#by aa

[rosebyrnecentral]

Rose Byrne SCHON Magazine Fall 2021

[rosebyrnecentral]

Rose Byrne Marie Claire Australia July 2021

[moviesandsets]

Maniac - 2018

Here I will again wrote about an american tv show realsed on Netflix in 2018. Yes, there are seriously good TV Shows sometimes. This one is a remake from a Norwegian TV Show, available now on Arte if you want ! 

Maniac was directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, mainly know for True Detective (the first season), and I watched it 4 years ago but what I remembered is that, when I watched the TV Show, I was really in love by the universe.

It’s a strange world, there are a lot oof references from the 80′, but there are also so much weird technologies like, for example, a miniature street cleaning robot, actors who can be ordered online to play the role of friends, and even a live advert in the form of an employee who comes to talk to you. We also don’t know if we are in Tokyo or in New-York, this strange universe make us ask ourself if we really are in the reality. Because all these contradictions were not enough to surprise the viewer, every episode, every pills took by our heroes bring us to another universe, another reality. 

Each universe (or hallucination) from our two progaonists (Annie & Owen) that we see through the clinical trials is carefully worked out and each one has its own tone and poetry. Thus, if we go from film noir to comedy to heroic-fantasy, the directors have taken care to give each of these genres its own colour. And beyond the chromatic palette of red, green, yellow and blue that accompanies each of the tests, we are bluffed by the delicacy and finesse given to each shot.

[moviesandsets]

Gattaca - Andrew Niccol

In the famous science-fiction movie of Andrew Niccol, relased in 1998 and produce by Colombia Pictures and Jersey Film, Nancy Nye and Jan Roelfs have won the oscar of the best set design. Of course, we had to talk about it in this blog. First, let’s focus on these two set design directors.

Nancy Nye had learned decoration in the famous art school : Les Beaux-Arts de Paris (we can be proud of it !!). She had worked as the set designer in a lot of movies, and she is mainly known for Body Of Lies from Ridley Scott, The Lincoln Lawyer by Brad Furman or Matchstick Men from again Ridley Scott.

Jan Roelfs, for his part, is also a production designer. He is mainly known for Ghost in the Shell by Rupert Sanders and Bird Box from Susanne Bier.

Let’s focus now on what we want : the set design: Gattaca is an anticipation film set in the near future. All the sets and props must therefore have been invented or chosen by the director or his assistants with full knowledge of the situation.

Gattaca differs from many science fiction films in its science fiction films by its setting. Not everything is built in a studio, but is a real place, taken out of its original context. The imposing Gattaca space centre, for example, was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (famous, among other things, for the spiral of the Guggenheim Museum in New York).

The straight lines and perfect curves recall the hardness of the human hand and many visual elements recall the symbolism of the DNA double helix, such as the spiral staircase in Jerome's flat. 

The environment is stripped of all vegetation and nature, in order to illustrate a world where nature no longer has a place and where the world and life are entirely shaped by the human hand.

There is also an importance in the choice of the color of the movie : the ochre colour: even if Gattaca is about DNA and perfection, there is still imperfections and the society is not so clean and wonderful that its wants to be.

[moviesandsets]

2001 : A Space Odyssey - 1968

Here, we will not discuss the philosophic interpretation of the movie who which would deserve an entire article. We will focus more on the avant-garde universe created by the filmmaker.

In this science-fiction movie, Kubrick breaks the codes by not using intergalactic battles but by using an aesthetic style of the filmmaker which makes the setting a capital element to understand the universe of the movie: The decor gives birth to a future modernity where materials, curves, geometric shapes and pure lines are mixed. 

As you know, Stanley Kubrick was a designer as well as a director and photographer : This is surely why many of his films benefit from an incredible set, as in Shining, A Clockwork Orange or even Eyes Wide Shut. Each of his films gives birth to a complete world, perfectly imagined in terms of space, architecture, details, content thanks to many renowned designers.

In this movie, A Space Odyssey, Kubrick had surrounded himself with a special team: 35 decorators, 20 special effects specialists, two Nasa recruits, but also a handful of major furniture designers. In the set, we can see many works of art: the french Olivier Mourgue and its “Djinn” chairs, or the Finnish-American Eero Saarinen with his “Tulip” serie (also used in Clockwork Orange), and the “Action Office” from George Nelson. In the modern world, however, there is a more realistic room, the bedroom in the final scene. The room, all immaculate white, is decorated with Louis XVI furniture, is in stark contrast to the rest of the film. This bedroom reminds us of the American bourgeois houses of the time, and echoes a mantra of Kubrick : “ you have to start from reality to create the illusion of reality “.

[moviesandsets]

Edward Scissorhands - 1990

Just after reading the article of JMD about Beetlejuice, I immediately had the desire to explore Tim Burton's sets in Edward Scissor.  In this almost autobiographical film, great intention is given to the sets. Bo Welch, the set designer also responsible for Beetlejuice places great importance on two particular sets which are in many ways opposed to each other.

At first, we have the world of Edward : a garden with a lot of colors, nature and fantasy sculptures but also a dark castle without colors, in a gothic’s style. This set immediately contrasts with the second setting of the film, the suburbs, which are made up of pastel-coloured, saturated, smooth and orderly houses.

At first, we can feel the fist set more grim than the second one. But all along the movie, the image of the nice suburb is becoming less and less comforting. We realized, when Edward starts to be rejected by the habitants, that the soft appearance of the suburbs is deceptive and let place to hypocrisy, cupidity and conformism.

In the end, it is in the dark, seemingly unwelcoming castle that Edward finds a refuge for his creativity and difference.