Kirill: Please tell us about yourself.

Jacqueline: My name is Jacqueline Demeterio. I’m the costume designer on the film “Verity”, and I have been a costume designer since 2007.

Kirill: I was looking on your IMDB page and most of your recent productions are contemporary stories. What do you feel is the biggest challenge with working on contemporary productions?

Jacqueline: Contemporary has changed so much with the whole social media aspect and people have such easy access to identifying your work immediately. You put something on screen, and they identify the designer of it or the brand and where you can purchase it. Your work is vastly shown across everywhere [laughs].

Contemporary fashion is a lot of what I do. For me, it’s about being able to create characters as well – and not just to look like it’s just fashion pieces. It’s important to have each character have their individual style that tells their story on the screen. It’s storytelling through costumes. If you’re doing period pieces, you can be much more specific with making pieces and building pieces. I still make and build pieces in contemporary style, but there is also a lot that is purchased or shopped or lent from different design houses. It’s about making it speak to the audience and not just look flat.

Kirill: Something that stood out to me in “One Night Only” was that little sequin dress, and on “Verity” you have this beautiful red dress. Do people reach out to ask where they can get some of the pieces that you brought to the screen?

Jacqueline: They reach out a lot, even about work that I’ve done years ago. People are still asking me where I got things for the movie “The Intern” which was the first time I worked with Anne Hathaway back in 2014. “Younger” from 2015 was a big show, and they started streaming that on Netflix a couple of years ago. So there was a whole new fan base that came through, and I was getting all these inquiries about where people could buy this or buy that. What can I tell them? I shot that ten years ago. It’s not available anymore [laughs].

Behind the scenes of the costume department of “Verity” with moodboards and costumes. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

Kirill: Getting to “Verity”, when and where did it find you, and how did you get to join it?

Jacqueline: I did a movie called “The Idea of You” with Michael Showalter, and we had a wonderful experience working together. For Anne and I this is our fourth project together. When Michael asked me to do “Verity”, I immediately said yes because we had such a great collaboration on “The Idea of You”, and I was more than happy to join him again.

Kirill: How much do you have to work with when you read the book and when you read the script in terms of the costume, and how much is yours to explore?

Jacqueline: Going back to “The Idea of You”, I read the book first, and then I read the scripts – and things were different. I felt that I was getting a little confused when I was putting the ideas of what I had from the book into the script. They were two separate things, and I didn’t like that.

When I started on “Verity”, I read the book, but I said to myself that I want to make what we’re doing on screen. There definitely should be some crossover, but I knew that we were doing things a little bit differently. So I wanted to do it from my own visual standpoint and not have the book too much in my thought process. I did pull some inspiration from it, and then it went into the discussions with Michael, the discussions with Anne, the discussions with Dakota, the discussions with Josh about how they saw the characters. Of course they read the book as well, so that was important, but we wanted to make it our own as well.

Costume moodboards for “Verity”. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

Kirill: What is your approach to the main characters – one at a time, or all at the same time?

Jacqueline: It’s important to do both. I usually start with the individual to get my thought process going, but I also think of them together. I start to make my inspiration boards for each character. Then once I start to do fittings, I have to always think about how everybody is going to look as a whole. How is this all looking when they’re together? Is this how this character is dressing? If this is the thought process behind this character, what does it mean for this character when they’re together?

I start individually and then bring them all together. At that point, if I think things aren’t working as a whole, then I will pivot.

Costume moodboards for “Verity”. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

Kirill: Starting with Lowen, how do you see her arc from a struggling author living in a rundown apartment to her gradually taking over this glamorous life of another woman?

Jacqueline: She definitely starts out as an edgy Brooklyn girl, and that had to reflect in her clothes. At the beginning she doesn’t have a lot of pieces in her wardrobe in that tiny apartment. When we first meet her, she is a bit guarded. She’s coming to this house and she’s layered with her sweaters and her leather jacket. She has a little bit of a tough exterior. There’s a protectiveness around her. She’s not vulnerable at this point, but she’s got a lot of mixed feelings. I think she’s coming into this a little bit trepidatious.

It was important to also have the differentiation of her being this edgier character coming into the luxurious home and wardrobe of Verity. You needed to have them contrast. She starts out that way, and over time that she spends in that house, she starts to have all these different feelings. You see her evolve into feeling that maybe I could live this life.

You really see that when they go out to dinner for her birthday and she gets into the red Versace dress. That’s the first time you see her transform. Then she evolves, and then at the end you see her evolve into her version of a successful writer. By the end she is much more put together, chic, a little bit more like luxurious high end – but there’s still a feeling of Lowen to me. It wasn’t too much of a departure, but her version of what her success would look like.

Kirill: What does high end mean today? Is it more muted colors and emphasis on more expensive fabrics?

Jacqueline: High end would be luxurious fabrics. It could fall into quiet luxury, but it’s definitely fabrication, the way things fit, the silhouettes, the way that they’re photographed. There’s a lot of thought process in fabrics and how they’re going to photograph.

We looked at what that silk charmeuse was going to do on camera and the lighting, and what it was going to do in the water. It’s all thought out. It has to look luxurious – this to me is what high end is.

Costume moodboards for “Verity”. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

Kirill: The way Verity’s story is told through costume on the screen has three parts. There’s the period when they just started dating while she wasn’t a famous writer. Then there’s the jump forward to her being a worldwide known author. And in between the flashbacks she’s homebound and bedridden. Would that be a fair assessment of your intent?

Jacqueline: I’m happy that you recognize that because that was very intentional. That was a collaboration between Anne and I and Michael. We wanted that to be three separate things, or rather four. There is a coma look to separate her in the wheelchair and her being bedridden.

When she’s first starting out in the apartment and she doesn’t have a lot of money, she looks softer. We used softer colors. She had a pretty yellow sweater. She looked a little bit more vulnerable. Between Anne and I we kept saying that she was a little coquette.

Costume moodboards for “Verity”. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

When she does become successful, and she has the public version of herself in the world for interviews and guest appearances, I wanted that to be super chic, and to ooze luxury. It’s fabrication. It’s the estate jewelry pieces that I used. She is exceptionally coiffed. And then when she’s at home writing, Anne and I decided that Joan Didion was a good inspiration. It’s her home. She’s in her home office. Amy [the production designer] had started to show us what she was going to do for the office, and we decided to go into that Joan Didion world of knitwear, matching sets of tops and pants. She’s always in her red sweater.

I was looking at old runway shows from Missoni for inspiration. I wanted it to be interesting. I wanted it to have a certain color and texture, but I didn’t want it to be the shiny luxurious version of when you see her public persona out in the world. What is she writing in? It’s still these luxurious fabrics, but it’s more like knitwear and it’s a little bit more grounding.

Then, when she is bedridden, she is in her white nightgown. She has her oversized sweaters. We were using light gray tones and whites. We wanted her to be ghostly in those images.

Costume design of “Verity” by Jacqueline Demeterio. Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: How many different shades of red did you try, and how many different cuts of the red dress did you go through until you found the one?

Jacqueline: Somewhere around 25 dresses. We started looking around, then we started to make a red dress, but we never truly loved it. And then we were two days away from shooting the scene with the red dress, and I ran around all over New York city, and I gathered up as many red dresses hat I liked. Anne and I tried them all, and we fell in love with three of them. Then, between Anne, myself and Michael, we all decided on the Versace red dress.

Costume design of “Verity” by Jacqueline Demeterio. Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: Would it be fair to say that the world of fashion has more depth and breadth around womenswear? Do you find that the world of men’s fashion is a bit more restricted, in a sense?

Jacqueline: There’s definitely some truth to that. There are interesting men’s pieces out there for sure, but you can have more play with women without there being some sort of a label on them in certain things with men. If you’re putting something a little bit more outlandish on this person, they become something else. It’s a delicate line.

Looking at Jeremy, he’s in his home in Vermont. What is he wearing? How crazy are you going to want to get? In this story he’s a father at home in Vermont. The weather is cold. But he has to have some appeal to him for Lowen to fall for him. He has to have this masculinity, which he naturally has. Josh didn’t want to be a sex symbol in the movie. He wanted to have a story behind him. He wanted to have a lot of thought in what he was wearing.

Costume design of “Verity” by Jacqueline Demeterio. Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

When he and Lowen are walking in the woods, he has knitwear and an outwear jacket on. And there was that one that I did with plaid and jeans. It still has to make sense, but you want it to look good as well. But you’re right, there isn’t as much in the menswear. And if there is, it can quickly become overstyled or overdone. It can get hard – how many navy and gray sweaters are you going to look at? There’s not a lot, but it has become more over the years. Definitely menswear has grown.

Kirill: Without too many spoilers, how many sets of clothes did you make for Lowen when she first meets Jeremy at that city intersection?

Jacqueline: We had five or six ready to go, but I’m not sure how many we ended up using. We did a blood test on that, and we knew there was going to be a lot of it. We did have quite a few coats, a few sweaters that she had underneath, the pants, the whole look. And then she changes into his white shirt, and we had multiples of those in case she got blood on the shirt with her on her neck and everything.

Versace dresses of “Verity” (left, right).

Kirill: Some people see generative AI as yet another tool to adopt, and some see it as an existential threat to human creativity. How do you see it today?

Jacqueline: I see it a little bit as both. I try not to use it very often. I try to use my own creativity. It can be useful to put in an image and ask it to turn this to another color – to quickly see what it would look like.

A lot of what I do is so personal. It’s hours and hours talking directly to the actors. I have to be there on set. A big part of their characters coming to life is because of the costumes. A lot of them find their characters in costume fittings, and I don’t think AI can do that. I’m hoping that the human touch and the human nature of it all is successful in all of that.

Nightgown costume sketches for “Verity” by Lyndsea Lamarr. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in this industry?

Jacqueline: Patience would be the first one. And another one is being able to work with a lot of different personalities. My own personality is pretty even keel throughout everything. You can be in a lot of stressful situations. I feel that people do enjoy that I don’t get nervous about things or too stressed out. People see that things are going to be handled.

It can be challenging and tough. But when you have that confidence and ease about making everybody feel like it’s going to be OK and not to worry – they respect that. It’s important for everybody. Filmmaking can be crazy, and people don’t really know all the ins and outs of it. I always say that it’s always going to work out – because it does. It always works out [laughs].

Finished nightgown costumes for “Verity”. Courtesy of Jacqueline Demeterio.

And here I want to thank Jacqueline Demeterio for sharing her time with me to talk about the art and craft of costume design, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Alex Drapac and Maddie Hilf for making this interview happen. “Verity” is playing now in movie theaters. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Aron Meinhardt during the production of “I Live Here Now”, photography by Robert MacCready.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Aron: I came to film pretty late. I grew up in rural Vermont, and the idea of making movies on any professional level was definitely not on my radar. I would make films with friends, but honestly, they were more interested in it than I was. I’d help out with their movies, and make some of my own, and do little stop motion animations, and other fun stuff.

In high school I was interested in philosophy and comparative religions, and I thought that I would go to college for that and probably have an academic career – and suddenly I lost interest in all of that. As a teenager, I was looking for personal answers, and once I found those answers for myself, it wasn’t clear to me what I was going to do. During my last year at high school they offered a filmmaking elective, and I loved it.

I read Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel Without a Crew” which made it all feel possible – compared to a lot of different directors that make it sound like they’re the only ones who can do this. His book talked about how anybody can do this, and made it so accessible. I took a year off and took some filmmaking and writing classes at the community college, and then I enrolled in a small film school in Vermont called Burlington College that doesn’t exist anymore. At that point I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write or direct or edit or what not. I knew it was creative, but I went hard learning to become technical because it’s such a technical industry. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, and I knew that I needed a bankable skill, and by being technical you can make sure people rely on you for the technical expertise.

I fell in love with camera. For me it’s the perfect marriage of creativity and technicality and art and science. I love the interaction between having these creative ideas and figuring out how to execute them in the physical world. I never looked back, and it’s camera for me.

Behind the scenes of “I Live Here Now”, photography by Robert MacCready, courtesy of Aron Meinhardt

Kirill: Jumping a little bit forward into the movie, but also staying in the more general area of cinematography, would you say that your generation is digital natives? How hard is it to fight to make a film on film?

Aron: It’s interesting, because it’s having such a resurgence, particularly among my generation. I was probably one of the last groups of filmmakers that shot film in college. Film has been phased out of most film school departments, and people don’t get exposed to it as much.

I owe a lot to digital. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have access to digital cameras. Kodak and different labs are doing a lot to support filmmakers. Panavision have been incredible allies. The people who are passionate about film are excited to teach and share and collaborate. If you know what you’re doing, it’s not that expensive. Maybe for shorter projects the ratio becomes different.

What I love about film is its capacity to unite all the departments. We’re all trying to get it on take one. Some people use the first three takes as rehearsals when they know you’re doing 10-15 takes of every shot. So film enforces a discipline that makes sets more efficient, and therefore makes them cheaper.

There are people in my generation who are intimidated by it. I don’t think they should be. And I know plenty of cinematographers in their twenties who are buying broken Bolex cameras on eBay, figuring out how to fix them, and doing incredible work. I live in Los Angeles and we have ready access to laboratories. That’s a privilege, but you can mail it. Going to film school in Vermont, we had to ship it to a lab, and that lab closed, so we had to find a different lab. It would take a week or two for you to see the footage.

I remember these moments of group terror [laughs] where you’re all sitting and watching it back. Everybody would be seeing their footage for the first time. Sometimes it was all black. Sometimes it was all white. Sometimes it was all out of focus, or there was the registration issue and the images were all over the place. And sometimes it was incredibly breathtaking and magical. That’s a good terror to feel, as it keeps us honest and humble.

Behind the scenes of “I Live Here Now”, photography by Thaïs Castralli, courtesy of Aron Meinhardt

Kirill: What are the bigger misconceptions or misunderstandings of what you do?

Aron: It can be a misconception that a cinematographer is primarily a technical position, that you’re only metering and getting exposure and figuring out lighting. Sometimes people don’t understand the amount of storytelling that is happening, and the amount of collaboration you have with the other departments. That is the most exciting thing about what I do – figure out the arc, and understand that not every shot can be the most beautiful shot in the movie, and that these things have to exist for a certain emotional and dramatic purpose, and not just an aesthetic one.

Digital cameras are so light sensitive, and sometimes it feels like we don’t even need lighting when you can crank the ISO to 128,000 and denoise it later. But lighting is not a device for exposure. It’s a storytelling device. It’s a blend of art and science. People can either fall too far on the science part or too far on the art part.

Ultimately, a lot of my job is leadership, and personality management, and trying to figure out how to effectively communicate with teams. There’s a lot of management when you’re leading three departments each with their own department head. That has been my biggest learning curve in the last eight years. I know how a camera works. I know how I like to light. I know these creative components of it. However, I’m also responsible for people. How can I manage that in an effective and ethical way?

Behind the scenes of “I Live Here Now”, photography by Thaïs Castralli, courtesy of Aron Meinhardt

Kirill: Looking from the outside in, my impression in the last few years has been that there are a lot of advances in digital lighting, with dimmable and fully programmable LED lights. Is there anything on the technical side – with lights, sensors, lenses or camera bodies – that excited you recently?

Aron: It’s funny because I still love to light with tungsten when I can. It’s beautiful. I shoot on digital, but I also shoot a lot on film. Film and tungsten are a match made in heaven – or a laboratory somewhere [laughs]. They seem to work together beautifully, and there’s no replacing that.

I do love that LED sources have gotten bigger and more powerful, and can start to replace HMI units. I don’t have any love for HMIs. Tim Kang‘s work at Aputure with their color engine has been phenomenal. It’s been exciting to see LEDs get better at color and power. When LEDs were new on the scene, they leaned a lot on the digital sensors and their sensitivity. Even on “I Live Here Now” I was asking my gaffer to get LED units to go to 100 because I wasn’t getting enough out of the smaller LED fixtures to get to the stop and stock sensitivity that I wanted to get to.

When I have a great location or great production design, I don’t like to blur that all out by shooting at a shallow stop. Not only does shooting on film require more light, and it also looks better the more light you can put on it. You can overexpose a bunch of stops, and the image looks better and better the more you overexpose. So I definitely love to have a lot of light. That has been hard with fluorescent lights, and it can be hard with LEDs. I like seeing how all of those things are scaling.

Kirill: Getting to “I Live Here Now”, I was looking at your website, and you mention that you are a part of the production company, and you are credited also as a producer on the movie. How did it all come to be? How does it feel to wear the hats of the cinematographer and the producer?

Aron: I’ve been working with Julie Pacino for a while now. We’ve shot around half a dozen shorts and music videos and other things together. I’ve been involved as a lighting designer on her photography as well.

“I Live Here Now” was a labor of love for all of us for years, because that’s how long it takes to make an independent film. It took about six years from it being a glimmer in Julie’s eye to being projected back on 35mm in Los Angeles for our friends and family. I’ve been a part of the team every step of the way with her and with this film – and that has a lot to do with that producer credit. I was involved in early drafts of the script. We’d share it around with the other creative partners and talk about everything that it could be or shouldn’t be.

I also find that, credited or not, a lot of directors of photography are essentially producers on films, especially independent films. I’m working in pre-production on another feature right now, and I’ve connected us with post-production and vendors. We found a production company that’s searching for locations and doing budgets, and I’m having early conversations about that. Anybody who is trying to make things happen in this industry – especially at the independent level – is a producer at some level, if they want any control over their career.

You can’t just sit around and wait for the phone to ring. You have to make things happen. And if you’re making things happen, you’re a producer.

Kirill: Was it clear from the beginning that you would be doing it all on film?

Aron: Julie is a brilliant photographer, and most of her work there is on film. A lot of our early creative development was centered around these dramatic studies she was taking on film. It was always a part of the film’s DNA. A huge part of my job as a cinematographer was to let those photographs be our guiding light to approaching the visuals of “I Live Here Now”.

We were quite fortunate to have producing partners that didn’t laugh us out of the room. They were very supportive towards doing that, and they kept us on course when Julie and I would get cold feet. At the time she was a first time feature director and I was a first time feature DP. This was our first feature, together or alone. I’ve done features since then, some of which came out before this movie came out.

It was scary. We had a good team around us that encouraged us to trust ourselves. That’s what you have to do all the time, but especially with a first feature. You need to push down all of the imposter syndrome and trust that you know what you’re doing. You need to trust that your point of view is important, and commit to making strong decisions. If you make something average, you might not get a chance to make another one. I don’t think safe decisions are rewarded with indie filmmaking. We always wanted to pull no punches with this film, and make something that was as unapologetically us and unapologetically true to the script and the characters as we could.

Behind the scenes of “I Live Here Now”, photography by Robert MacCready, courtesy of Aron Meinhardt

Kirill: I love neon, probably all the way back to my childhood years growing up in the ’80s. Was there any color you wanted to stay away from? How do you know how much is too much and how little is too little – for the visual style of this film?

Aron: This is something that a lot of people don’t realize about making creative choices in film. A lot of it is about subtraction. It’s the color you don’t use. It’s the lens you don’t use. It’s the thing that falls into the shadows. My colorist, Rory Gordon had this incredible line when I was interviewing her – that for her, color is about the elegant loss of information. That approach applies to a lot of decisions in filmmaking.

For the colors we avoided, there isn’t very much green in the film. Also technically, the only earth tones that exist are in Rose’s wardrobes. They are never in lighting and never in production design, which was a conversation between Julie, myself, our costume designer, Amit Gajwani, and our production designers, Lucie Brooks Butler and Hannah Rawson. We wanted to separate and alienate Rose from her surroundings, and to have that radical shift we have between the first act and the later acts.

Our first act shows a cold and monochromatic Los Angeles, and that was a deliberate choice. Los Angeles is often depicted as bright and sunny and warm. Julie and I had just moved to LA in the middle of the pandemic, and it was a lonely and alienating place. You felt gaslit by the sunshine and the palm trees. It’s supposed to make you feel happy, but I felt lonely and scared. And we wanted to build an environment where Los Angeles looked the way it felt to us.

Then, moving into the next acts, we’re flipping that on its head and exploring all of these vibrant colors – but keeping them isolated. There is the blue room, there is the orange room, but you don’t see those colors very much outside of those places. Most of the cooler colors in the film are in Lillian’s (Madeline Brewer) lighting and wardrobe.

To your question about how much is too much or too little, “I Live Here Now” takes a lot of strong, creative swings – but on set it was always about restraint. You shoot out of order and you want to do the coolest thing possible. So you look at this cool thing you did yesterday, and you want to do something as cool today – but there’s a deliberate escalation of the visual language. It was all based on Lucy Fry’s performance and Julie’s direction. Production design and costume and camera and lighting – all wanted to be lockstep with this character.

Lucy is in almost every frame of this movie, and we wanted to be basing all of our decisions around where she was at, and what her character was feeling, and what she was performing. We only earn the ending by slowly ratcheting up all of those choices as we move along. So we wanted to escalate things to a fever pitch, where they’re as wild as possible, only while still being grounded in the story. The story gets pretty untethered, so we could afford to be pretty untethered – but we needed to earn it every step of the way.

Chapter transitions of “I Live Here Now”

Kirill: One of my favorite moments is the transitions between the chapters. What went into making those transitions?

Aron: Those titles came somewhat later in the edit. We needed to find a way to ground and recenter the film, and that’s how we approached designing those chapter breaks. Of course, the prop of the book and the theme of the stories we tell ourselves and each other is a big part of the script and what we shot. So, it didn’t feel like a thing that we invented at the last minute.

I shot a lot of it in my garage with a friend of mine, a terrific DP Craig Boydston who was my key grip on the film. We shot every piece of that notebook and all of the art for about four days to give love to our production designers, and give cutting material to our editor. It was a living document for Lucy who was writing in it the whole time she was prepping the character, and using it as a prop throughout.

Julian House did our opening credits and the sequence that brings Rose into the inn. He’s a mad scientist. He’ll take photos of things, rescan them, and run his analog process to design and build these sequences. He does incredible work for opening title sequences. We wanted to work with him because it kept this analog/optical feeling to it, which was important to us. We did so much in camera, and we were sparing with VFX. We wanted VFX to be invisible, because if we had one shot that screams VFX, then the audience is going to assume all of the things that we actually did for real are also VFX.

Shooting the chapter transitions of “I Live Here Now”, courtesy of Aron Meinhardt

The film is about bodies and identity, and it was important for everything to feel organic – the sets, the performances, and the image to be captured on this organic surface to connect us to all of the themes. It’s a collaboration that becomes a soup of everyone’s contributions. You have all of these people working together, but it feels like one voice. That’s one thing Julie does phenomenally well – she empowers us as department heads and as creatives to bring our own ideas and our own processes to the film – but we’re still making Julie’s film. You look back at some of these things, especially once some time has passed, and you see this “mess” of everybody’s contributions that all percolate, and mix, and blend, and become something that is unique to Julie and her vision. And that is from all of our contributions.

Shooting the chapter transitions of “I Live Here Now”, courtesy of Aron Meinhardt

Kirill: Another thing that I loved about the film, which perhaps goes back to me spending a couple of years watching only black-and-white movies on TCM some time ago, is sculpting light through patterned slits. Going back to advances in digital lights, is it easier to play with light compared to 10-15 years ago?

Aron: The light that’s doing a lot of the cues you’re describing is from the 1960s. It’s a 2000 watt tungsten unit with a bunch of weird rotating gels. We are rotating trays of various textured tempered glass, with a palette of gels that Julie and I selected with our gaffer, Tom Nowell. A lot of this is old technology.

Julie and I love to work with lighting cues, and you can never go from 1% to 0% on LED without feeling it click off. Tungsten dimming is still the only thing that can do that. It’s where you can actually go from 0% to 100% warmly. A lot of my lighting style and the visual language that Julie and I work with together is based on these old methods. LED has brought a lot of tools and controls that are very useful, and it makes life much easier. But sometimes it’s easier to do things the way we’ve always done them.

I love technology and I’m not stuck in the past at all. If something is easier to do in a modern way, I’m pleased to do it. But there’s a warmth and beauty to some of these old methods that in a lot of ways are lost. I did a neo-noir short with Julie called “Harmony in Gold”, and I learned a lot from our gaffer, Dwight Lay, on that film about how to light with hard light. Now one of the first questions I ask a gaffer I’m interviewing is how they feel about hard light.

A lot of gaffers my age and younger are frightened by hard light, because they’ve never had to work with it. There was a period of 10-15 years where everything was a panel light or a tube light. I think that people who came up in that era lost a foundation of lighting that people have been working with for decades or almost a century. They want soft sources – which can be beautiful, but I love that LEDs are getting back to hard sources.

Kirill: What went into that ventilation shaft or tunnel when she goes between the rooms – on the technical level and artistically?

Aron: That was such a funny day. We had so many conversations about that tunnel, and Julie had such a specific vision for it. She didn’t want it to be this “Die Hard”, cold industrial vent. It’s about the character going deeper into herself, so it needed to feel fantastic. Production and I would go back and forth on how big it needed to be to get a camera in there. It was a tug of war between me not knowing what I was shooting and them not knowing how to get me something.

They had so much work to do on an independent film, and they did not have enough money or enough time to do any of the things being asked of them. Of course they did it anyway, because they’re incredible. Huge shout out to Lucie and Hannah, our production designers.

I finally saw it for the first time on the day we were meant to be shooting it, and we figured out a lot of things on the fly. It was all these reflective surfaces made out of holographic wallpaper, and we found that it was translucent enough that if we rolled it over the top, it didn’t need backing. That way we could shoot lights through it and it acted like a one-way mirror. So you could shoot light through it on one side, and it would be reflecting all of the light on the side that the camera was seeing. So we put a bunch of movers and colored gels, and blasted as much light as we could.

This is one place where I must give film a nod over digital. Without being able to test that, I think digital would have had a lot of problems with that scene with all the hard points of light, and areas of overexposure, and areas of over-saturation, and color clipping, and other things. It could have been a nightmare for a digital sensor. And I knew that on film it was going to look just as beautiful as what I’m seeing to my eye. I didn’t need to worry about all of the uncontrolled elements, because we were pointing a bunch of lights at a bunch of reflective surfaces and hoping for the best.

It didn’t have a fixed roof, and we were able to put a Steadicam in low mode and roll the roof back over the camera as we pulled back. And then our colorist had a great time with all of the saturation she had to work with, adding some chromatic aberration. It’s one of those scenes visually where we had full reign to see how far we could take it before we broke something – and I don’t think we broke anything [laughs]. I love that scene. We had projectors shooting images through the vent to foreshadow that last hallway scene with the projections. It could have been scary because it came together last minute, but it worked out. It was pretty late in the schedule, and at that point we all knew we could trust each other and trust the process to be certain that it would work out in the end.

Kirill: Generative AI is on everybody’s mind, and opinions vary from it being an existential threat to human creativity to seeing it as yet another tool to adopt and adapt to. Where do you find yourself these days on it?

Aron: I used to be shy about answering this question because I didn’t want to come off as naive. The way I see it today for filmmaking as a creative artist, I’m not afraid of it at all. I don’t believe it to be a threat because it can only do things that it’s seen before. Therefore, in terms of the end results, we will always have the upper hand because I’m always trying to do something new. I’m always trying to challenge myself. I’m always trying to do something that I haven’t seen before.

I do worry about the brain drain of people who over rely on it, not realizing what they’re missing. I was just doing a prelim shot list with the director. We sat for around 6-8 hours, and we got through the first 30 pages of the movie in our first meeting. We were considering every shot and what it means. If we do this, if we have a close up here, what does it mean that we had a similar close-up 15 minutes ago? We were being deliberate about the progression, and setting rules for ourselves, and figuring out when to break the rules.

When humans do a storyboard, we make all these small choices deliberately. But if you rely on AI to do a storyboard for you, it becomes arbitrary and derivative. You will not know what you’ve lost unless you’ve gone through the human process.

We are seeing audiences and people rejecting it. It feels cold. It feels sterile. It’s doing great things for film and shooting movies on film, because people want to know that real people stood in a field and got that shot. I love what Brady Corbet said about there being something magical about getting a shot that is physically challenging. When you take the path of greatest resistance, sometimes magical things happen. The audience feels that effort, and it feels more important for the simple fact that something was challenging.

It’s only a threat to people who are interested in doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe the ones with the most to lose are the superhero movies or other things where you are already copy pasting everything. A machine that is better at copy pasting might be a threat to those careers.

I’m for the ways that it can be used as a tool. If AI can take the weight off of the technical drudgery of filmmaking, and give people more room and more time to be creative and less time slaving away at some technical detail, that’s a good thing. But it’s not a threat to creativity. Guillermo del Toro talks about the creative process being essential to humanity. It is about the process and not the results. Giving us a result without process misunderstands the point of art entirely.

Kirill: What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out? If you could jump back in time to give advice to your younger self, what would that be?

Aron: Care about what the elders say. I feel myself giving the same advice that I got at that age – and I just rolled my eyes [laughs]. I’m saying the same things that I did hear back then and I didn’t listen to. I have to figure out another way to say them that may be more interesting.

I would say be fearless. Go out and shoot. Create something.

When you’re growing up, you idolize the older generation of filmmakers that already have their people. You know that you’re not going to be Tarantino’s DP. You’re not going to be Paul Thomas Anderson’s DP. They have their people. But when you’re young, you have a vision that you’re going to become friends with your heroes and make stuff with them. But you’re going to find all of those people by yourself, and you’re all going to be broke, and you’re all going to talk about the things you want to do, and you’re not going to have any way to do them. And you’re going to create this new generation of filmmakers – but it’s all going to be people standing around you at the film festival, or at the mixer, or at the bar, or at film school.

Invest in the people around you. Invest your time and invest your trust. Find out who you shouldn’t invest time and trust in, because there will be plenty of those. No one is waiting for you. No one is going to discover you. No one is going to figure out how to do it for you. The only way to get better and the only way to find success is to focus on the work. The more you focus on the work, the more success finds you, the more opportunities find you, the more you learn – but you need to detach the process from the result. You need to focus on the process, because the result is going to happen regardless.

I had a professor in college say that you just make things, and if they work out, you made a film, and if they don’t, it was just an exercise. I think that’s a good approach. It’ll either be a film or an exercise, and all you can do is focus on the things that you can control. That is the quality of your work, and your relationships. Nurturing those things is the most important thing that you can be doing. Anybody who’s a freelancer in this industry spends most of their time being unemployed – don’t bemoan that. Take that time, read books, watch movies, and have weird ideas.

There’s so many things that I’ve put into movies that have been things that I talk about with friends. I ask “can we do this?” and somebody says “no, that won’t work”. And then you try it anyway. And then it doesn’t work the way that you thought it would work, but it does something else that’s cool. You learn different ways of doing things, you try things out, and you fail.

Fail gloriously. Fail spectacularly. Fail in ways that nobody’s ever failed before. Fear of failure is a huge impediment to the growth of anyone. You need to find a way to get over that to grow.

Kirill: When you flip through the TV channels, what is a movie or two that always make you stop flipping and start watching them whenever they are on?

Aron: I love Sidney Lumet’s “Network”. That script is impeccable, the performances are incredible, and it’s so relevant. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is one of my favorite films. It’s so beautiful and so well told. Anything from Vittorio Storaro, starting with “Apocalypse Now”. I love “The Conformist”.

I love watching old movies. The American Cinematheque just concluded their silent film festival and I watched 1926’s “Faust” on film. There are opticals and camera tricks in that movie that I still don’t know how they did it. It’s 100 years old, and film had only been around for 10-20 years when they made that movie. It’s incredible. Something might look like double exposure, but then a character interacts with it and I have no idea how they did it. I love new movies too. I can never get enough.

That’s one thing that probably led me down this path. Before I was ever interested in film or thought I could do it, I would go to the DVD rental place with my friends, we would fill our arms with movies, and just watch movies for 10-12 hours. I love all movies. I love mediocre movies. I love looking at what they did well and what they did badly. It’s a joy to watch, to analyze, and to deconstruct. It’s easier to deconstruct a mediocre movie than a masterpiece, because you get lost in the masterpiece.

Kirill: Which film festival has the best food, inside or outside of the venue?

Aron: This is a great question. That has to be a European film festival. We had a pretty great meal at “The Witchery” in Edinburgh. But I’ll probably give it to Locarno. I love Italian food, and that festival was great. Deauville would be close second. For the US, “Beyond Fest” in LA has Figaro Bistro which is right next door to the Los Feliz 3 venue. Figaro is one of my favorite spots in Los Angeles. It’s a special place.

And here I want to thank Aron Meinhardt for sharing his time with me to talk about the art and craft of cinematography, and for sharing the supporting materials. “I Live Here Now” is streaming on Apple, Fandango and Amazon. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Kirill: We did our first interview back in February 2020, about a month before everything was shut down. How were the last six years for you?

Amy: That’s wild, an interview just before Covid. It’s been great. Covid was definitely a weird period to be in this industry and making things. After we spoke, I began prep for “Master of None” season three, working in London. When the pandemic hit, we had to stop production immediately. It was the most abrupt halt to a production. My producer called me and said that I had to get on a plane because “they might be shutting the borders down. We need to send you home.” It was heartbreaking because I’ve worked on all seasons of “Master of None” and we wanted to make this special and unique season in London.

Luckily, we were able to resume later in August. The period in between provided a lot of opportunity to connect with other production designers, to talk about the craft, and to reflect on the craft instead of jumping from one job to the next.

It definitely influenced things, and not only the way studios approach filmmaking. We have Zoom meetings nonstop, and less is in person. We have tighter timelines than we once did and often tighter budgets. A lot of travel has been involved due to tax incentives and credits. I’ve worked since then in London, in Budapest, in Taiwan, in Atlanta and in other parts of the country. I’m New York based, and New York State has a great tax incentive and lots of filming is coming here. It’s quite busy.

From the Pinboard production design moodboards of “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

From the Pinboard production design moodboards of “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: How did “Verity” start for you? How did you find your way to it, or maybe how did it find its way to you?

Amy: It started way back in 2020. I did an Apple series with Anne Hathaway called “WeCrashed”. I had an amazing experience on that, collaborating with her on her character sets and her ideas and thoughts about the narrative. She was very supportive and collaborative during that process. And then a year or two later, she had signed out to do a film called “The Idea of You” that Michael Showalter was directing. I had met him previously in another interview for a different project, but she was a producer on the film, and she recommended me to work with Michael.

Working with Michael Showalter was also an incredible collaboration. We all found our team, and the three of us did “The Idea of You” together. After that, Michael had a film called “Oh. What. Fun.” and I came on to do that as well, along with the same script supervisor, DP, still photographer, Set medic and team. Then “Verity” came up and Michael called me. I was attached to another project at the time, but knowing that Michael and Anne were both a part of this project, I couldn’t not do it. I had to figure something out.

Michael’s assistant sent me a photo of the house that they were considering, when I was still unsure of my schedule. As soon as I saw the location, that was the final straw. I couldn’t not do this movie. The house is an incredible inspiration, and the interiors are a dream. It was a no-brainer to get to work with people that I genuinely love and with people whose genius I’m inspired by.

From the 1st Dibs production design listings of “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: Before we get to that main house, can we talk about the publisher’s office? Was that an existing space?

Amy: The publisher’s office was quite difficult to find in Manhattan. Our location manager, Elizabeth Krekel pulled out all the stops, and we actually used Colleen Hoover’s real publisher, Hachette Book Group. It’s remarkable. It’s great to put that kind of realism into the film. They let us redecorate their office, take all the art off the walls and replace it with Verity book covers. It was very special to be able to film in the actual publisher’s space that made the book happen

Kirill: Going to the main family house, let’s start with the exterior. Is it an existing place? Where is it?

Amy: It is in Westchester, New York, and it had never been filmed before. Our enthusiastic and talented location manager Elizabeth Krekel went about finding the house in a rather unconventional way. She started by looking at design magazines and architecture magazines, and she came across a listing of the house. It was for sale maybe five years earlier. It had never been filmed in, and the owner wasn’t familiar with the process of it. He was understandably uneasy about renting out his space to us. But it all came together.

Exterior of the main house on “Verity”, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

The home was designed by Jens Quistgaard, who was a Danish designer known for all of the homewares that he made for Dansk in the mid-century. He’s mostly known for his sculptural elements and his home goods and things like ice buckets and pepper mills. But he designed a few homes and this is one of them. It’s called Beckoning Path, and it’s an architectural marvel. It’s perfect for a story.

It’s the house we never pictured that came to us and we were able to use. It has a haunting feel to it. It feels both monastic and maniacal with its claws reaching into the sky. It also had the narrative elements that we needed – a home on a lake, deep set in nature where some of these dark secrets can take place.

From the production design moodboards of “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: The very first thing that jumped at me when the story moved into the main house is the wooden beams and panels everywhere. What was your idea to lean so heavily onto wood?

Amy: I wanted to bring a ton of texture and dimension to the home. When Jens Quistgaard designed it, the idea was that it was a shipwrecked boat that crashed into the landscape. I wanted to honor that and I was inspired by it. The materials that were used in that home were the materials that we used to design all of our spaces and to build our stage sets on stage. We took a lot of care and detail into matching the wood tones. There was zebra wood on the floor in the home. There was hard pine on the walls, and copper detailing.

We brought the color of the stone that exists outside our house location and the color of the tile on the floors into our interiors, but we also had to make locations work so that it satisfied the story. This is a story about an author and her husband who is in real estate. So we needed bookshelves and other narrative elements. We played a lot with shape, color and nature versus humanity.

On the set of Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: What’s the story behind the chrome-plated desk in her office?

Amy: The chrome-plated desk was a really exciting find. The piece is a sculptural 1970s chrome and marble desk by Leon Rosen for Pace and it’s still available on 1stDibs because we rented it. A few months after we wrapped the film, I saw the same desk at auction and I splurged. Chrome doesn’t go anywhere in my space, but it’s such a special piece and it will find a home somehow.

We needed something bold that left a stamp on the space for Verity as a character. It had V-shapes in it and reflective chrome. We replaced the top with a pale pink leather, so it had a hardness and a softness to it. I was a little bit nervous at first but craved it for the space. It was a big, bold statement, but luckily Michael and the team were on board with it.

Pre-viz for Lowen’s bedroom on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: What about Lowen’s bedroom? What feel did you want to have there?

Amy: It’s the primary bedroom for Jeremy and Verity, but as Verity is unable to move and traverse stairs, that becomes Lowen’s bedroom while she’s staying at the Crawford home. I wanted to make it a voyeuristic, a temple to intimacy and eroticism. I wanted to make a V-shaped room with V-shaped wings, ceilings with angles that come into the space, rock formations that the home is supposedly built on. The room is all about the bed. The bed was the altar in the space, and everything else was behind a mirror, behind a closet door, or built into the space. I pulled from a lot of inspirations with that one and had so much fun with it. It was a fantasy to build, especially the rock carved bathroom.

Set drawings for Lowen’s bedroom on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: Was the kitchen there or did you want to make your own?

Amy: The kitchen was in the location. The location is used as a Tai Chi studio, so it wasn’t furnished. We brought in all the furnishings. You’ll see a lot of pieces by Jens Quistgaard on the shelves in that kitchen, because it was important to honor the origins of the home’s designer for me and my team.

Kirill: Was there any color that you wanted to stay away from in that house?

Amy: The color red is such a signature color in the film. I spoke about that frequently with the costume designer, Jackie Demeterio. The thought was that the costumes would carry and use that color, and the palette that I designed would support it.

We used a very limited amount of red, which is symbolic in many ways. We would take Verity’s red sweater and some of her red dresses to the space, and compare it with wall colors and fabric choices to make sure that when the costume and actor stepped into the space, it was all in beautiful harmony.

Construction process for Lowen’s bedroom on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Construction process for Lowen’s bedroom on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: Do you want people to go and see it on the biggest screen possible in the movie theater?

Amy: Of course! I came onto the project knowing that there was going to be a theatrical release. As a lover of the craft and a cinephile, there’s such a magic to being in a theater and being fully immersed. There’s so many distractions in the world. A lot of times that’s factored into the design of a TV show or a movie – assuming people will also be on their phones. You have these incredibly beautiful faces on screen along with the cinematography of Jim Frohna, the costumes and some killer design environments. You have to get the full theater experience.

Kirill: Going back to those early Covid days, I was quite pessimistic about the future of the exhibition business. For the first year it wasn’t even clear that movie theaters as a business would survive. I’m very glad that they are back.

Amy: Yes, and people are going to the theater again. They are selling out. Genres like the erotic thriller are getting to see the screen. It’s hopeful. There’s a lot of fear about AI in our business taking over. But it’s reassuring to know that people want to be around one another while they’re watching these stories.

The bathroom set on Lowen’s bedroom on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: That’s a nice bridge to my next question, which is how you feel about generative AI today.

Amy: There’s definitely a fear that audiences and studios will heavily rely on it. I’m hopeful. I have an 11 year old, and anytime he sees something that’s AI generated, he immediately frowns and complains about it.

AI is at the point right now where it is so very realistic, but it’s still missing human emotion and the human touch. You can feel that, and people want to feel things. They want texture. They want real acting. They want things that are not perfect to show up on screen. So I’m hopeful that the crafts will valued. But also, if it takes over, I’m hoping I get to be one of the ones to give it the prompts.

It can be used as a tool, and as much as there’s the existential threat, there’s the thought that this will become a tool for most people. So why not embrace it and try to make it work. Luckily a lot of studios right now ban it. You won’t see artwork or graphics created by it. You still have talented people making art. But it’s around the corner and I think we’re all uneasy about it.

On the set of Verity’s bedroom on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in this industry?

Amy: It’s an incredibly beautiful and an incredibly difficult industry to be in. It takes you away from your family. The hours are horrifically long. The schedules are really tight. There’s so much stress on every project. Every project is a marathon. There are no easy projects. We’re artists, so we bring a lot of passion to this, but it’s also a business and we’re making a product for profit, so there’s some conflicting motives in between.

I’m so lucky that I get to do what I do. I get to travel the world. I get to see spaces that most people don’t get to see. I get to create things out of scratch and build worlds. I’m incredibly grateful to be a production designer. There’s times though where it is quite exhausting. It is not great when it comes to having time with friends and family.

The key to making it work is to have a support system around you that supports the art and loves the projects we do. I have an incredibly supportive partner. I make sure that my son is a part of the process. He knows and understands what mom does at work. He comes to the set and the office often and raids the craft service, gives feedback about designs and trims graphics. Finding the work balance in that way is key for me. A lot of people – and especially women – have to choose whether or not they stay in the industry, or whether they have children, because a lot of time is spent away from home. I want both. I love both deeply. It is important to make the work-life balancing act work. I’m hoping the industry slowly gets there with reasonable hours and respect for life outside of the industry. Well, I hope it quickly gets there, but things take time.

On the set of Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

On the set of Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Kirill: Out of all your travel for work, what was your favorite food or dish of all time?

Amy: There’s so many. I would say that it was on the second season of “Master of None.” We filmed in Modena, Italy. As soon as my plane landed, Aziz took us into this charming basement restaurant. I can’t even remember what it’s called, but it had a couple nonnas cooking in the back.

I was so tired and jetlagged. All I wanted to do was to put my head on a pillow. The great thing about working with Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang is that they’re foodies, and so we eat really well. Aziz passed a dish to me called gnoccho fritto, which is this fried dough with cured meat on top. It was incredible. It’s something that exists in Emilia-Romagna region. We had many great dishes, but to start off the project with that bite was so special and set the tone for our time there. I also had some seriously good food in Taiwan when I got to do “Tigertail”. That was also a feast.

Pre-viz for Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Set drawings for Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Set decoration items for Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

Moodboard for Lowen in Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

On the set of Verity’s office on “Verity”, courtesy of Amy Williams and Amazon MGM Studios.

And here I want to thank Amy Williams for sharing her time with me to talk about the art and craft of production design, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Alex Drapac and Maddie Hilf for making this interview happen. “Verity” is opening in movie theaters this week. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Nick: I was always quite good at art from a young age. Later on I went to an all-boys high school, and while I did fine there, their art department was pretty terrible. I ended up switching to a different high school, and their art department was great. They had an option to take it as two subjects, which was a rare occurrence for local high schools.

That was a memorable year for me, and from there I decided to do either fine arts or a design school. I chose an industrial design school, and in some ways I looked at that with a bit of regret. It’s such a luxury to be able to do pure art and indulge in that. For some reason, there was a slightly more cautious side of me that advised that I should go down a path of something that may lead to a career, rather than just a freelance artist. About 2.5 years into the 4 year program I decided it wasn’t for me. While I liked it overall, I just wasn’t learning much. I felt a need to go and do something practical.

One of the part time tutors at the school was designing furniture, making jewelry and other bespoke things. He was a trained jeweler, but not a trained furniture designer, and that triggered my imagination that there is a world where you can just go out and do this thing. I worked with him for a while and learned about jewelry, welding, metal casting and other practical things. Along the way there was a small opportunity to make props. That was my first introduction to the world of TV commercials, and from there through word of mouth I discovered the existence of the film industry.

I always wanted to do my own design and my own products. I might have had lofty ideas of being like Philippe Starck, some superstar designer [laughs]. Everyone at design school thinks they’re going to be the next big thing, and that’s kind of mad to think when you have so much global competition.

I probably had a few opportunities where I could get into the film industry. One was through TV commercials, and the other was where I’ve met people who are making props in the old fashioned way. They make fake giant ice creams and closeups of pouring fake chocolate for beautiful Cadbury ads. It’s really detailed work and they were working at such a precision level.

And then this one weekend I was up at my family home, and this red Ford Mustang pulled up outside my mum’s house. I look outside, and I see a camera crew, and they were making an episode of the TV show called “High Tide”. People were wearing Hawaiian shirts, as that episode was supposed to be set in Hawaii. That moment was a trigger for me, as it looked so fun. My partner at the time, who is my wife now, had been offered a running job on that show, and while she turned it down, she asked me if I wanted to take it. That was it, and I thank her for it.

It gave me the very bottom rung as an art department runner – with the potential that you could see that you could move all the way up to doing production design. The head people in that art department were trained architects, and that was so interesting. I could see a path where it wasn’t going to be a dead end.

I then worked my way all the way through, and I’ve been doing this now for 30+ years. I went from running to set dressing to standby working on the floor of the set. And then back into the art department, after earning my way back through – and always doing design projects on my own on the side. That was all in New Zealand. The industry was quite new there. There’s always been a film and TV industry, but it was very small, and you had these American projects coming in. Everyone was putting on American accents for these superstar actors [laughs]. It was a major trigger to your imagination to work on a detective show set in California or Hawaii or some other place that wasn’t local.

It took about 8 years for me to find my way to the film industry. I was 17 when I went to design school, about 21 when I first heard about this industry, and 25 when I realized that it was a career that you could stick with. There’s no straight path in the film industry. It’s one of those jobs with no promises or guarantees.

On the sets of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: As you look at these 30 years that you’ve been doing this, you’ve probably seen quite a few changes in and around the art department. What would you say are the bigger changes?

Nick: When I was starting out, everything was hand drawn, and now it’s all in 3D computer programs. On some of the smaller shows back then it was just sketches and no working drawings [laughs]. The scale of every movie is different, but the basic practice now is a lot more. We’re having to document what we do a lot more and sell the concept, so we can share it with other departments.

The best time you’ll ever have is when you start in the film industry because you don’t know anything. When you know more, it gets harder, because now you realize what you didn’t know. I imagine there’s very few people who feel like experts in our industry, because there’s so much to learn all the time and no two projects are the same. You’re always learning, and you’re always feeling like there’s more to learn.

We have a better understanding of the importance of color, of how the costume works with the backdrop, and how all departments interlace. I often work on horror shows, and you have so many departments that have to mesh together. It’s a really big responsibility to communicate clearly and to leave a documented trail of what we’ve decided to do to prevent surprises on the day. Our industry in New Zealand has seen a massive change since back then. We learned from overseas crews that were coming in, and now in New Zealand you see a much more professional department that takes it seriously.

It’s a competitive industry, and one that has matured quite a bit. A lot of people want to be in it. A lot of countries are competing for work. So everyone needs to be really good at what they’re doing. You can’t relax in it too much.

Technology is coming in more and more, but it’s always been there. Everyone has always been progressing. I started back in the days of film, and then digital started coming in, and we were learning how digital cameras are different from film cameras. They were much cleaner, and they were picking up detail that we wouldn’t have noticed before. That was a long time ago now, but it’s just another example of how you’re constantly training your brain to cope with technology changes.

Now we’re in a much faster tracked prep period. Our pre-production period is very quick now. It’s not enough to be good at it. You also have to be fast and efficient, and do work with fewer people. There’s nothing stable about it. It keeps evolving. I like to embrace technology as much as possible. One thing I do is I stay with the basics. I try not to jump ahead of myself. Technology can quickly get you something that looks finished and resolved, all the while you still have to go through the creative stages.

On the sets of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: What are the bigger misconceptions or misunderstandings about what production design is?

Nick: In a way, it’s quite easy to explain production design. But then you have multiple departments on bigger projects with visual effects, special effects and in-camera work that are creating worlds, and it’s possibly easy to think that the production designer is responsible for all of that. But of course there are high ranking and experienced people within each department that we integrate with – extending to costume, make-up and others.

The best description of my job is that we build a robust world. If we’re doing a fantasy, I present as many images that will help tell a story and give all the other departments everything they need to do their job. It’s almost an endless task, but at no point do you take credit for all of the hard work, because everyone is contributing their part. I happen to be the head of the department that starts earliest, and then people come into it, and it keeps building.

If you’re outside the industry, none of it might make any sense to you. When I say I’m a production designer and I explain what goes into it, people ask me to explain it again and again. If I say that I’m responsible for designing the set, they ask why don’t you just film in real places [laughs]. It takes a long time to explain that 90% of what we’re seeing on camera is created and painted, even if it’s a small piece of it.

This job is about leadership and motivation. You’re pushing your own department as far as you can with the resources you have to give as much information and answer as many questions for other people starting. I love it when other people grab hold of things and run as well and we’re all working together. When you get the script, we’re trying to push this locomotive to get it moving. We’re trying to get ideas and build sets and design everything. And once it starts moving, you have to try and outrun this thing – because the momentum of a film with its schedule is a powerful thing.

Another part of the production design job which is not spoken about as much is that we’re involved with very early decisions. Are we going to rent soundstages? Are we going to shoot on location? What are we going to build? What is this going to cost? What countries are we going to film? You go with your gut instinct so often, and these decisions then inform the budget of the whole project. It’s an exciting moment when you read a script and see a problem that you have to crack. Some things are not as easy to solve as others. The logistics of it is like a jigsaw puzzle that we’re solving together.

What can we cram into these sound stages? How can we turn them around and how are we going to work with the producers to give them what they need before all the other crews start? It’s a hidden part of the job, and people may not understand how mechanical a lot of it is at the beginning. You break them down methodically, and in some ways these become the interesting challenges.

Kirill: Getting to “Insidious”, how did it find its way to you, or maybe how did you find your way to it?

Nick: “Insidious” was a Blumhouse project, and they do a lot of joint projects with Atomic Monster. I was working on Lee Cronin’s “The Mummy” in Dublin, which is another Atomic Monster production. Dave Garbett was the cinematographer on it, and we’ve worked together a lot in the past. His name came up for “Insidious”, and then my name came up in the mix as well.

I had a Zoom call with the director. You read the script, you put some ideas together – not necessarily visuals, but more of your thoughts on what we can talk about during the call. Jacob Chase the director has seen some of my earlier work, and we had a common love of the same projects. So I ended up wrapping one movie in Dublin, then home for a week, and then to Melbourne to make “Insidious”.

On the sets of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: I’m not sure how it is in the rest of the world, New Zealand included, but it feels that Americans love horror movies – going back decades all the way not just to the ’70s, but to early black-and-white ’30s. How do you explain this phenomenon of the evergreen obsession with the horror genre?

Nick: For me it’s quite simple. The closest thing to it is a rollercoaster ride or going to a theme park. If you want to have a night out and have a lot of laughs, you go to a horror movie. Horror and comedy are quite closely interwoven, and they evoke similar emotions. If you want to experience something intense for a short period of time, horror is a really good way to do it.

I find that horror fans are quite forgiving of bad horror, if you will. They like the genre and they’ll go anyway. People go to horror movies with their mates. People go to horror movies on a date. Many people take horror seriously, but for the average person it’s just a laugh. They’re normally often absurd. It’s something crazy and ridiculous – but you can watch it, laugh at it, cry at it, or jump at it, or whatever. You experience this emotional range, and then hop off that rollercoaster ride, and still have time for dinner.

It appeals to people who want a short blast of excitement, and other movies don’t promise that. Superhero movies can deliver it in ways, but that often involves a lot more buy-in or a more extreme world building. Horror can boil down to something very simple. “Insidious” has this simple idea of this gateway to the Further. You can get into the groove of it quite quickly. And it’s usually moving at a good pace.

You’re on this theme park ride. You hop on this ride with your friends, you have this journey, and you can talk about it afterwards. It’s generally not overly complicated, and you can all get it. It’s a lot of fun for filmmakers. We know what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make a fun ride.

Kirill: This is the sixth installment in the “Insidious” franchise. Do you feel that there’s a certain expectation from the audience in how this world is “supposed” to look like?

Nick: This franchise is quite carefully guarded. Jacob came up with a new idea for it, but you have James Wan, Leigh Whannell and Jason Blum all involved, and everybody is aware of the fan base for the project. There is a version where we could have taken the story and changed everything. There is a bit of a time gap from the last one, but you don’t want to suddenly start so fresh that people are confused about what that franchise is.

There’s an expectation to change and develop and progress, but we certainly didn’t want to take for granted the fact that it has a big fan base. Jacob knows all these movies intimately. He knew every detail of the previous films. At that point, I have a lot of trust in the director, because they have been involved in many conversations before I started.

We wanted this one to be a bit of fun to see all these characters from previous movies come back, to celebrate the franchise a little bit, and then to bring a new idea to it – but not bring so many ideas that it felt like a different franchise. You have a spectrum of fans, and I’ve seen this through my involvement in the “Evil Dead” movies and TV shows. Some fans love the humor in it, and some fans hate it. You’ll never please everyone.

Jacob wrote a great script for “Insidious”, and everyone loved the idea. We tried to make the best movie we could make, and honor the previous films, and not have it feel totally disconnected. We are aware that we’re introducing new characters, and it’s a challenge. We had 10 weeks for pre-production, and a lot of things were happening quickly.

On the set of the pillow fort tunnels of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: The main character Gemma spends her time between the cluttered house and open, spacious dental clinic. How did you approach thinking about these two spaces?

Nick: I gather as many references at the beginning of the movie as possible. Then I lay the movie out on a board in its chronological order and look for moments. Color is one moment. Space is another moment. As you’re saying, one moment can be claustrophobic, and then the next can be more open or sparse. The dentist office is the extremely opposite to her family home which was damp, dark, and depressing in some ways. One version of that family house is quite warm, if you turn all the lights on. But we saw it as dim and heavy, and the opposite to the clean and clinical world of her workplace.

And then we’re bringing in the Further concept, so we wanted spaces that can open up and be something else that she falls into. Some of those decisions are 100% creative as a look, and others have practical ramifications that you have to consider.

When she came back to turn her childhood home into a family home for her and her daughter, we didn’t want to completely remodel it and lose some of the character we had earlier. It was a more realistic renovation – a lot of paint rather than knocking walls down. We tried to do it in a way that we felt was believable. You’re creating your own backstory. You read the script, and there’s a scene here and a scene here – but there’s not a lot of description of what happened in the middle. What happened in the 20 years that we don’t have in our movie?

Our job as an art department is to build that backstory. We’re always talking about these moments that will help us get to what that look is in creating our own story. It’s a lot of fun. You’re essentially writing your own script to fill in the blanks and checking it with the director. We’re trying to put ourselves in that situation as designers. What would be the history of it? What part of America are they in? What’s the climate like? What’s the school like? What can we add to build more of a backstory?

You may not see it on screen in detail every time. One interesting thing with horror is that the camera is always moving past things, and you never know where that camera’s going to land. A shot might be designed in a certain way, and then suddenly it’s revolving around some random part of the set, and it’s going to be huge on screen. I want to detail everything correctly. I’m obsessed about every little corner of the set.

There’s a common saying in the industry that people don’t notice these details, and if they do, you’ve lost them as the viewer. But I believe that the details are the key to it. You may not scrutinize the details, but you will be aware of it. You’re aware of the architectural things that are wrong. You might not spot it straight away, but there’ll be something about it that won’t ring true. It’ll nag your subconscious.

When an actor walks into a set, and they open the drawer. and it’s full of school reports or whatever is the right thing – or it’s the dentist’s office, and they pull out the drawer, and it’s full of dental gear – that’s a grounding moment for the actor. It’s the exact opposite of standing in front of a blue screen and talking about what our hope is. Everything they’re touching helps them play the role they’re playing, and I take that seriously. I give that detail everything I can. I believe it makes a big difference.

On the sets of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: What was your thinking about the tattoo parlor? What design elements did you want to see there?

Nick: A typical tattoo parlor you would walk by on the street now is a clinical space. They are quite like a barbershop or a dental clinic. I was talking about it with Jacob, and we decided that it would be better to go for a different look. We didn’t want it to be too clinical and too clean. Our movie takes place in Pittsburgh, and I researched some local areas, and we found an old industrial building with a cool exterior. It was also an opportunity to break out of the suburban world that we were in.

For the mirror sequence, we built the wall with the mirror in it, and then cut a hole that matched that removable mirror. Then we duplicated the set in reverse, and we did it in camera for the most part. That took a lot of rehearsing. You’re trying to move quickly and build these sets, and they’re waiting for you to start the rehearsals. The pillow fort was another example of giving the crew a lot of time to get their head around how they’re going to film it. You stop your art department work for a moment, and you let the camera team and the director and the actors figure out what they’re going to do. Then we come back and address the changes that they require.

For the tattoo parlor we wanted a hit of color and a feeling of looseness to its aesthetic, before we’re returning to that suburban setting. Sometimes you want to have more fun. You pick an angle and that’s what we did on that one.

Kirill: The Further is the last big place in this story. How do you know how much is too much, or how little is too little? How do you strike that balance?

Nick: Five movies have been made, and this concept of the Further has been around for a while. Jacob was leading the way on that. One of the things that we talked about early on was about not trying to reinvent that yet. There’s a lot of room to play with that, but we felt in this movie it was good to keep it familiar to people.

One thing that we added was in the bathroom where you pull out and withdraw the camera into this Further space, and we came up with this idea of a textured black. We pulled the walls off the set, extended the walls out, and painted black marks all the way down the walls that had a texture to them. You start to fade it into the wallpaper as an in-camera transition into complete darkness.

Overall, we didn’t want to veer too far off track. We didn’t want it to feel like a different movie. It was carefully considered. There’s a world where you could investigate that more, and I suspect that will happen. But as you’re introducing new characters and new places, it was wise to hold on to a few of the elements from the previous films.

On the sets of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: Why should people go to the movie theater to watch this production on the biggest screen they can get?

Nick: It’s not my department, but the sound quality of a cinema isn’t something that an average viewer is going to get at home. It’s a much more immersive experience. I saw “Insidious” a few weeks back when it came out, and you see so much visual richness in it, and that is all intended. People watch movies on their cell phones and on airplanes, and that’s about the worst version of watching a movie that you can imagine [laughs]. The cinema is a superior experience.

The other part of it is to go to a theater and hear people react to it. That reaction is what I remember going to the cinema as a kid – and all through my life. It’s infectious. If someone laughs, it will trigger other people to laugh. If someone screams, it will trigger others. Horror is great for that. If you’re in a full cinema and it’s a good horror movie, it’s a moving energy. This is something that people are discovering again. I do believe we’re going through a new version of people falling in love with cinema again. A full cinema is an amazing experience that has such a huge buzz. It’s creating so much energy.

On the set of the pillow fort tunnels of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Nick Bassett and Sony Pictures.

Kirill: How do you see generative AI today?

Nick: It’s very present. Even if we’re not using it, it’s talked about all the time. I see those conversations continuing for a long time.

As every creative tool, it’s occasionally quite useful. I’m definitely having a play with using it as a creative device. It is allowing me to get my ideas in order in quite a good way. I don’t see it as something that would give me a brilliant idea, but rather something that is a tool for visual enhancements.

We know all of the perils of it, and it’s almost like a cautionary thing we go into. That said, it’s not replacing anyone. I need set designers. I need builders. I welcome their opinions. My use for AI right now is to get my ideas across. If I want to apply different colors to the 3D set drawing, I could spend a long time doing that in Photoshop, or I can ask the AI to do a quick pass for the colors. It’s a useful tool that speeds my process, and things are speeding up already in the art department as I mentioned earlier.

I am slightly fearful of this aspect. I worry that it’s going to put everyone under much more time pressure. Ultimately, it might not be good for us to arrive so quickly at things that look finished. It might feel like great success to present these amazing things, but it can’t come at the expense of skipping steps and not fully figuring out what works and why it works. I really do like to go back to basics and allow my brain to think about it. But I’m always looking for tools to help me speed up my visual communication – so I’m right on the fence with it.

My kids are in creative fields and I worry for them. The current language around AI is so negative. As a young creative person it’s feeling very threatening, and I worry about that. I was lucky that I got to start at the bottom of an industry. I’ve been able to work as a creative person my whole life, and I’ve been able to do it in a slow-paced, methodical way. And now the expectation is that you can be an expert much quicker. I worry that we’re going to speed up and we’re not going to enjoy the learning.

I sit right on the fence with it. I see it as a useful tool now. I see it as a cautionary tale. What I hope is that anyone who’s interested in design or quality will keep learning to question things. Travel as much as you can. See as much as you can. Talk to people as much as you can. Learn and train your brain to see what reality is. It’s an interesting time. We’ve been through interesting times before, and this feels a little more unpredictable.

The final still of the pillow fort tunnels of “Insidious: Out Of The Further”, courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients or maybe the secrets to longevity in your field?

Nick: It needs to click for you that you’re there to tell a story. I don’t think everyone clicks to that straight away. You’re really there to bring this story to life. Once that clicks, it hooks you in and you realize there’s nothing as much fun as that. You’re privileged to be able to do it.

And then you have to figure out a way to survive the ups and downs of the career path and the financial side of it. If you really enjoy and see the potential in that, that does motivate you to have longevity in the industry.

Having done movies and TV shows seen by a lot of people, you wouldn’t want to listen to the critical audience too much [laughs]. You’re on your own journey. I’m trying to learn as much as I can as I go on each job. What have I learned on this one? How can I bring that to the next one? How can I teach or encourage people to do good work?

It’s a rewarding industry. If you think you’re going to be famous and make a lot of money, it’s definitely not the right fit. It can happen, but it happens to very few [laughs]. Those who love storytelling are hooked for life.

Kirill: If you’re randomly switching TV channels, what would be a movie or two that always grab your attention and make you stop flipping?

Nick: When I’m just trying to relax, I’ll always go to comedy movies. Watching high concept superhero movies is too much for me. I work in the industry and I know how hard they are to make. So I go to things that are quite basic. My wife always laughs. She’ll put on a movie and I’ll fall asleep if it’s too much action. But if it’s two people talking and it’s a good drama movie, I can hook into it. The simpler, the better.

I am drawn to ’80s comedies. That’s my default if I want to relax. I don’t watch all the horrors that come out. I work on them, and I don’t watch them, funnily enough. If someone says watch it as a good reference, I’ll dive into it.

I love a Larry David sketch or Seinfeld. That’s me through and through. You look at the set behind them, and it’s the most basic set you could ever imagine. But it’s so clever in my mind because I’m listening to what these people are saying.

Kirill: Of all your professional travel for work in the last couple of years, what was your favorite dish or cuisine?

Nick: Good Japanese is my default. Melbourne has incredible food throughout the whole city. I wish I remembered the name of this great Japanese restaurant down this little alleyway. It was a street vendor and it was the best. It’s great to go to such a place with somebody who you know well, who you work with a lot, who you travel with a lot. You find a good restaurant, and you can chat about your day and also eat this great food. Anyone who’s traveling to Melbourne will be absolutely spoiled for food.

And here I want to thank Nick Bassett for sharing his time with me to talk about the art and craft of production design, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Alix Becq-Weinstein for making this interview happen. “Insidious: Out Of The Further” is playing in movie theaters now. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and what drew you into the world of art department and production design.

Jacinta: I am a film production designer. The production designer is responsible for everything that is on the screen that you see during a film, except for costumes and the actors.

I was drawn into this world step by step. When I was twelve, I wanted to be a performer on stage, whether it be with music or acting. Together with my sisters I went to audition for a stage play called “The King and I”. The set designer, Lindy Whistler, was a qualified architect. I was always interested in drawing buildings, and I thought that if I want to turn up to auditions, I could also study architecture to become a set designer and have a couple of options.

When I turned seventeen, I went to the Queensland University of Technology. In my final year there, I found myself being drawn more to film than theatre. My final year thesis was on set design for film and television, because there is such a crossover between architecture and set design. Many of the principles are the same. Most of the set designers for theatre were architects, because often the backdrops were of a city or a street. That’s how I got drawn into it.

After I finished the course, I started sending my CV out to production designers, art directors and studios. Then I was lucky enough to land a job at the movie studios in Queensland. I also wrote to the production designer Henry Bumstead in the ’90s, asking if I could do some work for him. I joined his art department in the States to work as an intern on a film called “The Stars Fell on Henrietta”, and I was totally hooked by then. That was in the early ’90s, and I haven’t stopped since.

Conceptual art (top) and final still (bottom) of ladders and platform on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: Looking at these 30 years in the industry, what are the bigger changes in how these stories are made from the perspective of the art department?

Jacinta: From the perspective of production design, the principles of designing have not changed. It’s more about the process of creating artwork and drawings to be built, and the way of conveying that to everyone who needs to know what it’s going to look like – be it the director, the cinematographer, or anybody else.

Back in high school I had a subject called geometrical drawing and perspective. We used T-squares, set squares, lead pencils, and erasers. Then, when I was studying for my university degree, I started working in an architectural firm, and they were using AutoCAD. My experience using AutoCAD has been enjoyable, but I’m very glad to have had the lead pencil background.

Going back to film production design, sets were drawn and drafted using pencil and T-square. When I was on “The Stars Fell on Henrietta”, Mr. Bumstead was there with his T-square lead pencils and drawing board. So that’s one change – going from lead pencil drawings to computer drawing, and the 3D aspect of it as well.

The second one is how research has changed with the digital age of the Internet. When I was starting, a production designer would turn up with tubs full of books to bring into the art department. I still do that now. I’ve got some books, and I’ll put post-it notes on and tag pages and add that to the reference packages. But most people do research online.

Design schematics and construction details of ladders and platform on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: Getting to “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, how did it start for you? How did it find its way to you, or maybe how did you find your way to it?

Jacinta: In 2023 I was introduced to the directors, Peter and Michael Spierig. I worked with them on a project which didn’t end up being made. But because we had met on that one, the following year they contacted me to work on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”. It came up quite quickly, and I was only too happy to have the opportunity to work with them on a film that went ahead. I like to travel, so going to Thailand was a great adventure.

Kirill: Starting with the very first set that we see in the movie, which is the house where Shiloh’s sister Jax lives. How did you approach creating that environment?

Jacinta: For economical reasons, if you find a location, that is a good start because it’s already existing. In Thailand, there was a movie house which had been used for another series. It was a two-story interior and exterior, and I would say that the actors did most of the work there to make you believe it’s happening in the USA. You believe they were in the USA because of who they are. We dressed it with pizza boxes, some furniture pieces, and some artwork on the wall. It was quite dimly lit in the background, and that created a morning atmosphere. We didn’t see that much of it. There were scripted items like the table in the kitchen where they’re sitting at, and the lounge room as well.

Building the High Spirits tourist bar on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: Then they move to the tourist camp when they get to Thailand. Was that something that existed or was that something that you built?

Jacinta: We built that from scratch. Jax and Luce appear when they walk through some jungle-ish environment, and they hear music, and then they see this bar for tourists who want to climb Mount Kwan. It didn’t exist. We built that from scratch on a plot of land near a lake within a national park. It was the perfect setting.

One of the design elements was to make use of that lake and have 360-degree views around. Then you have a locker space for them to get their harnesses. And then you have the lodge that you see them in, and we built that in another area of the park. I’m sure the locations team were looking for an isolated bar, but you wouldn’t find something that would be suitable for these backpackers and tourists with the flexibility to shoot it in day and night with a film crew. That’s how we ended up building the set to get the shots that we wanted.

Kirill: When they get to the set of the fictitious Mount Kwan, where was that shot, what existed there, and what did you add?

Jacinta: Peter and Michael wanted the height for the planks because we wanted to look up to them in their perilous positions. You can only go so high before it becomes quite time-consuming to shoot. So we set planks at a maximum of about six meters off the ground, because the camera cranes could only reach so far. That was the best way to achieve those shots.

What existed in the first place was a quarry about 2.5 hours drive from Bangkok. We had a rock climbing expert assess the quarry walls for safety and strength. Originally we thought that we may have to put planks up not into the wall, but actually support them from the ground with scaffolding – and then we’d have to have VFX erase those supports digitally. But thankfully, after the testing it was found that we would drill into those rock faces safely and place the planks on the brackets that we put in.

Conceptual art (top) and final still (bottom) of Devil’s Elbow on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: Without too many spoilers beyond the movie trailer, the story spends a lot of time in the Devil’s Elbow. What was the setup you envisioned for building the structure there and how much work went into it?

Jacinta: The vision was to have the two climbers stranded at an extreme height. And we wanted the camera to shoot it in a way that places the audiences directly into that experience through immersive filmmaking.

The script called for it to have a huge, breathtaking view the first time they see it. We needed to have them at that height and at that sharp angle, and that feature didn’t exist at the quarry. That’s why we built it. There’s so much other action there that demanded a set build as well. You see it in the trailers when they’re hanging with their arms from those rungs, or they’re stepping and standing on them.

It was built using scaffolding and polystyrene in that initial sharp arrowhead shape. It was built in a workshop in a flat area of ground where they had room, and then it was transported to site and assembled using a crane.

Design schematics of Devil’s Elbow on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: The last big piece is the sky bridge closer to the end of the movie. How much of it is real, and how much is the visual effects or set extensions?

Jacinta: The length of the bridge, the rock face that they start in to get to that bridge, and the platform at the end – they were all real. As Michael and Peter were determined to use the natural light and landscape of that area in Thailand, it was built at that same quarry with the sun setting on that side. It was engineered as well. It had to be safe for three actors to walk across – plus camera crew, makeup, stunts – all on that platform.

We had several versions of that bridge. At one point it was a rigid timber bridge to be in keeping with the planks. We were looking at so many bridges that are high up around the world. And then one of the things Michael said was that it could be a tight rope. I looked at steel wire cables together with planks to have it consistent with that world. That was a different kind of plank. It was one that would move and sway. It was broken down and dilapidated. And, again, we were pushing that fear and making it feel that you wouldn’t step on it.

Building process of Devil’s Elbow on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: Do you want people to go and see it on the biggest screen possible? Do you want people to go and see it in the movie theater?

Jacinta: I would love the audience to go and see “Fall 2: Deadpoint” in the movie theater. The experience is worlds apart from watching it on TV at home. It’ll be a more immersive experience, and the sound will really place you there as well. The scenery in Thailand deserves the big screen. I hope the audience enjoys having their buttons pushed.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in your field?

Jacinta: The key to longevity in this field is that you have to really enjoy it. I don’t know if it’s talent, skill, or a willingness to be involved. But you really must want to be working on films to have that longevity.

Before and after the completed construction of Devil’s Elbow on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Kirill: What was your favorite dish or food that you had in Thailand while you were working on this movie?

Jacinta: I’m from Australia, and Thai cuisine has a lot of spicy food. There were a couple of occasions I would line up to the food that they had, and then the person in control of the food would say “Oh, put this spicy dish away, have that plain rice over there” [laughs]. I’m going to say it was vegetarian Thai fried rice.

Constructed set (top) and final still (bottom) of walking planks on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Constructed set (top) and final still (bottom) of the bridge to peak of Mount Kwan on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

Building process of the aircraft cabin on “Fall 2: Deadpoint”, courtesy of Jacinta Leong.

And here I’d to thank Jacinta Leong for sharing her time with me to talk about the art and craft of production design, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Jackson Vickery for making this interview happen. “Fall 2: Deadpoint” is playing in theaters now. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Then we have Holly’s room. I always loved the floral Marimekko wallpapers that you see in old references and magazines from the late ’70s to early ’80s. It was so exciting to use it there, as it ended up being my dream bedroom that I never had as a kid. It also is such a hard contrast with what happens in that bedroom. You see this happy bright colorful room, and then all of a sudden a monster is coming through the ceiling and trying to steal her. It’s that fun “Stranger Things” contrast.

And now it’s my absolute delight to share more of what went into decorating that bedroom, with many thanks to Jess for sharing additional imagery.

We start with the moodboards, bringing together images, colors, textures and design to inform the overall tone and style of the bedroom:

Moodboards for Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

Moodboards for Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

Moodboards for Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

Moodboards for Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

Moodboards for Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

Moodboards for Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

We continue to the photos of the decorated set:

On the set of Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

On the set of Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

On the set of Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

On the set of Holly’s bedroom in “Stranger Things”, courtesy of Jess Royal.

And then to the final stills in the show:

And here, again, I want to thank Jess Royal for sharing these materials. All seasons of “Stranger Things” are streaming on Netflix. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Jeanie: I started out as an actress, very briefly, in New York. Then I was a reader for auditions, and it opened me up to the other side of the industry and casting. I found that quite fascinating, and still creative to this day. That was my start in casting in New York where I worked primarily in theater. Later on my husband and I moved out here to Los Angeles, and made my way mostly in television. That’s been the main focus of my casting career.

Kirill: What are the bigger misunderstandings or misconceptions about the role of the casting director, and what goes into it?

Jeanie: People don’t quite understand what we’re doing behind the scenes. So much of it is about personal taste, and what you respond to in an actor and in their work. The wonderful thing about it is it’s subjective. What I might respond to in an actor, someone else might not, and vice versa. I try to tell young actors to always keep that in mind. Whatever feedback you’re getting is coming from one person’s experience or perception.

Taste is a key point. People don’t realize that there’s a collaborative aspect of it. We are there at the very beginning, often before maybe even a director is on. We’re trying to take the writer’s vision and bring it to life. But part of our job is to try to expand whatever that idea may be. When they were writing it, they may have thought a specific way. But what’s so fun and maybe not as understood about what we do is that we then try to take that and stretch it as much as we can while still serving the piece and the character. You can’t become arbitrary and have it at the detriment of the story you’re telling.

Then, you’re working behind the scenes to set actors up to succeed as best possible. Sometimes that means finding a piece of film on them that other people may not have seen that can help a director or writer to see their work in a different light.

It’s so collaborative, and you’re there from the beginning. One way to see it is that you give birth to the project, and then it’s up to the rest of the creative team to go from there.

(L to R) Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller, Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin, Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin in episode 202 of Beef. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Did it feel that the recognition of your craft at the Oscars was overdue?

Jeanie: Certainly, as every other part of the creative process has been recognized up to this point. It was way overdue and very exciting. I don’t quite understand what took so long, but I’m so glad we’re there.

Kirill: What are the bigger differences between the feature film world and the episodic productions, and why do you mostly stay in the episodic world?

Jeanie: When I first started in television, there wasn’t as much streaming and cable. It was pretty much all network TV. As streaming and cable came into being. and there started to be the crossover of feature people – directors and writers and actors – into television and back and forth, the differences starting getting smaller.

The biggest difference is we have to work much faster in television than in feature films, because the schedule is so different. Once you get into casting a series, you have anywhere from eight to ten days to cast an episode, whereas in feature films you generally have months of preparation.
Another thing about casting in television is that since you don’t have that much time, you need to know that actors are going to be able to deliver in the moment. And yet another one is that no matter if you’re casting for a long term series or for a limited one, it can be eight or ten or twelve hours of screen time. You need to find actors that people are going to invest in and want to watch over a period of time. On a feature film you’re holding a much bigger screen, but for a relatively shorter period of time.

You’re looking at a longer period of time when you are casting for a series. You have a deeper development of the character in a series. A feature film may cover a large period of time or a shorter period of time, but in television, more often than not, where your character starts and where it ends can be very different. You need to know that the actor can carry all of those beats and story points over multiple episodes and/or seasons.

(L to R) Seoyeon Jang as Eunice, Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller in episode 203 of Beef. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Getting to “Beef”, how did it start for you?

Jeanie: Sonny [Lee Sun Jin, the creator of the show] reached out to me and wanted to know if I would be interested in talking about Season Two – to which I said “Yes, of course, I’m there. Just tell me where to show up” [laughs]. We had an initial meeting and hit it off from the beginning. We started talking about his ideas for the story for Season Two in that meeting.

Kirill: What drew you in the most on this show?

Jeanie: The tone on the show is so interesting. You have these heightened situations while still remaining grounded, real, and relatable. The challenge of walking that line for me is so interesting. He had also talked about the emotional depth that the characters were going to need to do this Season Two, and that was interesting to me as well.

Kirill: How much time did you spend on the show?

Jeanie: Several months between before they started filming through to when they finished filming.

Kirill: Who were your primary collaborators on it?

Jeanie: Sonny for sure was who I worked with most closely. I also worked with my partners over at A24 and Netflix, but in terms of exploration of the characters and the day-to-day collaboration, it was with Sonny.

(L to R) William Fichtner as Troy, Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin, Benny Blanco as self, Baron Davis as self in episode 202 of Beef.  Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: How do you usually start this? Do you start with the primary characters and then go for the supporting cast?

Jeanie: In this case, yes. We started with our regulars, and then built out from there with the larger roles.

When I started on it, we didn’t have all the scripts. A lot of it was conversations with Sonny as he was thinking about these characters and where they might go. That’s where the collaboration is also so wonderful. He has maybe an idea of a character, and then as I’m suggesting actors or as we talk about it, it may move in a slightly different direction. Or an actor may make him think of the character in a different way than he had originally thought. Or I may suggest an actor to him, and he will say that while it works for this particular part of the story, this is where I’m thinking about going with it, and I’m not sure that that actor serves that purpose. There’s so much give and take. It’s a trust that starts to build between us where both of us can push each other to think a little more outside the box.

Kirill: What are your thoughts on typecasting? How difficult is it for everybody involved to not fall into that trap?

Jeanie: It goes back again to the trust element. When you have people you’re working with that you trust and they trust you, that allows you to think outside the box and turn an expectation of a role on its head. You can cast somebody who comes with a certain preconceived idea, and you then take the audience in that direction with that actor cast in a stereotypical way – and then you turn it in a way that the audience doesn’t expect.

Sometimes casting to type that way can be good if you want to set people up on an expectation and then pull the rug out from underneath them. And sometimes you may see the actor in this stereotypical way, but you’ve also seen them do other things. I started in theater, and that’s a big part of it for me. I saw actors do so many different things. I came up watching people who trained and studied their craft. They know how to play drama, they know how to play comedy, they can do heightened, they can do naturalistic. From that basis, I try to look at actors as a whole and not as a stereotype of what they may be best known for.

It’s so hard for actors. If you’re lucky enough to land on a TV series that runs for a long time, you become known as that character. It’s great because you’ve made a living, but then you have to spend the rest of your career convincing people that you can do other things. We’re moving so quickly, and I have to remind myself that it’s too easy to say that a certain actor is not right because you think of them a certain way. Part of your job as a casting director is to try to know people’s body of work as broadly as possible, and not just the way most people know them. Part of our job is to go the extra mile and look at actors’ work that may not be as well known.

(L to R) Song Kang-ho as Dr. Kim, Youn Yuh-jung as Chairwoman Park in episode 203 of Beef. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Going back to the show and the South Korean part of it, is it becoming easier in this global world to keep track of the international talent and find the right people?

Jeanie: For sure. You can get on a Zoom call with an actor in another part of the world. Or you can have them make a tape and have it arrive in your email box 10 minutes later. It’s completely changed it. It’s opened up the world immensely. There’s also a tremendous amount of international television and films now available, and that has completely changed the game as well.

Kirill: You worked on “Ally McBeal” in the late ’90s, and that was absolutely my favorite show back then. Do you feel that it’s easier, if you will, to get the big name actors to do episodic productions these days compared to how it was back then?

Jeanie: Absolutely, and that is also tied to the writers and the directors who have been attracted to television. Actors are looking for good stories and good characters to play.

Going back to what I said before, if you’re a feature actor, the idea of being able to explore a character over ten hours of episodic versus two hours of a film can be exciting. If you’re working with cable or streaming, and you’re doing 10-12 episodes, you then have the whole other half of your year to do a film. When it was back in the network TV broadcast world, you were doing 22 episodes a season, and it didn’t leave much time to do anything else.

(L to R) Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller, Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin in episode 202 of Beef. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Do you want to have exceptional actors as individuals or an exceptional cast?

Jeanie: To me it’s the whole which is so important. I understand a studio and a network’s desire to have recognized names in significant roles. There’s so much product out there and you’re trying to get eyeballs to your show. So there is that desire to have somebody who can get on a talk show or somebody who has a following already.

But to me, if they don’t fit in the world and they don’t work together with the rest of the cast, it doesn’t matter how famous they may be. It has to work. People have to come back to the show. They might come to the show initially because of some name recognition of a famous actor in it. But you need them to come back, and keep watching. That’s why to me, it’s about the ensemble as a whole and not just that particular actor.

Kirill: Maybe, and correct me if I’m wrong, there’s also less appetite from the studios to bet on a completely unknown cast and give that new show a couple of years to find its legs. Maybe now it’s more about hitting it straight out the gate.

Jeanie: It depends on how big the show is. If it’s an extremely expensive show to make, there’s more pressure to have known entities in it. But there’s so many successful shows that did not have known actors before they were in the show. It really depends upon the project itself and the platform. There are places that are willing to take more chances than perhaps some others. I do think it mostly depends on the size of the show. And I actually think there is more openness than there used to be.

Kirill: Going back to “Beef” for my last question on the show. You start working on it so early in its development, and then it goes to shooting, and then to editing, and then the network decides when to air it. And then you sit down and watch it. How does it feel to go back to that story after all these long months that you’ve been away from it, so to speak?

Jeanie: It’s great. I have to watch it a couple times. The first time I might be looking at the actors that we took a chance on and I’m a little anxious as to how they did. Then the second time, I’m really in it.

Sometimes there’s a role that took a long time to cast, and you read the same scene over and over and over during the auditions, and then you finally see it, and it’s a little bit triggering. I remember the process the first time I’m watching [laughs]. It’s always exciting to see it all come together. I’m there from the very beginning. Then you have production design, costume design, makeup, props and editing bringing the rest of the piece together.

(L to R) Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller, Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin in episode 206 of Beef. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Some people see generative AI as an existential threat to creativity, and some see it as yet another tool to adopt and adapt and to add to their arsenal. Where do you find yourself these days?

Jeanie: I would say the former. Going back to what I was saying earlier about what casting is. It’s about personal taste. It’s about being able to see something in an actor’s audition performance. It might not be exactly right, but you see something there, and you work with it.

If we lose our humanity, especially in casting, we’re really lost. So much of it is about being able to work with an actor and to see something in there, even if they didn’t fully land it, and helping them to find it. There’s so much vulnerability that is required from an actor. The further removed we come to be from that process, the more we’re going to lose in the storytelling and our ability as an audience to connect and to see ourselves in those characters and in those performances.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in your industry?

Jeanie: From an acting perspective, it’s about training and understanding that it’s a craft, and not just about being discovered on TikTok or having a certain look.

You need adaptability, humanity, and compassion for the people you’re working with. You need respect for the people you’re working with. You need a collaborative spirit. And you need just the right amount of ego to fight for what you feel strongly about. And you also need to understand that you’re part of a whole, and that sometimes maybe you’re not seeing the whole picture. Sometimes you’re digging in your heels for your own ego or whatever it might be – and not hearing what the director or the writer is saying isn’t working from your perspective.

You need to work well with others, and walk the right line of personal investment and passion without letting it be absolutely everything in your life. You need to have a balance in your life.

Kirill: Is there a piece of advice you would want to give to your younger self if you could jump back in time to the late ’90s?

Jeanie: Trust the process. Trust the journey. Stay true to your beliefs, and what’s important to you and your creative soul. Trust that eventually you’ll find the people who understand that and see that. And enjoy the ride.

Kirill: Out of all the travels you had for work over your career so far, what was the place that had the best food?

Jeanie: I had some amazing meals in Chicago working on “The Bear”. There were a couple different restaurants there that I only would have known about from working on the show and introductions that were made from people working on the show. That made the meals all the more special.

(L to R) Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller, Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin in episode 208 of Beef. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix.

And here I want to thank Jeanie Bacharach for sharing her time with me to talk about the art and craft of casting. I also want to thank Kristy Chan for making this interview happen. “Beef” is streaming on Netflix. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Olga Mill on the sets of “Beef”.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Olga: I knew I wanted to do what I do today pretty early on. My family moved to New York from the Ukraine when I was five. They would take us to the theater all the time, and I also went into community theater acting programs. Later on I went to a performing arts high school in New York. The acting part of it didn’t resonate with me, but I did like the parts about making your own sets and costumes.

I remember walking home from school one day and thinking that I could be a costume designer. The more I thought about it, the more it looked like it would let me out of some of the acting stuff that didn’t resonate, and also that it appealed to a nerdier research part of myself. It also felt more practical in a way. That’s when my path started, back in high school.

It took a long time to feel confident enough to want to be in the designer role. In the film industry, if your family’s not in it, it can feel so out of reach. So at first I was thinking that I would be happy if I could just work in a costume shop. And then I wanted to be an assistant. And only when I went to graduate school at NYU that I felt ready to go for the head of department role.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: What are the misconceptions or misunderstandings about what costume design is?

Olga: The first one is that a lot of people assume that I know how to sew. It’s really important to understand the construction and design because I’m talking to tailors. But left to my own devices, it’s a skill that I don’t have. I respect it a lot, but I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it myself.

The second misconception is putting costume design in with fashion. Fashion is its own lane that I have so much respect for, but that’s not where the meat of my knowledge is. As a costume designer, you are driven by the script and the characters and not the aesthetics of fashion. I don’t mean to downplay fashion, but these are two independent avenues that often get intertwined. They are different skill sets.

Kirill: Getting to “Beef”, how did you find your way to it, or perhaps how did it find its way to you?

Olga: I feel that we met each other halfway. I was a big fan of season one, and I had worked with the production designer Grace Yun several times in the past. I got the script for the second season through my agent, and I don’t know if it was through Grace or through my past work with A24.

I met Sonny [Lee Sun Jin, the creator of the show] for a coffee, and he laid out his thoughts for season two. It’s an anthology series, and it was interesting for me because you can start from scratch with new characters. I put together some visuals and sent him, and then we went from there.

Costume sketches for “Beef”, courtesy of Olga Mill and Netflix. Left to right – Ashley, Austin, Ashley.

Kirill: What is the most interesting part of this season for you?

Olga: I’m 41 years old, and I’m a part of the millennial generation. It feels that my generation is culturally at the part of the curve where enough time has passed from your twenties and certain trends when you can look back and start to see the things that were popular in a more objective way. You need a little bit of distance, maybe 10-15 years [laughs] to be able to reflect on it.

The show deals so much with how generations are interacting with each other, and it was the chance to look at millennial culture in an anthropological way for the first time. I didn’t do that before, and it was quite humbling at times.

Costume sketches for “Beef”, courtesy of Olga Mill and Netflix. Left to right – Joshua, Chairwoman Park, Lindsay.

Kirill: There’s generational divide, cultural divide, class divide and others in the show. How did you approach this? How wide of a canvas did it give you to explore in your department?

Olga: Even though it takes place in the modern day, I do modern day projects the same way as if I’m doing a period film. It’s a different part of society for me. I didn’t grow up going to country clubs, so that was new.

We spent a lot of time at the Montecito Country Club. We spent time in Ojai. Bailey Gardner who was the assistant costume designer and I, together with Grace and Kellie Jo Tinney the set decorator would go to both those towns, have lunch and look around. The other place where I do a lot of research is Instagram. It’s amazing. You think about the characters of Josh and Lindsay and Ashley and Austin – they would be posting stuff online. So I spent a lot of time trying to find real accounts that I thought had elements that spoke to the characters. Sonny, Grace, James Laxton the cinematographer and I would send them back and forth to each other.

It was trying to find real people who lived in Ojai or who were in Montecito. It’s a costume designer’s dream. They post their outfit of the day. They post the brands where they shop. I’m researching it like I’m researching the 1500s in England., to get a sense of where these people shop, and what’s important to them.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: How did you approach the differences in culture, traditions and environment for the South Korean characters?

Olga: Our window into Korea is very specifically through the lens of Chairwoman Park, who is not just Korean, but super ultra-wealthy Korea. There’s the scene where she comes in and looks at the room that Lindsay designed at the country club. Grace did such a beautiful job with that room. It’s not garish, but it’s not quite a room that amazes you. It doesn’t make you want to be in that space.

Everything about the Korean aesthetic that we were trying to represent was in opposition of what the style of that room is. It is more modern. It is more sleek. The term “quiet luxury” is overplayed, but it is there. Lindsay’s design is stuff on stuff on stuff. And the Korean aesthetic here is simpler and more refined.

Originally we looked at examples of real Korean ultra-wealthy women in that age group, and it’s a cashmere world. We did veer from that with Chairwoman Park, giving her the leather jacket. She represents modernity, but there’s elements that are unexpected to her as well. I wouldn’t say that she is the typical Korean woman of that age. There is a certain worldliness to her. But overall, just in opposition to Lindsay’s aesthetic, that was a good guiding light.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: One of the parts of the storyline that I liked was how the four main characters try to blend in in an environment that is a completely different tax bracket, an environment that has a completely different set of financial means. Joshua and Lindsay want to be seen as almost equals, but they’re not quite there with the money. And the young couple has their own aspirations, especially Ashley.

Olga: The term “hyper assimiliation” came up quite frequently. It is almost like an immigrant experience, but through class instead of countries. Take Josh for example. The way I thought of him and talked to Oscar Isaac about him is how he walks through the club. He’s clocking how people are dressed. He has to be really aware of it, and then constantly trying to mimic it – again for his own ego – to feel like he’s an equal at the club.

But I also think it’s in service to the members too. This is what I noticed in the spaces of these country clubs. Part of what the members are paying for is to feel like they’re not interacting with employees. There’s something about interacting with somebody who you know is paid to be there that doesn’t feel as good. What feels really good is when you’re interacting with somebody who you don’t feel that class divide. They know your name. They know what you like to drink. Ultimately, it’s because you don’t want to feel guilty for having more than somebody else. So it’s important for Josh to look like the club members because it feels better for everybody.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: As these main characters move up and down the class hierarchy, if you will, throughout the show’s storyline, what changes did you want to make in their costumes?

Olga: I thought about it more like mirroring each other. When Ashley becomes jealous of Eunice, she starts to dress like her. Her shirts become a little bit more silky. She starts to mimic her professional style. Then when they go to Korea and she’s with Lindsay, she’s in that dress that they’re in at the clinic which is trying to mimic this Montecito prairie aesthetic. And then at the very end when she takes over Josh’s position, she’s in a green suit the way that Josh started the show in. The way I was thinking about it was who are you trying to reflect – or whose skin do you want to put on – and not up and down.

When we first meet Austin, he’s a trainer, but we intentionally made him not wear any athletic fabrics. Everything is cotton, sun washed, and casual. And then, as he starts moving up in the club, he starts wearing moisture wicking official workout fabric.

At any given moment in the season, it was about who you are reflecting and whose life you want.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Is there such a thing as your favorite character in this season to work with?

Olga: On a TV show the picture is so much bigger, and you have so much more space with these characters. So they all come in and out of favor, so to speak.

I thought Chairwoman Park was a very interesting character to design. Sometimes characters surprise me. You think this is what they’re going to look like. You do the research, you talk about it with the director, you make the boards, you show the pictures. And it’s not until you’re in a room with somebody until you realize that it’s something different. Her character was the one that I found the most surprising where we landed. In retrospect, it has a softer place in my heart because the process was the most unexpected.

Costume sketches for “Beef”, courtesy of Olga Mill and Netflix.

Kirill: Was there a color that you wanted to particularly emphasize, and was there a color that you didn’t want to use at all?

Olga: Not for the whole show. We did have an intentional map or color theory between Grace, James and I, which was thinking about each couple as a different season.

Color-wise, Lindsay and Josh are very autumnal. It’s purples, oranges, greens, brown, thinking of their relationship is like autumn. Things are drying up and kind of dying. In contrast, Ashley and Austin are spring. It’s all pastels and a spring palette. And then Chairwoman Park is winter. It’s icy grays and light blues. And then the club was an endless summer. That’s where the greens and yellows come in. That was a really helpful way to work to have this color plan that you’re all standing under. Then when you’re making tiny decisions – like what sock should Ashley be in – it comes to which sock feels the most like spring. You give yourself a little map for when you get lost.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: How do you see AI generative AI today?

Olga: If I’m being really honest, I feel that I don’t know enough about it to have a dogmatic point of view on it. Like with most things in history and in life, it’s not so much what the tool is – it’s what the intention behind it is. Anything can be used productively and anything can be used destructively. I hope it makes most of people’s lives more comfortable, but I don’t know if that’s the case.

It’s easier for me to understand how it makes me personally feel. It is the first time that I feel a sense of aging. You feel that it’s almost a glacier that’s moving and turning – in a zoomed out way of time and technology. I do remember the time before we had the Internet, but I was also young enough that it felt like second nature for it to be around. It wasn’t a concept I had to wrap my mind around. And this feels like the first innovation that makes me feel old, because it feels like something that’s moving. It’s something that I’m not standing on, you know?

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in this field?

Olga: It’s being a person that people want to be in a room and have a conversation with, whether that’s the director, the actors, or the producer who’s talking to you about the budget. It’s being somebody who people want to figure out problems with. Nothing is going to go as planned on any project you’re going to make. There’s going to be problems. It’s like a marriage. Who do you want to sit across the table with and figure out a problem with?

Another part of it is a real privilege, which is having the financial flexibility to be able to pick and choose which projects you want to do. It’s a recurring theme for people that are able to do it for a long time. If you can keep your overhead life expenses smaller so that you don’t have to take every project that comes up, that you can be intentional about which projects you want to take, that is super valuable as a designer.

Kirill: What was your favorite dish that you had while working on the show in South Korea?

Olga: There was this little dumpling shop right next to our office in Seoul, run by an older Korean lady making dumpling soup. It only had a few things on the menu, nothing fancy. Our first day at the office our translator took me there, and that was my favorite spot. It was delicious.

Costume design of “Beef” by Olga Mill. Courtesy of Netflix.

And here I want to thank Olga Mill for sharing her time with me to talk about the art and craft of costume design, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Marilyn Lintel for making this interview happen. “Beef” is streaming on Netflix. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Jess: I’m Jess Royal. I’m a set decorator and I did all five seasons of “Stranger Things”. My background is in law. I went to law school and practiced criminal defense. I had some faith going into it that some people are wrongly accused or overcharged, but in my case, our clients were very much guilty [laughs]. The thought of doing that for the rest of my life was quite daunting, and I felt an urge to do something creative.

I didn’t know what that was going to be right away. I found my way into film based on watching background interviews of production designers and set decorators who did period sets on movies and TV shows. I love history, and that was the best possible merge of both worlds. Fortunately, I met a production designer on an elevator, and I would not let go until I got what I wanted, and here I am now.

Kirill: What are the misconceptions or maybe misunderstandings about your role?

Jess: My mom still calls me a set designer, because that’s what the words make sense in her brain, even though a set designer is more of a draftsman who draws up the plans. Perhaps people draw a connection to interior designers that do a full design. People hear set decoration, and think about curtains or sofas or the frilly little details at the end.

The best thing about my job is doing junkyards and huge equipment. It’s doing a landscape that I can build from scratch – exteriors and interiors. It can be drapery, but it’s also every stack of newspaper or a collection of tchotchkes. You can build a backstory of where someone’s been in their life, what they’ve collected, what’s important to them.

I feel like “decoration” is the wrong word. It’s designing a whole world and a whole backstory for a character or a town, using objects, exterior and interior.

Left to right – production designer Chris Trujillo, set decorator Jess Royal, and art director Sean Brennan on the Mayor Cline’s bedroom set of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: What would be the bigger change that happened in your part of the world, comparing today vs when you were starting out?

Jess: Before, we didn’t have the option to fix things in post with VFX. You had to think about everything – something like covering a transformer on a telephone pole half a mile down the road that someone would see that’s not period. Now we make a note for VFX. Sometimes it’s handy, but I also miss thinking about everything in 360. On “Stranger Things” we started with Schindler boxes to do playback on older TVs to prevent flicker on camera, and now everyone is using green screens to put it in post. It’s mostly about technology and VFX.

Kirill: Getting to “Stranger Things”, how did it start for you, and what stood out in those early days?

Jess: I worked with the production designer Chris Trujillo for a few years before the show on smaller indie movies, and we kept saying that one day we’re going to get a show or a movie that everyone’s going to watch, and we’ll really have made it in the world.

I was in Los Angeles on a vacation, about to get on a plane, and he texted that he was sending a script with a good potential for me to read and to see what I think. Originally it was called “Montauk” and that’s where we were supposed to shoot it. I read the script on the plane, and I thought that it could be so amazing. One thing led to another, and we were scouting in Wilmington for Montauk, and eventually they said that maybe we can look in Atlanta and change the setting of the show. No matter what though, I felt that it had great potential.

It felt very small at the beginning. Netflix was hesitant to give us money to do everything we wanted to do, but then it came out, and it was amazing. It felt that our lives changed, as everyone watched it within 48 hours. It was cool to grow up in those early months of the first season or two.

Jess Royal on the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: Was it that immediate for you after the first season dropped?

Jess: The release premiere in LA was somewhere outside of West Hollywood. I remember we were sitting on folding chairs, and how small it still felt. But it caught on so fast. I went straight from LA to a wedding in Massachusetts, and by the time I got to Massachusetts a day or two later, my brother had watched it, my mom had watched it, people at the wedding had watched it. Everyone was talking about it, or at least the people I was surrounded with, whether they were watching it for my sake or not. It felt like it was blowing up right away.

I’d already started scouting for “Ozark” at that time. My original film job was the location scout and then I became a decorator, so on some of those earlier shows I would scout and then I’d start prepping decorating. “Ozark” was fun to scout for and I was excited about doing it, and then at some point a few weeks in “Stranger Things” was immediately picked up for season two. So I had to leave “Ozark” a little bit early. I was bummed about that, but I think I made the right choice to stick with “Stranger Things” and what we had built. Merchandise and various experiences came later, but everyone hearing about the show was pretty immediate.

On the sets of the Byers’ living room of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: Looking back at these 10 years and the entire story arc, why did people connect so much with this show?

Jess: It’s a multi-generational show. One of my best friends is about the age of Jonathan in the show, and he was a photographer in high school and later went to college at Pratt for photography. People his age identify with all the music of the era. They were kids in high school right at that same time. He immediately loved it, and I ended up using his photography as Jonathan’s background photography in the dark room and bedroom.

People his age who now have kids who are around the younger kids’ age in the show can watch it together as family. It transcends generations. It also lends itself well to having a pop culture – the music, the D&D aspect for all the nerds out there who love it. This game has been going strong since the ’80s, and there’s so many generations that can enjoy that aspect. You cheer for these kids and it doesn’t matter how old you are. You want to see them beat the dark forces and stay friends. Watching them grow up has been a delightful thing for a lot of people who have grown up with these kids as the show has gone on.

On the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: Looking at all the seasons, as it kept on expanding to the mall and the Russian subterranean base, and going to Lithuania for the Russian prison, and so much in the Upside Down – how was it to see the increased scope of your work, and how did you approach it?

Jess: It’s not just “Stranger Things”, but also film in general. There’s been a little bit of a turn in the industry, and we felt it on season five. Studios are pulling back a little bit as far as some of the money they’d spent on productions.

I would have told you that there’s no way that we could do season three for less money or with less people than we have now. But as that constrained slowly, we did season five with a little bit less resources, at least for our department. You grow with what you have. You are challenged, and you know how to do that the next time. It comes with experience. I don’t know if I could have gotten that much experience out of 10 years of doing anything else. “Stranger Things” kept on ramping up every season, and the expectations got higher and higher.

Season three was probably the hardest that we did. We built the entire mall from the ground up. Everything was dressed. All the stores had everything in them. And at the same time I’m planning the carnival. It was a multi-million dollar expenditure to get all the rides, to get all the original incandescent lighting and other things. And then season four got even bigger because we’re on different continents. If anything, season five spends a lot of time in the Upside Down, so there’s less things to do for set decoration. You take it as it comes, and if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.

Set decoration of “Stranger Things” by Jess Royal, courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: How disruptive was Covid for your department?

Jess: Everyone shut down, so it was less disruptive than the writer’s strike was for season five. We still had some people working and building, but set decoration was out of the loop for a while. We came back to all these sets that were built, and a lot of decisions had to be made really fast to get them dressed so we could start shooting right away.

I was working from home, keeping in touch with some friends in Russia who supplied us with computers and some other things. They were still shipping technology back to the US that I was gathering. That way, when we got back in from Covid, I was ready to hit the ground running. We started going back to Lithuania to scout. When everyone stops at the same time, it doesn’t feel as oppressive. The biggest problem there was just the kids looked so much older after we came back [laughs].

Jess Royal’s dog on the set of Holly’s room on “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: What are your personal highlights of the fifth season of the show?

Jess: I think the production designer and art director and I all agree that the radio station was one of our crowning achievements for the whole show. It brought in so many elements. We built the exterior fully around the Palmetta area in Georgia, and the residents that were driving by were not able to figure out what it was. You have all the neon lights, and the start of the tower right there on site. There was so much research around how everything should look like – the transmitter, the copper lines for certain spaces, etc.

It was based on a real radio station in North Carolina that the Duffers grew up nearby that they were always inspired by. Chris had found it in his research on radio stations, so it synced once they saw that in his lookbook. We copied pretty much the whole layout of that station. We ended up going up there, and picking up some of their dead equipment and elements that they had at the actual radio station, and bringing it back to Atlanta. Then we made it fit within the world of “Stranger Things”, adding a livable hangout space with all the records. It was so much fun for me to select all those bumper stickers on the walls.

Then we have Holly’s room. I always loved the floral Marimekko wallpapers that you see in old references and magazines from the late ’70s to early ’80s. It was so exciting to use it there, as it ended up being my dream bedroom that I never had as a kid. It also is such a hard contrast with what happens in that bedroom. You see this happy bright colorful room, and then all of a sudden a monster is coming through the ceiling and trying to steal her. It’s that fun “Stranger Things” contrast.

Derek’s bedroom at the Turnbow house was a lot of fun. He’s like my spoiled little brother growing up, and everything I was jealous of, he had it. It was a little bit of a take on Francis from “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”. Everything that happens in that house is so “Stranger Things”, with the kids all setting traps and doing their beats to catch the Demogorgon. I like the cultural life layer more than I do the pure sci-fi stuff, because it’s given me more to do.

Set decoration of “Stranger Things” by Jess Royal, courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Where do you find this big grandfather clock that we see in the Upside Down?

Jess: I had a lot of options from eBay and different auctions. We needed some of the elements to be replicated, so we couldn’t have anything so unique and crazy that it would be too hard or time consuming to copy it. Once I found that one clock, that was it. It was traditional enough, but also big and imposing. I shared that with the Duffers and Chris, and they all loved it. I wish I had a more interesting story [laughs], but it was one of those you know it when you see it moments. I think it was in Michigan, and we bought it off eBay on auction, and had it transported down to Atlanta.

We were all careful with it on set. We would put it into a tree or a coffin, and we didn’t want anything to break. We had a few variations of it where they built it just in case, but it held together pretty well.

On the sets of “Stranger Things” with the grandfather clock. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: As they go into the Upside Down, they see the mirror “images” of their houses, the school and other places. How did you approach decorating these “other world” houses?

Jess: On most seasons it came up later. Going into it, I didn’t necessarily have a plan to replicate everything.

I found Eddie’s trailer in Florida, and had it shipped up. Then we found that it had asbestos in it, and we had to take all the asbestos out. I decorated it with this whole collection of trucker hats, and a whole collection of coffee mugs, and other stuff that was all over the trailer. It was almost a small house that we were creating. Then, after we had already started shooting, we found out that they were going to have to go in the Upside Down in his trailer.

It was a little bit forgiving, because the tentacles and the vines can help cover if there’s something I cannot find as an exact replica or a duplicate. It’s also flexible because the Upside Down was created at a moment in time in 1983. While certain things have changed in the real world over the years, you can go back to that original – what it would have been in 1983 in the Upside Down. By the time season five came around, I was already planning for everything to be seen in the Upside Down, trying to find at least two if not more of everything.

We didn’t even see the Wheeler house in the Upside Down until at least season three or maybe season four. A lot of that stuff ended up being covered with vines or painted over. Then the next season I had to try and clean it up when we saw the house back again in the Rightside Up. It was a trial and error process.

Set decoration of “Stranger Things” by Jess Royal, courtesy of Netflix.

Kirill: Are you by now used to walking away from these sets and spaces that you’ve decorated, spaces that have lived in your head for a full decade?

Jess: I think I handled it better than a lot of people. There are some people in other departments who came on just for season five. I saw some of them crying on the last night we were filming, and I was a little more bittersweet.

I’ve been planning for it for a long time. Originally, we were only going to do three seasons. When we were first setting up for season one, the Duffers said if people actually watch this, then we have a three season arc we’re thinking of. We’ll know what it is, and there’s an end point, and we can plan for that then. And as it got bigger and bigger, there was the push to have more content, so they expanded some storylines and we ended up going five seasons.

But mentally I’d always been prepared for three seasons. So by the time we got to season five, I was ready to move on and do other things. I would do anything with the Duffers always. They’re the best. But at least for this storyline and these characters, I felt like we watched them grow up and I liked the ending. I was OK with letting it go.

Design sketches for the “Scoops Ahoy” ice cream parlor on “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: Did you get to keep any piece to yourself for your personal collection?

Jess: Not anything that anybody would notice or care about. I kept a set of glasses from the Wheeler house. I have a firm “one in, one out” rule in my house. Working as a set decorator and being tempted to keep so much, I have to purge something else if I’m going to bring something into my house. There’s so much that people wanted, so I just let them have their pick, and I kept those glasses for myself.

On the sets of the Starcourt Mall of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: How do you see the world of generative AI today in your industry?

Jess: It’s a hot topic. Last summer I worked on the movie “Artificial” about Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Ilya Sutskever who is one of the people who created OpenAI. I downloaded ChatGPT for that movie, because I felt that I should try and figure out how people were using it and what it was all about. But honestly, I deleted it after that movie and I have turned off every aspect of AI that you can on your phone, be it in search results or email summaries.

As far as technology goes, I’m old school. For a long time I thought that the Internet was just a trend and that it was going to go away eventually [laughs]. Obviously I was wrong on that. I still read books and I don’t like to read anything digitally. Of all people you would ask that question to, I’m hoping if there ever is a dark age again and technology falls by the wayside, I’ll be poised to do really well. I know how to use card catalogs and libraries and microfiche and all the old analog technology.

There are already actors and actresses that are being created by AI that people are embracing as real people, and it’s troubling. But there is a spot for a real physical person coming up with these concepts as a production designer or as a decorator in a lot of these productions – at least for now, until AI is so good that they can think our thoughts better than we can. As of right now, I feel like AI gets it wrong a lot of times, so there’s still definitely a need for human beings and creativity in that sense.

On the sets of the Soviet prison of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in this field?

Jess: It’s very important to start from the bottom and do it the hard way, and I believe in doing it the hard way. You can start as a PA and learn your craft watching other people do it well. I was a location scout, but I started even below that as a locations PA. I was cleaning out porta potties and honey wagons. And that was after finishing law school and practicing law, so I had to humble myself, take a step backwards, and watch other people do their jobs well. It also advised what I wanted to do specifically in the industry and how to do it well.

There was a period of time here in Atlanta when they were making so many movies and there was a need to have more crew in the union. People were saying that I don’t even have to start at the bottom. I can join the union now and start working. I think that was a missed opportunity for people to start and learn the industry from the ground up. A lot of the people I know who have left the industry now are people who went in too fast, did their thing for a couple years, and now they’ve had to go back to working in some other places.

Take your time. Be a small person observing for a while before you think yourself having made it in film.

On the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

Kirill: What was your favorite dish that you had while you were working on “Stranger Things” in Lithuania?

Jess: The best place that we ate in Lithuania was a Mexican restaurant that was owned by a mixed couple – the wife was from Mexico City and then husband was from Vilnius in Lithuania. They opened this little adobe casa place right downtown near our hotel, and it was some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had.

On the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

On the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

On the sets of “Stranger Things”. Courtesy of Jess Royal and Netflix.

And here I want to thank Jess Royal for sharing her time with me to talk about the art and craft of set decoration, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Meghan Johnson for making this interview happen. All seasons of “Stranger Things” are streaming on Netflix. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.

Charlie Cole on the set of “Cruel Hands”.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Charlie: My name is Charlie Cole, and I’m a cinematographer. I started out as a fine artist, I was in love with charcoal drawing, and went to undergrad in Brooklyn at Pratt Institute. And then I realized that to be a fine artist, at least what worked for me, you’re isolating yourself in the world so much. I started falling in love with the idea of working with collaborators and being inspired by other people’s art forms, which led me to picking up a camera and seeing how that fit – and I just fell in love with that.

I did freelance director / cinematographer work for a couple years, experimental poetic narrative type things, and then I applied to this grad school in LA called American Film Institute for cinematography. That’s when I started taking it more seriously as far as a craft and a career. Before it was much more of a passion and something that I felt very in tune to – but now it’s full throttle, making my job, making my life fully cinematography.

Kirill: Would you call yourself a digital native? Did you catch the tail end of the film as the medium?

Charlie: I love that term digital native, that’s really fun. I was at the transitional period where film was still very much alive, but not being taught so much. I got my hands on it a little bit, but only enough to see how beautiful it was. It was never directly accessible to me easily.

Even today, if I ever want to shoot with film, it’s quite a challenge with production to get film going. I get maybe a year to shoot a project on film. Usually it’s a short or a commercial. I love film, but I’m a digital native for sure. I definitely grew up with it, and feel very comfortable with it.

Now everything is so good that you can cheat it so easily between the two. I did a music video years ago with the director of “Cruel Hands”, and we worked with Andre Chlebak, the colorist who did “Mandy”. I could have sworn that “Mandy” was on film. I would have bet an arm and leg on it. My first question was what film stock was used, and sure enough it was digital. And if you’ve ever seen Steve Yedlin videos, he shows you how you can make anything look like anything else with the right approach of digital control or manipulation.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: What are the misunderstandings or misconceptions about cinematography?

Charlie: I’m half French and half American. When I tell my French side of the family what a cinematographer is, they’ve never heard of it. I think in Europe there’s a lot more of the idea that the author-artist is in charge of the story and the vision, including the camera work, especially in French cinema.

Our role as cinematographer changes culture to culture and depends on each collaboration with each director. I’ve seen collaborations where the cinematographer is more of a camera technician who is helping the director’s vision come alive, and those can work beautifully. I’ve seen collaborations where the cinematographer and the director are figuring it out together. I’ve seen and been in situations where directors come from more of a theater background or they have a wonderful idea with little film experience, and they’re using you to help finesse the story through filmmaking and how to show a story through a film. It can mean so many different things.

The term that I’ve come to love is that the cinematographer is shooting what the actors cannot say. Your job is to shoot the subtext of every performance and shoot the subtext of the story. Years ago I saw “Shawshank Redemption” on a plane, and I had no headphones, so I watched it on mute. But the whole time it was clear what was happening, what the characters were going through, and what the story was going towards. That’s the job of the cinematographer – that the images say everything that can’t be said otherwise.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: What is the most exciting recent development technology-wise, or maybe the most exciting technical thing that is on the horizon in your area?

Charlie: AI is obviously an exciting conversation – or very scary, depending on how you look at it.

The most exciting thing for me these days is that every camera is pretty excellent. I’m an Amira owner, and it’s quite large. I often find myself wanting to have a smaller camera for a trick shot or whatever, and almost anything you use looks gorgeous. It opens up a lot of doors, both financially and aesthetically. You can put the camera anywhere, and you can pretty much do anything.

I grew up in a world where I was idolizing the big chunky cameras that I would see on film sets, and I wanted to get my hands on those. And now that’s fizzling apart. Now it’s about finding a way to get the perfect image any way we can.

Kirill: Getting to “Cruel Hands”, how did you find your way to it, or maybe how did it find its way to you?

Charlie: Al Kalyk, the director of “Cruel Hands”, is one of my best friends. We went to grad school at the American Film Institute together. It’s his first feature, and we’ve been talking about it for maybe a year and a half before the funding started coming in. There were many parts of it, and then it ended up being a wonderful thing that we had been collaborating for so long.

It was a fully Australian production, and I was the only American there. He had to fight for me to be able to be a part of it, because there was pressure to have full Australian crew, tax incentives being involved and all. He really stuck his neck out to bring me on, and I couldn’t have done it with a better person. He’s been one of my best friends for a long time, and a collaborator too. We’ve done a lot of music videos and shorts together.

From the lookbook of “Cruel Hands”, courtesy of Charlie Cole.

Kirill: What discussions did you have about the visual style of this story?

Charlie: The discussions led a lot around blending early Cohen brothers and 70s western films and the boldness of that camera work with a much a more delicate look to the film. Our look – the coloring and the way the lenses were showing the world – came from a place closer to “Phantom Thread”. Our story is a balance between a mother and son who are trying to get through a tough situation , and then this husband who is chasing them down. There’s this contradiction between a western thriller and a coming of age quieter film, so the film had to find a way to mix in between the two visually.

We had a ton of references between the two of us. When he first sent me the script, I sent him this big lookbook that was what you would expect from a film like this on script. It’s independent, it’s low contrast, it’s a very wide open lens kind of aesthetic. And then Al came back to me and said that it was all wrong and that we have to start from scratch. He wanted the bold western in there, which you don’t get often these days. I loved that.

From the lookbook of “Cruel Hands”, courtesy of Charlie Cole.

Kirill: How did you approach separating the flashbacks from the main storyline?

Charlie: That’s something that got discovered in post. We didn’t shoot chronologically, but that was intended to be the earlier part of the film. Al directed the film, and he was also the editor. In the editing table he discovered that it was a lot more interesting as a back and forth jumping between the narratives.

In this film we had an approach where the first act uses only wide angle lenses, so it was shot on Leica-Rs 14-22mm. Act two was 25-50mm, and act three was 50-110mm. This turns the film into a pressure cooker where the image is getting more and more compressed as the film goes on. And then now that we have the flashbacks, you feel the world encroaching upon you, and then all of a sudden you get this escape into a wide-lenses flashback. It does a good job at releasing tension when it needs to be.

Kirill: Was there any color that you wanted to stay away from?

Charlie: For whatever reason, it didn’t feel like there was any room for purples. Our world is blue and green by nature, because it was so much in the woods. Then there was a lot of yellow and a lot of red. The father character was always represented by red. He is this encroaching threat, so the only red we ever wanted to feel in the whole film was only what was associated with him. We only feel red when we’re in the flashbacks at the house which he has a large part of, and then we feel more as he gets close – towards the end of the film when we’re more and more surrounded by the wildfires. The sky turns red and so the whole third act of the film is entirely dosed in red – which hopefully feels like a foreboding of him coming and taking over.

Lighting diagram for “Cruel Hands”, courtesy of Charlie Cole.

Kirill: Was the house a single thing, or was it split between location and set builds?

Charlie: The house was one beautiful location. But the entire floorboard scene where we find this big cavity under the house where the mother and son end up hiding underneath during the film – that was entirely built on the same property as the house. We had to have scenes where they’re crawling into it from the interior location, so we ended up building a six inch platform that covered the whole floor of additional wood that they could then break and go into. It was pretty intensive.

We were shooting with the Alexa Mini LF, which is not too big and not too small. Luckily, because that scene was a separate build, we’re in a barn at that point, so the camera was just right aligned with them. We were about five feet off the ground to give them the proper staging that they needed to climb up into it. Luckily we didn’t have to sneak a camera into a little cavity.

Kirill: What was your lighting setup? How are the lights treating you these days?

Charlie: We had a great gaffer named Dan Michaud and a great key grip named Sean Aston. It was a pretty small team all things considered. Our budget wasn’t too big on this, and the lighting was a lot of hustle. It was all LED, a lot of sky panels, a lot of little kino tubes here and there for little beats.

We were trying to primarily light from outside the windows as much as possible, because the space wasn’t very big. We had a lot of 360 situations going on in there, but we were fortunate that our location had this big cavity above us, like an A-frame. So Dan was able to sneak in a ton of little spotlights above, which helped us get this more western cinematic feeling. If the light were through the windows, it would have been so naturalistic and beautiful in its own right, but to really get that punchy high contrast effect we had to have all these little spotlights all over the place. That way you have these little moments that characters would step into.

Lighting diagram for “Cruel Hands”, courtesy of Charlie Cole.

Kirill: You said that the cameras are pretty great these days. What about the lights? Is there room for improvement there?

Charlie: Lights are so great these days. About 5-6 years ago when I was starting to do more serious work and play with a wider range of LEDs, there was a lot of difficulty with CRI [color rendition index] and the fidelity. If something says it’s red, is it actually red? All these different lights would be all the different flavors of red. Now everything is pretty wonderful. You can get battery packed lights and throw them all over the place, and it allows you to do so much.

My last feature film is called “Corpus”, and it just premiered at Fantasia last week. That film is a ’90s period film and we only used tungsten and HMI lights to keep it period-relevant. It was a challenge, or rather a burden of love. It gave us a lot of interesting images. What I noticed most with tungsten lights is that compared to LEDs they tend to punch stronger. If you’re looking at a skin tone, it seems a little bit richer and a little bit denser. It’s almost like it pierces the first layer of skin and hits a little harder. You can’t beat a nice tungsten for that beautiful close-up, but the practicality of it is a thing.

Kirill: Is it a little bit painful to not have full control over how people see it? We have so many screens in our lives after the movie is out of theaters – laptops, tablets, phones, and those tiny plane screens that you mentioned earlier.

Charlie: If I tried to fix that, I would lose my mind [laughs]. It’s impossible. The only thing I could ever do is if I’m showing it to a friend, I get to their house 10 minutes early and mess up all their TV settings. For me, the most color correct home theater setup is when I check it on a MacBook, as they are so good.

It is difficult. It is heartbreaking. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can do. You color it for the theater. You color one more time for a MacBook. And then beyond that you have to let the world be what the world is. Hopefully, if somebody’s watching on whatever TV they have in their house, they’re watching everything that way. That’s how they watch “Dune” and every other movie. Their level is already standardized and hopefully they’re not comparing theatrical “Dune” to your movie at home.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: What went into the fire sequence at the end?

Charlie: Around 90% of the smoke is all practical in the film. We had a bunch of PAs who were slogging large tubes full of haze all over the fields. Then we had them stay around the area so that if the wind ever changed direction on us, we could compensate by having haze come from another way. They rocked.

We had very little fire, either one or two flame bars that we use as references. Other than that, if we had a close-up of somebody during a fire scene, we’d put the flame bar right under the camera. That way you get the heat effect, and also feel it in their eyes. That’s something that is harder to fake with VFX. Other than that it was a really great job from the VFX team. We’d put a flame bar somewhere, and they would use it as a reference to throw it all over the scene. When I look at it now, I know there was no fire there, and it just looks amazing. They did such a great job.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: Is there such a thing as the most challenging day or sequence that you had on this production?

Charlie: We had a lot of obstacles. The story of the film turns into being surrounded by wildfires, and we had to have the feeling that the air is always full of smoke. That meant that we could never have any direct sunlight once the fires have started. So in order to get the sky light correct at our location in Australia, we could only shoot at dusk or dawn, or when it was extremely cloudy, or when the sun went behind a mountain. We were shooting in this big valley, so that limited us extremely in terms of when we could shoot any outdoor scenes during the third act of the film.

We were in Australia, so we had monsoons, we had snakes, we had venomous spiders. One day it was night shoot with Diesel La Torraca who was about 12 years old at the time, and our key grip discovered a brown snake, which is the second most venomous snake in Australia. If you get bit, you die in 30 minutes, and the nearest hospital is 30 minutes away [laughs]. So we had to have a snake wrangler come in and check the whole property. He found a whole nest of them. It’s a crazy place.

There was a scene where we’re shooting them running in the woods. We had a two camera setup. I was on one camera and Al the director was on the other camera. They have these 1.5 inch long bull ants, and if they bite you, it’s extremely painful. Al was sitting on this apple box, and one of our grips was swiping ants off of his back because they were crawling up [laughs]. It was stuff like that every day.

We also got rained into location several times. One time we were there for about four hours because we literally couldn’t leave. We were flooded in. It was a wild shoot. I’ve never experienced anything like that. But it adds to the energy of the film. You really have to fight for it. And the craziest thing is that the rest of our otherwise fully Australian crew was just used to it. I have this video of myself in the car with a camera, and I look to the right, and there’s a huge python right outside the car just going across the street. And everybody else was just taking a minute until it was gone [laughs]. It’s a special but wild place.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: Why should people go to see this movie on the big screen in the movie theater?

Charlie: We shot the film on the Mini LF, so the film is in large format. You really get a sense of space the way we shot this film. Space is so important for this project. You feel the claustrophobia of the cabin that they’re in, and then you have the vastness of the fire that surrounds them later. It’s a cinematic film. We had this incredible composer Libby Hsieh who goes by their artist name Alvidrez, and the sound design of this film is amazing. There’s breath work and crackling of fire and haunting instrumental crackling. It’s a special soundscape.

Kirill: Where do you find yourself these days on the raging debates around generative AI?

Charlie: I’ve been going back and forth with all of it. On one hand, any tool is a wonderful thing to have at your disposal. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that this tool is frankly based off of a lot of other people’s work – and that it’s gotten so good that you can replace work.

Career wise, it is a huge disappointment that it is replacing a lot of smaller jobs. If you’re shooting a shoe commercial or a food commercial, those things are easily replaceable now with AI. And those are the bread and butter of how people stay working so we can do fun projects like this – and also how you learn new tools and how you learn your craft. That’s where you finesse your abilities, and that is going out the window.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: What are the ingredients for longevity in this industry?

Charlie: I can only speak to what’s worked for me. Something that I’ve found to be helpful for my approach as a cinematographer is that I come from fine arts. Teachers would always say that everybody in the room can draw, and then ask “Why are you drawing?”

I see the same issue or the same thought process with a camera. Anybody knows how to expose. What makes you holding the camera or lighting the scene different from other people’s abilities to do the same thing? That goes in terms of your personal flavor, and how emotionally involved you are into the work you do, and your collaboration with your director and the actors and crewmates.

The short answer is that the key to longevity is in who you are as a person. If you’re kind, if you’re generous, and if you’re genuine, you will go far. You have to lend your heart and your eyes to everything you do.

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: Is there a piece of advice you’d want to give to your younger self?

Charlie: I’ve had a lot of good fortune with working with people that I really love and that are quite different from me. So my advice would be to make sure I continue to do that – work with as many different people who care as adamantly as you do. There’s nothing better than people who come from different backgrounds and different experiences and different desires of what the film is and could be – as long as we all put all of our heart into it every chance we get. Then we’re all going to make something special.

The other advice would be to communicate, communicate, communicate. That’s a lesson I learned over time. People speak different languages in terms of what images are. I worked with this director who I went to AFI with, and she came from a theater background, while my parents are architects. When we started working together, we started talking about wide shots and we talked for weeks about those wide shots. Then we got on to set, and in my mind the wide shot is the person defined by space, defined by the architecture. And in her mind, a wide shot was a head-to-toe shot of a person, because she works with actors.

I realized that we have been speaking in completely different languages for two or three months now [laughs], but we never thought to compare it with specific images. That’s a lesson that I’ve learned the hard way – make sure you’re on the same page before you get to set. Even though it feels like it, you never know. It’s as simple as referencing images. When I say wide, I mean this. Yes, we’re on the same page. When I say close up, I mean this. Yes, we’re on the same page. When I say cool, I mean cobalt blue and not light blue. When I say red, I mean fiery angry red and not calm red. People have so many different tastes, so locking in on that is extremely important.

As far as prep goes, one of my favorite things ever on any film set is that moment where you and the director are so in sync, that if, God forbid, one of you is in an accident or is sick and has to miss a day, the director would trust that you would run every shot and every setup the exact way that you guys had talked about. That’s where you want to be when you hop onto a film set.

Kirill: When you turn on the TV, what would be a movie that you would watch again and again, no questions asked, whenever it comes on?

Charlie: “Lord of The Rings” no doubt. I’m such a fantasy guy. I watch so many movies. I love to be entertained. I love to watch movies that transcend me.

Films that I admire are different from films that I watch. If I see a film that pushes me artistically or inspires me artistically, I try not to watch it again. So much depends on who you were when you saw it, and how you were feeling that day when you saw it. If it really affected you, watching it again would potentially ruin it or take away the magic of what you experienced. It lives in your soul and I don’t want to analyze it. Those are films by Lynne Ramsay, Lars von Trier, Gaspar Noe. They stick with me artistically, and I try not to watch them anymore.

For the films that I would watch again and again, pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy. You have to probably pull me away if it was on the TV. I watched all of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” yesterday. It was a great day [laughs].

Cinematography of “Cruel Hands” by Charlie Cole.

Kirill: Is it difficult for you to enjoy the story and not overanalyze it from the cinematography perspective?

Charlie: The better the cinematography and the better the filmmaking is, the less distracted I get from it. For sure, any of us who work in this industry are analyzing things and picking up on things all the time. If they are masters of the craft, you just forget. How impressive is it to trick people who are there to analyze into forgetting any of that? It takes a really great film for me to completely forget that I’m watching a film, and they’re few and far in between. I love those.

That being said, I still love seeing how the sausage is made. I get a big kick out of that. Maybe it means that the film is lacking in something, and then I get inspired by something else. Usually I’m noticing the good stuff.

Kirill: What was your favorite dish in Australia that you had while working on “Cruel Hands”?

Charlie: All of the food in Australia was impeccable. There was this meat pie that I loved. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I’d have avocado toast constantly. There was this place in Australia that I would go to almost every weekend that I could to have avocado toast, because the food there was so fresh and prepared with so much care. They also sell the Maxibon brand of ice cream, and I probably had 500 of them during the three months I was there [laughs]. It was a whole thing. They sell them at gas stations everywhere, and it was the best thing I had there. I got really obsessed with those.

And here I want to thank Charlie Cole for sharing his time with me to talk about the art and craft of cinematography, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Jordan von Netzer for making this interview happen. “Cruel Hands” is out now streaming on Apple, YouTube and Amazon. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.