The art direction of “Moonrise Kingdom” – interview with Gerald Sullivan

“Moonrise Kingdom” is by far the most enchanting and charming movie that I saw in 2012. It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to host Gerald Sullivan, the art director of this wonderful production, and to ask him a few questions about his craft, and his work on the movie.

Kirill: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Gerald: I am a graduate of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, SCI-ARC. I began working as a set designer in ’95 without much prior knowledge of film making. Since then I’ve had the good fortune of working on a variety of films, gaining insight from many great production designers and working with some of the industries most highly regarded directors.

Kirill: In your experience, what’s the role of an art director in the overall production, and what skills do you bring to the table?

Gerald: An art director takes on many roles throughout the production. We need to be shape shifters. Initially we need to be able to conceptualize the scenery needed to tell a certain story. Budget and schedule need to be established. The art director has to be able to react, adjust and respond to inevitable changes through out each project. We are in constant contact with the assistant directors, the UPM [unit production manager], construction, set decoration, SPFX [special effects], the Director of Photography, the key gaffer, the key grip, etc. Every art director I know has an appreciation for art, architecture, decoration, and the history of each. The best understand we must be learning more all the time, constantly expanding our knowledge, what we bring to the table.

Kirill: From set decorator to art director to production designer. Is it a natural progression, or just one path to follow?

Gerald: No natural progression, no one path to follow. Doesn’t need be a progression that aims toward, or ends up at, production designer. Whatever your best at, and take pride in doing, that’s where you should be.

Kirill: How did you end up working on “Moonrise Kingdom”?

Gerald: I had worked with Adam Stockhausen on a film the previous summer in Michigan. We got along well. I am a big fan of Wes’s work. Adam had worked with Wes on “Darjeeling Express” and a few commercials as an art director. When Adam let me know he was going to work on “Moonrise” as production designer, I let him know I was interested in art directing.

On the set of Bishop family house. Photography by Niko Tavernise, courtesy of Gerald Sullivan.

Outside shot of Bishop family house. This extension was built to match the house and provide the director with what he needed for each scene. It also camouflaged a non-period sun room.

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Production design of “Pushing Daisies” – interview with Michael Wylie

I was hooked from the very first episode. The idea, the script and the cast were phenomenal. And the colors were absolutely gorgeous. Almost too bright and vivid to be true, and yet never flashy or harsh. As I sat down to relive those few precious episodes that saw the light of day (two seasons, twenty two episodes total), I was completely overtaken by how amazingly well this show was put together.

The very first sequence with young Ned running through the impossibly bright field of yellow flowers transitions into the kitchen scene with his mother. Every piece in this set has its place, every fabric and wallpaper lovingly textured with nature-based patterns, and the pop of bright red is a perfect compliment to the earthly yellows, olives and browns.

This style extended to all interior sets, never too vintage to mark any specific era, and yet never modern to break the charming spell of the deeply emotional connections between the different characters. Here’s Olive in her living room, surrounded by blooming flowers on the walls, sofa, pillows, lamp, her pajamas and even the tableware. Delicate, intricate, each with its own color palette, yet none screaming for attention, and all working together in a perfect unison.

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The art and craft of production design – conversation with Sarah Greenwood

In this conversation the acclaimed production designer Sarah Greenwood talks about her craft, the research work that goes into the preparation stage of a new production, why every production is a period one, the famous Dunkirk beach scene in “Atonement”, her take on the advancement of digital tools, and “Anna Karenina” which is her latest collaboration with director Joe Wright, set decorator Katie Spencer and actors Jude Law and Keira Knightley.

Kirill: Tell us about how it all started for you…

Sarah: I trained as a theater designer at the Wimbledon School of Arts, and I worked in theater for three years. I found it enjoyable, but it was strangely unsatisfying. There was something collaborative that was missing. When you work on a film set, you have a very close relationship with the director, and I certainly wasn’t finding that in the work I was doing in the theater. It also involved traveling a lot around the UK, and I quite liked being based in London, see my friends and earn proper money. So I sold my soul to the devil and started working at the BBC which actually was fantastic.

At that time BBC had a massive art department, and it was an amazing training ground. So making the transformation from theater to film television was helped by the training we got there and the work that we did. Working for the BBC was fantastic. You could go two routes – assistant art director or set designing on small productions. I went down the second route, and started designing moving quickly onto “Later with Jools Holland”. I moved into the drama department working with some fantastic directors like Patrick Marbur on “After Miss Julie” and with Mike Barker on “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”. And then with demise the design department at the BBC in the mid 1990′ss, I joined the freelance world and started working in film.

That was the story of my transition from theater to television to film. I went backwards and forwards for a bit, and decided that I much prefer film. I’m much more suited to film design. I have friends who still work in theater, and I could never design as well as that. My design work in much more suited to film, and I’m happy to working in this medium.

Kirill: Do you see yourself going back to more restrained budgets of television productions?

Sarah: I would like to say yes creatively, but financially probably not. The budgets were tight then and it was fine because you were going through them, but I would probably struggle a bit now with the scale of the budgets. But why not? Although going back to Theatre is a step to far, Joe Wright [director] just has come back to theater and wanted me to do it with him – two shows next year. I’ve chosen not to because conceptually that is so different. As much as theater design informs film design, being character-based and script-led, I think aesthetically they are so different now for me to go back and design theater.

But to go back to television – as they say, never say never. There’s some brilliant television that’s done, particularly at the BBC. They do amazing things, but at the moment it’s probably not for me.

Kirill: Do you think that you’ve been “spoiled” by the much bigger budgets of your recent films?

Sarah: The bottom line is that there’s never enough money, no matter what your budget is or your scale. You never have enough time or enough money, which is fine,its the way. You can go from “Sherlock” which had a budget of $130M to “Anna Karenina” which had a budget of $25M, and they’re both equally short on time. There are compromises in both but, creatively good things often come out of those challenges that. If you tell me to go back to a television production with a budget of $2.5M, I’m sure I could do it, but that’s not the route that I’m going down at the moment. Equally, maybe in the future when I don’t want to be working away or stressing as much as the big productions demand I might want to change direction.

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The craft of art direction – conversation with Judy Rhee

In this conversation Judy Rhee talks about the craft of production design and art direction, taking a look at her work on commercials, TV productions and feature films. After discussing the similarities and differences in scope and pace for the various productions, she talks about her work on “My Blueberry Nights”, a romantic drama that takes Norah Jones on a journey across America. I’ll just go til I run out of places to go, and her path takes her from New York to Tennessee to Nevada and back. Explosively colorful, and yet never flashy, the film is a veritable cinematic feast, and Judy talks about how this production was unlike any other she has worked on so far.

Kirill: You’ve been doing a lot of things in movies, TV and commercials. How did it all start?

Judy: I went to film school and became interested in production design through watching films and taking a cinema studies class in the history of art direction. At the time they didn’t have any production design/art direction classes at NYU in the film department. They only had a Theater/Stage Design in the theater department, but as a film student you weren’t allowed to take classes in theater design unless you were a theater design major, so I ended-up taking related classes at Pratt Institute and SVA [School of Visual Arts].

While watching and critiquing films in classes, I found it puzzling how a lot of the films we’re just focusing on the camera work (i.e. renting helicopters and Steadicams), but no one was paying any attention to the environment they were shooting in – a lot of actors against white walls. I became interested in exploring how you can help tell the story visually by just making a few changes to the set(s) or locations. I offered my services to other students and started working on their student films to make their stories more interesting and compelling by modifying, adding or embellishing their film environments and sets.

I was bar-tending and waitressing while attending NYU and 1-day one of my regular customers, who worked at the Metropolitan Opera doing make-up, came in and said he was working on a horror film called “Frankenhooker”, and he said they we’re replacing the art department that day and I should go down there if I was interested in working in the Art Department. I went there and was hired as an art intern, doing everything from driving the van doing pickups/drop-offs, making and painting props, helping with shopping and set-dressing. It was a non-union film, so everyone did a little bit of everything. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun – a great learning experience!

After that film wrapped I was hired full-time in the art department for his second film, “Basket Case 2″ dir. Frank Henenlotter. He did a lot of B-rated horror films. I wouldn’t mind working on a another horror film. From that point on it was just word of mouth, and I just continued to work steadily.

Cut to 20+ years later, I’m still working on films and commercials. Sometimes I travel or re-locate for work. I went to Jordan to work on a film, “Stoning of Soraya M.” for 4 months, which was really an interesting experience for me. I worked in Atlanta on Tyler Perry‘s TV series “Meet the Browns” for 2 seasons. For that TV show I was able to utilize my background in commercials and movies because the pace of it was like doing a small film on a commercial schedule. Sometimes we would get a script on Tuesday, design a set on Wednesday, start building on Thursday, paint on Friday, set-dress it on Saturday and then shoot it on Monday. Even for TV, it’s a very fast turnaround. My experience and knowledge in working on commercials where everything happens very quickly allowed me to deliver what was expected in an abbreviated timeline.

You still have to design these sets with narrative in mind of what the story is, who are these characters, what are we trying to convey visually – even if it’s a sitcom. My job is to support the director to help tell the story.

I currently have a film out now in theaters, “2 days in New York”, written, directed and starring July Delpy and Chris Rock. It’s a sequel to “2 Days In Paris”.

I just finished another comedy in NY called “My Man Is a Loser”. It was a very quick 24-day shoot. Written and directed by Mike Young, starring Michael Rappaport, Sean Young, John Stamos and Bryan Callen. It’s a first feature film for Mike Young, and he was one of the writers on “Entourage”. It went really well, I think it will be a funny movie. The current scheduled release is spring 2013.

Kirill: Do you like moving between different types and scales of productions?

Judy: Every project is different and there are always new challenges, regardless of the size and scale. The process is different from commercials to TV studio shows to films. I can’t say that I prefer one over the other. I like them all because it engages different parts of my brain and there’s always something new, whether it’s time constraints, financial challenges or different and specific expectations. The end products are different. If I can generalize; on a commercial the details of props and set-dressing can sometimes be more important and very specific to the product you’re selling, who the director is and what the expectations are from the Ad Agency and Clients. For Film and TV, the details are sometimes less important – it’s more about the broad strokes of story and characters, obviously depending on the director. That’s not to say there isn’t a narrative you’re trying to create in 30-second spot, you just have to convey it in less time, hence the importance of the specific prop(s) and/or set-dressing.

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