As I have a strong passion for theatre and set design, I have decided to share some of my favourite designers and their work;
Roger Christian and Star Wars:
Roger Christian is a set decorator, production designer, and feature film director. He won an Academy Award for his work on the original Star Wars. One of the most memorable elements of Star Wars is the set design. Roger was tasked with creating prop prototypes and decorating sets in a way that hadn't ever been achieved before in science-fiction films. The low budget for the films forced Roger to design and create sets and props from nothing. (1)
In the 1970's it was practiced that sets and props were made by hand in conventional ways. For example, the interior of the Millennium Falcon spaceship was made from scrap airplane metal. In an interview, Roger said "The Millennium Falcon was difficult, because I had to train prop men to break down jet engines into scrap pieces and then line them all up into different categories and stick them to the walls." (2)
Some of the prop prototypes Roger designed were made from scraps or items that he had around him, in an interview, Roger said that "For Han Solo's blaster gun, I wanted it like a Western gun, so I stuck old sights on it and everything. And I called John Barry and I said, "You better get George around here to see this idea," because we could afford to do it this way. Plus these work, you could fire them and get the recoil, on-set, and not like actors going, "Beep beep." So George came around, and that was the point where I'd either be fired or stay on. But George just smiled. And he stayed with me to help make Princess Leia's gun the same way."
(2)
He also talks about how he designed the iconic light sabres from spare camera parts; "...in the box were several Graflex flashgun handles. They were perfect, heavy, and had a red button for firing the flash. I could not believe my luck. I used rubber T-strip as a base, which I had also used for the Stormtroopers' Stirling sub machine guns, and I pulled out my superglue and stuck strips along the base to form a handle grip. Then I had found some interesting bubble strip from an old calculator LED strip and they fit perfectly into the grip where the Graflex attached to the camera. I placed some chrome tape over the Graflex name and voila."
(2)
Roger's work earned him an Academy Award for set decoration, and every film of the Star Wars franchise has been trying to achieve that inexplicable rustic and authentic appearance ever since.
Richard Hudson and The Lion King Musical:
Richard Hudson is a Zimbabwean stage designer best known for his work for
The Lion King, which won him the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design.
(3) The Lion King is a musical play based on the 1994 Walt Disney Animation Studios' animated feature film
The Lion King. The musical debuted on July 8, 1997, and has been touring around the world ever since. It is Broadway's third longest-running show in history, and has grossed more than $1 billion, making it the highest grossing Broadway production of all time. Over 100 million people worldwide have seen the musical and it has earned numerous awards and honours, including six Tony Awards, one for Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical.
(3) The Lion King is a non-naturalistic musical, and does not have any real animals; the actors wear masks or control puppets to portray animals. There are more than 232 puppets in the show, including rod puppets, shadow puppets and full-sized puppets. It took 37,000 hours to build the puppets and masks. The longest animal is the elephant: 4 metres long, 3.5 metres high and 2.75 metres wide.
(4) The masks have a static expression, so the character needs to be animated by the actor’s face. By not obstructing the actors’ faces with masks or puppets, this allows the audience to encounter both the animal traits of the design and the human emotions of the actor simultaneously, creating a singular, whole character.
(4)
Richard's fundamental design is the idea is the Circle of Life. Throughout the production design, there are circles present. This includes the design of Pride Rock which spirals up from the stage.
(4)
The sun in
The Lion King is constructed from 43 aluminium ribs attached to each other with silk strips. As it rises, the lights shine onto the silk, creating the mirage effect you might see in hot climates, it also gives the impression of the sun coming up over the horizon. This is the first use of the circle motif which we see throughout the show.
(4)
Throughout
The Lion King, the interaction between set and performer is very important in portraying the story. For example, the way the grasslands was created; performers emerge from upstage wearing large trays of grassheads. These costumes have been designed to portray the landscape of the savannah. They serve not only as costumes, but as architectural elements of a living, moving set. This moving landscape helps to portray a sense of journey which is essential to this scene.
(4)
The drought and disappearance of the watering hole is a very simple technique, but allows the audience to see time passing and the devastating impact of the drought very quickly. This is done by a circular cloth being pulled downwards from the centre into the stage floor.
(4)
Chris Trujillo and Stranger Things:
Chris Trujillo is a production designer for the show
Stranger Things. Visually, the show feels like a time capsule, the interiors shown in the show feel nostalgic, authentic and 'lived-in'. Chris and his team approached set dressing as realistically as possible, spending months of sourcing a lot of their furniture, decor, and props from garage sales in suburban areas.
(5)
Speaking about one of the houses in the show, Chris says, "When we found the Byer house exterior there was no question in anyone's mind that it was exactly what we were looking for: a ramshackle old house built between the wars, clad in grey-blue faux-wood asbestos siding, across the tracks, at the end of a grim gravel drive, pressed up against the woods on the far edge of town. Before you get through the front door you start to know who the Byers are and maybe what Will has been through."
(6)
When designing an interior of the Byer's house, Chris states that "I lay out the interior in a way that allows for the most unencumbered camera movement and interesting framing options, with particular attention paid to depth and the way each room connects to the next ... For the relentless graffiti and axe attacks and monster wall breaching's, we predetermined which walls would get it the worst and we built them to be removable and replaceable with specially fabricated walls rigged for the various practical special effects we executed. One of my favourite replacement walls was made by printing our wallpaper pattern directly on sheets of latex." (6)
When discussing another location in the show, Hawkins Laboratory, Chris states that "It was important that Hawkins Laboratory feel like an imposing, threatening entity looming secretly in your backyard. In that way, it works as a physical reflection of the Reagan Era, residual Red Scare, Cold War anxiety that's lying just under the surface in Hawkins." (6) The site which they shot as the exterior Lab was an experimental psychiatric facility. Complete with long, stark white, underground corridors that linked the main building to what once were patients' quarters. (6)
In season three of the show, it takes place during the summer, which the previous seasons took place during school term times. In an interview about season three, Chris states, "We really wanted to push the pool, and push the mall, to really make you feel summer, in a way that obviously wasn’t present in the first two seasons." (7) The mall that Chris and his team selected for a base is the empty Gwinnett Place Mall, Duluth, Georgia, built in the 1980's. Inside the mall, the art department recreated period branding for the stores. The mall was fully dressed to allow for filming in 360 degrees, the Gap store was the largest store created for the show, at approx. 3000 square feet. The art department filled this set with over 2,500 accessories and pieces of apparel. (7)
In Stranger Things, there is an alternate dimension called the upside down, which is an exact copy of the 'normal' world within the show, but with dark lighting, particles in the air, and wet tentacle like vines growing everywhere.
Most people would assume that the scenes for the upside down are created with visual affects and CGI, but its actually applied practically to the existing set designs, using building materials such as foam, plastic, and a large amount of pussy willow fluff to create the particles in the air. (8) In an interview discussing how Chris and his team made the upside down scenes, he states "when we're inside the Wheeler's house, for instance, or the Byers’ house or any interior environment where we're doing the nether, it's almost always 95% practical. We float different kinds of organic material in the air [when we shoot]. It's some sort of organic pussy willow fluff, basically. It’s a lot of trial and error, but we have a method down, and we’ve got assembly [down] — an Upside Down tentacle-building factory, essentially." (8)
Image references (in order of appearance):
- Photo of Roger Christian's Light Saber:
CNN.com- Photo of living room interior set from
Stranger Things:
netflix.com- Photo of exterior of the Byer's house from
Stranger Things:
intjournal.com- Screen capture of a scene in Hawkins Lab from
Stranger Things:
intjournal.com- Photo of Gwinnett Place Mall dressed and designed for the show:
curbed.com- Screen capture of a scene of Will in the upside down:
express.co.uk
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