How 'Asteroid City' Production Designer Creates the Worlds of Wes Anderson | Vanity Fair

what we try to do is make it as quick and light as possible and so pull a pin here and a hinge goes and the thing just slides out and you can kind of see an example of that in like the cafe and the French dispatch how the whole thing is planned so that the front of the cafe just opens up like a curtain and suddenly you're inside of the thing we'll do lots of mechanical things like that to make sure that the the sets are able to open up and and be seen from you know inside out and outside in [Mus

ic] hi I'm Adam stockhausen I'm a production designer this is how I helped create some of the worlds of Wes Anderson [Music] designer works for the art Department what we basically do is the physical environment of the film you'll read a script and it'll say you're in a monastery at the top of the Himalayas or you're in a train station in Prague or you're standing in front of the Berlin Wall then you turn to the production designer and say okay how do we do that I've worked with the director Ste

ve McQueen on 12 Years a Slave I've worked with Steven Spielberg on a number of films we made Bridge of spies together Ready Player one together and we made West Side Story together I started designing with Wes on Moonrise Kingdom then we did French dispatch we did Grand Budapest Hotel I co-designed Isle of dogs with Paul Herod and most recently we made asteroid City together working on any film you're starting with a script you're starting with research and you're starting with a conversation a

bout what is the world of the film what is what what does this space look like where are we with Wes's films we're very often breaking the movie Down frame by frame shot by shot and there are wild changes in between those shots where on another film you might go to a location and you'll you'll do all the different angles within that space sort of somewhat naturalistically when you look this way you'll really look this way when you look that way you'll actually turn the camera around and look tha

t way that's not necessarily true a lot of times on Wes's films where each angle will actually be broken apart into its own set or its own location and will actually manipulate space and that requires a intensity of planning [Music] almost always the initial conversations are where and how do we do this we ended up in a space outside of Madrid that had the right weather the right sunlight the right space and and also the right other pieces uh that we needed to go along with the main site of aste

roid City so what we're looking at right now is the sort of early days design for the luncheonette which is sort of the center piece of asteroid City this was a base sketch that alexios crucicos did with me and this is a conversation with Wes about the shape but also the specifics and the look and feel and the level of detail and how how aged is it and a lot of these things that you're seeing in here come from very specific reference points in Old photographs old postcards uh old films we would

talk about bad day at BlackRock and the diner in the town we'll talk about Ace in the Hole and the Trading Post store that's at the heart of that film and individual details will come from those things very often how do we use research and then uh bring it to be something that's a heightened version of of what it is is it the exact thing or is it the feeling of the thing and looking at the the research is a wonderful tool to give you all of these specifics it's just a gold mine of tiny little de

tails so this is sort of a drafting layout we're looking at One Piece One view of one part of the town of asteroid City but this is the kind of thing that we would do for everything in this drawing we're working on the kind of basic layout of the place how crowded is it what kind of a diner is it where does this paneling come from where does that door come from how are we going to be seeing into the kitchen the back room of the place under the surface we're also talking about specific shots on t

he storyboard and so the reason it's this long is because we have a shot from here that needs this huge depth into the distance of the length of the place we have Dolly shots that start looking into the kitchen and then sliding down the counter to find another character this whole thing is moving and shifting to try to bring the details to life but also be perfect in position so that those shots work and everything lines up when it needs to we'll go from something like this and now we're getting

back into the world of Erica Dorne in the graphics Department developing the exact colors on the tiles and the specific wallpaper and then that merges with the more technical uh layout drawing and we get something like this where we're at this point in the process locking in those details of finishes and color balance and what is this whole space from a color point of view how does it all hold together it really is kind of a forensic process of taking storyboards and kind of saying okay how can

we work this puzzle backwards so here we're looking at a couple of shots not frames from the film but just shots as the sets were coming together and as we were finishing part of that sort of forensic process of studying what exactly we need for each shot involved figuring out how the thing comes apart the sides were made on hinges to open up the whole thing has a steel skeleton to hold it together as the various component parts of it pop and move away the window frames all remove very quickly

I think it's very normal to be making sets that float and break apart what's kind of special here is that what we try to do is is make it as quick and light as possible and so pull a pin here and a hinge goes and the thing just slides out and you can kind of see an example of that in like the cafe in the French dispatch how the whole thing is planned so that the front of the cafe just opens up like a curtain and suddenly you're inside of the thing we'll do lots of mechanical things like that to

make sure that the the sets are able to open up and and be seen from you know inside out and outside in what we're looking at here is the writer's study so the scene is talking about the the development of the play Wyatt has written asteroid City the potential lead actor comes to visit him but of course this isn't a real house this is a dramatic retelling and so we're doing here a stage set version of the country house by the Sea and it's done very much in the western style that we'll later see

in Asteroid City we did a bunch of black and white shooting in in the French dispatch and we were able to look at things with the iPhone on the on the black and white setting to start getting the sense of how the different colors were relating to each other and then we eventually kind of just decided well why don't we just paint things in black and white even though certain elements the paintings the costumes may have a lot of color colors shift around and don't read in black and white necessari

ly the same way that our eyes perceive the color as in a value sense and so you can have a blue that turns completely black or a red that goes completely black and so it's just kind of nice to be able to say okay well I want to achieve this level of balance between the darkness value of the floor versus the stone versus the Timber and then sort of find a way to achieve that in paint so that the Black and White media film is reading it in the way that you're expecting it to I think this is a real

ly interesting image to look at because you don't see it this way in the film it's black and white in the film with the scenery elements we were working basically without color as a thing that was entering our minds because we knew it was going to be seen in black and white and we were checking how it was reading in black and white so it actually kind of looks low contrast here when you look at the thing you go this looks bad and Wes loved this piece of fabric this specific vintage piece of fabr

ic so we used it but we checked how it was going to look compared to everything else same answer with the typewriter it was just a great typewriter and it was better to use it in blue knowing what the black and white film would do to it than to paint the thing gray and lose something special about it [Music] Grand Budapest Hotel is a story about Europe in the 20th century and the struggle to hold on to Beauty in life Wes went on preliminary Scouts to look at some hotels and just kind of ask the

question and say okay starting point should we go to a grand hotel eventually kind of deciding there isn't one that's perfect they're either derelict or they're in operation but it was too big to just build the whole thing too so the kind of Goldilocks solution to the whole thing was a location that had the right bones and gave us the scale of the architecture of a grand hotel but where we could build inside of it the actual specific space that we wanted and sort of be very efficient with frankl

y the money we were spending to and the pieces we were building to say we're going to get a we're going to get a lot of it from the from the bones of the place on that Scout Wes ended up in a town called girlitz in the very farthest east part of Germany and sent these pictures and it was just magical it was just obvious that's it that's the place so what we're looking at right now is a really gorgeous pencil drawing by Carl Sprague he did this beautiful layout for what would become the large min

iature of the facade of the Grand Budapest Hotel we see it in a few different ways so this is built as a miniature it's about I think 12 feet across this thing and then we went to a location where Monsieur Gustav and zero pull up in the Mendel's van outside the entryway and so we kind of zoom into here we found a location for and did a heavy modifications to actually be the the front entry part of of the hotel itself and then we built another section of the upper windows and upper balcony for th

e piece of the movie where zero goes out the window and down and eventually crashes into the mendels van below so the Grand Budapest Hotel lobby and interior was built inside of a disused apartment store at karshdot in girl it's Germany and it had all of this it had this sort of flying stairway structure already existing it had the marble columns and when you look up there's this incredible art glass ceiling in the place and that was all there we brought in everything else you see this The Fount

ain the elevator the concierge the the windows in the back and then as you start going up in the hotel all of the walls with all of the doors to all of the rooms the coat check the barber salon the bar you know all those pieces were us adding on and actually building in to this Atrium space where the the original sales floors of the department store were then stretching behind our set and then we used the spaces behind to build all of our other sets the way that we do each set is is very much re

lated to the aspect ratio of the frame we're using and then also hand in hand with that the way west wants to use the the camera a really great example of it here is the sequence when Agatha goes to break into the storeroom to unlock the the safe we had another scene happening turn 90 degrees there's the window in the distance and then a massive zoom in just happens to land on on the frame of the window that's just happens to be the exact shape of the aspect ratio of the frame and everything lin

es up Wes and Bob at the viewfinders and we're able to say okay this is where it happens this is where the turn is going to be and then I can start putting tape on the ground and saying great great here's our axis everything evolves together the next one is the slightly more dour uh 1960s version of the hotel that we see later on in the film structurally The Shot is the same the funicular is coming up over here and the bus is over here and this is a an assembly of various different brutalist uh

buildings but trying to keep the same basic structure so that the Grand Budapest is still recognizable uh within it the one really exciting thing that we did when we were working on the Grand Budapest Lobby we made the 1960s version of the lobby inside the 1930s version of the lobby kind of as a nesting doll structure and so what you're seeing in this sketch by Ulrich zeidler where we floated down this egg crate lighting ceiling and filled up to the first floor mezzanine area with this entire Li

ght Grid it was a really interesting way of building a set within a set and not having to build every last bit of this from scratch and it was actually very lightweight it's a carpet some colored plastic panels and a ceiling completely transforms the thing the story of the architectural destruction of the hotel is something that you see around that part of the world you'll see these amazing old Bozart buildings that have plywood veneer paneling just stuck on top of the marble there was a buildin

g in gurlitz where we were shooting for the dining room scene it was the stud Hall of the community theater center in the town and the balcony rail had these carved angels and at some point cover had been put over them and I guess the heads of these things were in the way so they'd been knocked off and and the next layer was put on top it was something appropriate about keeping the space what it was and just cladding over it to become the newer updated version of the place education zero now it'

s exploded good morning Cicero call the goddamn plumber in mocking shots up all the time we're always dealing with the elements at the edge of the frame and The Parallax that's created in the barrel Distortion of the lenses and and countering it with pieces of scenery and that happens from the smallest thing like how would you make this filing cabinet behind me not if you didn't want to see the side you kind of cheat the thing so that the face was actually lining up to the axis towards the lens

but also bigger things like hanging off the cliff Edge scene in Grand Budapest which was a combination scene where we had the actual Cliff Edge just barely above the ground and then we designed the Vista View down as a miniature later and definitely planned the angle that all the trees were standing on to give a greater sense of depth behind and to try to show distance and we'll we'll do that a lot the way that West shoots these things makes for incredible opportunities an incredible fun in all

sorts of different ways in The Grand Budapest Hotel there's a ski sequence where willemus is chasing zero and West just thought it would be more interesting if we chose another medium to do it and so that's often why we'll use Miniatures use stop motion use puppets because it is fun and it allows a handmade way of solving problems all the time we hit on these kind of amazing shot opportunities where something will be made possible by the fact that we're only seeing one angle one that I absolutel

y love in Grand Budapest is the approach into the Gable meister's peak train station and we looked and looked and looked and couldn't find a steam train we could certainly build one it would cost a great deal of money and then Wes had this wonderful idea of saying well why don't we do not do any of it why don't we just be inside the train looking out and see the arrival into the station it allowed this sort of inside out way of looking at what a train station is because we were only seeing it fr

om that one way and so we were able to take a railway siding Warehouse building paint the side of it paint it with Timbers paint Gables meister's Peak on it and dress the thing as a as a trained platform and have a super stylized way of telling the story of the arrival into a train station thank you [Music] what's your name Sam what's yours I'm Susie it's such a pleasure to look at stuff for Moonrise Kingdom and to talk about it we knew I wanted to have this New England feel and we knew this was

a really intensely location-based film Jamestown Rhode Island turned out to be the perfect place next to Aquidneck Island it had the bishop house Lighthouse that and the Cove that became Moonrise Kingdom itself were sort of the two key anchors and when we went on a quick Scout we saw those places and it became clear okay this is it so what we're looking at here is the activity yard at Fort Lebanon when Sam and Susie are about to get married and Jason Schwartzman is kind of giving them the lowdo

wn of how it's done here at Fort Lebanon so what was fun about it and this actually it really kind of shows how we will take a location and then modify it for what we need it to be the exercise field existed we brought in 100 tenths but the zip line was there already we set up the rocket area but the important part about the whole thing is that we figured out the dolly shot and to actually see all this stuff Wes said we have to be up in the air and so we got up on ladders and figured out the exa

ct right height for the shot which happened to be about 10 or 12 feet in the air and then we made this couple hundred foot long platform and lined it with stockade fencing to feel like it had always been there but really it was just to get the camera to the right height to see the set Beyond it and so that kind of careful planning out of how to move the camera how to see the the world is half of what it's about West tends to go to a place and then stay in a very small radius to make every piece

of the film it makes us very efficient and very light on our feet and it became incredibly important on Moonrise Kingdom because we had a lot of sort of single shots of things where that were very light dependent the one that pops into my mind is the shot during the storm of 65 where we see a field with a basketball hoop sticking up out of the lake to show that the flood is coming we found the spot to do it we put the basketball hoop into the water and then we waited and we went and we shot othe

r things and I remember one day I was on duty to go check was perfect it was overcast and cloudy and I was able to kind of shoot a text over to West 45 minutes later that we were there and and setting up camera and about to shoot I can do it this way it's more fun this way that's what's so fun about this thing Carl Sprague did the original drawing of this and Wes looked at it and said it's just not extreme enough you know we want a treehouse that's dangerous that's the point of this is that it's

just too much we wanted to make the whole thing based on a telephone pole that was sunk into the ground it had to be multiple trees tied together and that's what you see here is is One Tree tied onto another when you're talking about how we see these sets it's really fun to be able to cheat massively you know and to say well this is the tree house and it's actually five foot by four foot by three foot when you look at it from the outside when you look at it on the inside it's 20 feet wide and t

here are 16 kids having a conversation in there there's no augmentation to this at all it's exactly what you see here it is a tree house and it is sitting in a tree and it is that high up in the air the only cheat to it is there's a little bit of Steel here supporting the whole thing I do think there was a steel spine running down the back side of this thing and there were some guy wires for safety when we weren't shooting we actually pulled the guy wires when the wind was calm and we were going

to actually grab the shot we pulled them out of the way but it is what you see this is Summer's end this is the exterior of The Bishop's house and it was great for our exterior we used it for Susie walking out to the mailbox going to wait for the bus when we go inside the house Wes broke it apart and there was no sort of overall architectural logic to the space where one room would connect to another room in a way that would seem rational you know instead he told the story and revealed the hous

e in a series of shots one of them tracking left to right one of them pulling straight backwards and those were all planned from the very beginning as the way to tell the story of the house and and each one was set up for the exact camera move knowing the exact lens I shouldn't say there's no logic to the house because there is there is a logic to this there's just no there's just a map of the house would be a very confusing one there is a sort of a logic to the house we just never built it that

way and we don't experience it that way we experience it in this broken apart very specific movement way it's amazing to work with Wes on multiple projects and to get to know him better and better and better really a shorthand develops where it's not just a storyboard but everything in the storyboard doesn't have equal importance it's trying to communicate an idea and being able to more quickly see and understand what he's trying to accomplish in the storytelling of the shot and being able to g

et there more quickly that shorthand is really wonderful and gets sort of deeper and richer over time and also I think makes me better at doing my job not just with Wes but with everybody that I'm working with foreign