With its viscerally spellbinding world, immaculate visuals and an exquisite cast, NBC’s “Hannibal” gave us three unforgettable seasons. It gives me immense pleasure to welcome Matthew Davies who was responsible for the production design of this show. In this interview he talks about various aspects of building sets on stage and on location, working with VFX department on augmenting physical sets, the pace of production schedule in episodic television, physical safety of sets and people’s reaction to “Hannibal”. In addition, Matthew dives deeper into the particular set details of the FBI office, the Baltimore state hospital and Cappella Palatina from season 3.
On the set of Hannibal’s Palermo house in season 3. Courtesy of Matthew Davies.
Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and your path so far.
Matthew: My name is Matthew Davies and I’m a production designer. I came into film through architecture. I studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Towards the end of my degree I recall one of my tutors critiquing my work as being very derivative. He said that if I was going to emulate the work of other architects, I might consider a career in film where everything is copied.
It was like a light bulb going on inside my head. I went to the National Film School for another three years, and graduated again into a very tough industry. I was art-directing medium sized features; then there were the occasional design gigs on low-budget indie films; and in the gaps, I was drafting on big studio movies. Nowhere was I finding anything that combined the satisfaction of having a budget to spend with the creative autonomy that accompanies indie projects. The opportunities were very few and far between in the UK; it is a field oversaturated with talent.
Fortuitously, I ended up by chance doing a film with a Canadian cinematographer, Paul Sarossy, who is probably best known for shooting the movies of Atom Egoyan. He invited me to Canada back in 2002, and I’ve continued working in Toronto ever since. I started with indigenous Canadian directors like Guy Maddin and as the source of the work shifted, I moved on to NBC and cable shows that were being made here in Toronto.
It was this path that brought me into the fold of “Hannibal” and attracted the attention of Patti Podesta who had been hired to design the original pilot. She asked me to share in the design of the standing sets and I subsequently stepped into her shoes on “Hannibal”.
On the set of Hannibal’s Palermo house in season 3. Courtesy of Matthew Davies.
Still of the same set from the final cut.
Kirill: Taking you back to the beginning of your career in movies, was there anything particularly surprising as you got into the industry and saw how things worked on the inside?
Matthew: I was surprised how big it is. I don’t think anyone really appreciates when they watch a film that 95% of what they’re looking at is probably shot in a studio environment, including often street sets and exterior scenes. I didn’t really think about that up until I was in film school.
Once you get into a studio environment like Pinewood Studios in the UK, you appreciate how many crafts go into creating a feature, and all the hundreds of thousands of hours of labor and craftsmanship that go into building sets. The relationship between set design and visual effects has become more paramount, and it extends right from the very early stages of the pre-production up to the last stages of the post-production. I think that design has become a much larger and broader discipline than it used to be.
Kirill: Is it difficult in any way for you to convince the production that what you do is a necessary thing?
Matthew: It depends. Experienced producers generally know the profits of investing more into the infrastructure of the show. On “Hannibal” it cost production an estimated $40,000 premium every day when we were shooting outside of our studio. So, generally speaking, if a set cost less than say $40,000, it was an automatic green light to build. And that doesn’t even take into account whatever had been allocated to the art department. It was an economy for production to be based around the studio rather than on location.
Other shows are location-based, and it’s by necessity. They have a small shooting crew and small lighting packages; they are very footloose and can move quickly. But when you’re working with a large unit, everything is slower. The time it takes to set up and pre-light in a studio is a fraction of the time because it has already been done many times before, and everybody knows the ropes.
Whenever there was a budgetary pressure on “Hannibal”, the producers would generally try to force Bryan Fuller [show creator] and his writers back into a pre-existing set.
On the set of Hannibal’s office. Still from the final cut.
