Price. “But he also didn’t want it to have a stylistic direction just for the sake of style.” You can’t just create a surreal world. It has to come from the story and the characters and everything has to be believable.”

The four main sets – London, Lisbon, Paris and a cruise ship – were based on the real world, but had to create the same surreal wonder for the audience that Bella would feel. “We tried to capture the essence of each city and distill it into our own little world,” says Heath. Heath focused on the unusual elements of each area and says they put them together in a similar way to how surgeon Godwin Baxter did with living things. “In Lisbon there are arches where we simply cut out the middle, and buildings that are two buildings cut in half and pushed together,” she says. “It gave the urban fairy tale a slightly contemporary, brutalist touch.”

Although all the sets were large and elaborate, according to Price, Lisbon was the most technically challenging. “It was a studio built in the largest soundstage in continental Europe,” he says. “It had undulating floors, there was a water tank and a 70-foot scenic backdrop that needed to be painted.” Each building had to be rebuilt from scratch, painted and aged to resemble a legendary ancient city. “Then they applied a concrete cast with a stamp for each cobblestone and the stones were painted in complex, acidic colors that harmonized with the Lisbon tiles.”

“The whole of Lisbon had fifteen streets with interconnected alleys and staircases,” says Heath. “The number of buildings four stories high was extraordinary and there was no end to it. It was a real world, a real city under construction.”

The wonders

While Captain Marvel traveled the universe and visited many strange worlds, The wonders Director Nia DaCosta wanted audiences to see these worlds for the first time through the eyes of Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, had to see. “She wanted everything to feel as otherworldly as possible,” says production designer Cara Brower, “and for everything to have a sparkle and magical quality.”

With that in mind, Brower mapped out what she would see if she were in Kamala’s shoes. For the music planet Aladna, the goal was to create an explosion of color. “[DaCosta] wanted fashion to be really edgy for everyone,” says Brower. “She wanted it to feel like Positano, Italy, but with alien technology.” With this in mind, Brower considered the design a work of art, drawing inspiration from the unusual, surreal look of the 1969 film. The color of garnets and the designs of Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. “We tried to make it really sculptural,” she says. “There are a lot of curves because I wanted all the buildings to feel musical.”

When Dar-Benn takes resources from other planets, she takes the atmosphere of the Skrull refugee planet. “It’s supposed to be their hidden, secret new home,” says Brower. Based on visual cues from previous films, she noted that the Skrull architecture was more organic and fluid. “We put them in this hidden, rocky valley and developed the look for them.”

Brower’s main goal was to create planets that really stood out from each other, which was accomplished with the design of the dying Kree homeworld of Hala. “Hala was also seen in the first part captain marvel, But we really wanted to put our own stamp on it and have a connection with history,” she says. Brower was inspired by the Saudi Arabian city of NEOM, which is being built in the desert and plans to incorporate artificial intelligence, similar to how Hala was controlled by an AI called Supreme Intelligence. “We wanted the city to look like it was designed by AI: very blocky, with every inch of space evolving into a vertical skyscraper. I also didn’t want all the buildings to really look like they were computer generated, so there’s a lot of repetition and it feels a bit soulless. “In the past we wanted to show that AI integrated green spaces, and now, as the planet dies, there is a colossal urban expansion.”

Barbie

Barbie presented an opposite challenge compared to the other films, in which the main character enters the real world with the same sense of wonder as when the audience enters theirs. For production designer Sarah Greenwood and set designer Katie Spencer, creating a plastic world presented some surprising problems. “We’re creating a world without elements,” says Greenwood. “There’s no water, no fire, no electricity, no light, no wind… It’s just full of things that aren’t there.”

“Because it looks so easy, there’s nowhere to hide,” says Spencer. “It was mainly the lack of things that posed a new challenge. Not just the lack of big things like walls, but also the lack of the way actors interact with each other and with the environment.”

Since director Greta Gerwig wanted to use as little green screen as possible, everything down to the blades of grass had to be artificial. “These days you can get fake grass that looks very real,” says Greenwood, “but it was too real.” To get the perfect green artificial grass look, we had to go four classes below the best.” The pool was made by hand. painted and covered with a two-inch layer of resin, allowing for a scene in which Margot Robbie as Barbie walked on water, adding to the artificial nature of the world.

The artificial nature was then broken by Ken when he brought in objects from the real world, presenting the interesting task of designing something without taste. “It’s like an anti-aesthetic,” says Spencer. “What was so wonderful is that when you put all these ugly things together and you have these televisions that always show the same images of horses in slow motion, it becomes so melancholy that it develops its own beauty.”

The transition between Barbie Land and the real world presented another creative challenge, as the two had to portray a transition from a plastic, artificial world to reality. After many rounds of ideas, they decided to view the transitions as dioramas. “The camera, the background and the actors are in static angles, and everything moves at different speeds,” says Greenwood. “So in the foreground are the tulips, then other tulips, the windmills turn and the balloons rise. “All this is moving all the time, but the camera, the actors and the finished screen are all static.” After understanding the concept, they came up with new, interesting transitions, such as the snowmobile, the rocket, and the boat spinning dolphins.