The important thing about designing sets is not what they look like to the passer- by in the studio, but what they look like through the lens, and whether they complement or distract from the characters. The set builders have an obvious, rightful pride in making good sets, and it is hard to resist the temptation to make them like beautiful dolls’ houses, looking fantastic as a whole piece, probably with detail that the camera is unlikely to see. The designer has to know exactly what sort The larger a production the more valuable are accurate storyboards, as the crew will have become fragmented. It is impossible for everyone to know exactly what the others are doing, and the storyboard becomes the bible.
of lenses, framing and compositions the director is likely to want, and exactly what the characters will be doing. There’s no point in building a glorious set if it doesn’t work for a particular camera lens or aspect ratio. Not only is animator access a bane to the designer, but cameras have to get in and the sets need to be lit. Access is obviously essential, not just on the sets but below, as the animators need to reach underneath for whatever securing device they are using. Usually an animator will be holding the leg of a puppet with one hand while trying to reach underneath with the other. This means that a set must be constructed around the length of an animator’s arm. For larger sets, various trapdoors or swinging walls need to be built. On the sets, particularly the interior sets, for The Wind in the Willows and Hamilton Mattress, we tried to shoot completely round the rooms. Some of the sets where small, such as the bar in Hamilton Mattress, but every wall was removable. This takes some ingenuity, as sets can sag when various walls are taken away. In general, a wall is removed for the whole shot, but walls in shot can be taken away every frame to allow the animator access. This only works if the walls are precisely replaced, otherwise there will be all manner of juddering. Magnets can be used to secure the walls, or they can swing out or lift out, and then be secured by something reliable such as gravity or clips.
I have tried to be clever with removable walls that cannot be detected, and in one scene in
Hamilton Mattress the bulky 35 mm camera travels from an outside alleyway down a corridor and into a ballroom seamlessly. In one of those cheap tricks I love so much, the corridor was dismantled section by section as the camera moved, the joins of the sections confused by various design elements. This is complex to plan and shoot, not least for the lighting guys who hope that the lighting does not change as a section is removed. Considerably smaller digital cameras now let the camera into diffi cult places, allowing more design freedom.
Antonio’s The Passenger has a simply remarkable fi nal shot where the camera starts tight on a character in bed, withdraws through a barred window, then wanders round the piazza outside, before fi nding the room once more, all in one take. This involved cleverly removing and replacing parts of the wall as the camera passed. Hitchcock, too, was adept at deconstructing sets to let his enormous cameras pass. Another shot, from The Wizard of Oz, probably one of the most signifi cant shots in fi lm history, is still impressive in its deceptive simplicity. This is the transition from monochrome to colour as Dorothy steps into Oz. I recall a fi lm professor waffl ing on about the use of a clever matte sequence, but it seems no more than sleight of hand. A body double for Judy Garland, with her back to us, and wearing a monochrome costume and wig, approaches a real monochrome door. As she opens the door, revealing the colour of Oz, she steps back out of shot. The camera eases forward, losing the sepia set. Almost instantly, Judy Garland, in full colour costume, steps in front of the camera and into Oz. The camera follows in a sustained tracking shot, revealing the entire Munchkin town. It is clearly shot in one take, moving from the sepia close midshot of the door to the wide shot of the colourful town, but then a close midshot of Dorothy’s reaction as she steps out is inserted. It is a beautifully acted shot with Judy Garland looking awestruck, but the continuity is all over the place and the fl ow of that amazing shot is interrupted. Maybe Dorothy’s reaction needed to be seen sooner, or the close-up covers a technical hitch, preventing a costly reshoot. I admire the audacity
of doing such a complex, important shot, showing the transition between the real and fantasy, all in one fl uid take and with no eff ects at all, just simple lateral thinking. Quite breathtaking.
Screen Play had a shot linking the two diff erent of worlds of animation and live action. In the fi nal sequence the camera pulls back to show the discarded
puppets and props standing on the table, and keeps pulling back to see this image as part of a storyboard. My live hand shuts the storyboard, and the fi lm ends with the fi lm itself running through the gate. Various showy elements made it a tricky one-take shot. Computers would make the shot easy to do now, but would have lost the showmanship.
The tricky fi nal shot of Screen Play.
Another favourite transition is in Terry Gilliam’s Baron Munchausen, where an audience in a bombed-out theatre watches a fl orid production of Munchausen’s adventures. As the actor emotes the camera moves onto the stage and gently glides into the real world of his tales. There’s no cut, but the eff ect is subtle and thrills me. A similar moment is in Poltergeist, where the camera follows an actress away from an empty table and as she walks back all the chairs have been stacked on to the table. This is a big jump for the audience, and would not have worked with a cut or a CG eff ect. The awareness of real time and of ‘before your very eyes’ makes the shot work. Long takes remove the safety net, and knowing there’s no cheating, any eff ects work better. Some scenes just have to be told in a continuous shot. Imagine if Fred Astaire’s famous sequence of dancing over all the walls and ceiling had been done with cuts. There would have been no magic or thrill. With this in mind I try to do long takes in stop motion as the challenge produces adrenaline, for me, and maybe for the audience. I’d rather the puppet’s performance created the energy than rely on quick cuts.
Today, CG trickery, blue screens, digital cameras no bigger than a few inches and second passes have made things simpler but possibly not as fun. I love working out all the trickery. With stop
motion you have the luxury of time in between the camera exposures to play with all manner of eff ects. The concept behind the sets in my fi lm Screen Play was to look as though this could happen on stage, but then to take it further. We were building, painting and destroying the sets frame by frame as the fi lm progressed. As screens slid across, I popped down props or characters behind them that were subsequently revealed. On stage, such characters could rise up through traps as the screen slid by, as with many stage illusions (detailed beautifully in The Prestige),
but my tricks were with the screens themselves. This took some planning, and I’m particularly satisfi ed with the scene in the dead garden where the Recitor reminds the girl she is to marry the Samurai. The open stage is full of dead fl owers but no screens. I needed the reminder of the Samurai to be instant. A screen sliding on would kill the impact, and it couldn’t just appear. I drew a thin vertical black line on the back wall, for just one frame. On the second, it was a piece of black tape hanging in the space where the screen was due to appear. Then a thicker piece, and fi nally the screen itself edge on, its thickness only just wider than the black line. The next frame had the real screen revolving towards the camera, until it was face-on, showing the Samurai. As the screen came edge-on again, a second screen was hidden behind it, and as it continued a double screen was revealed, now with the wedding dress spread over the two panels. After a beat the two screens slid apart, revealing a blue sky being painted frame by frame over the old yellow one. I couldn’t stand by watching paint dry, and there are a few fl ickers as the colours dry or I altered the shape I was trying to anticipate. Also revealed behind was the girl now wearing the wedding dress; we had seen her running across the stage just one frame before, with a bit of costume trailing for a few frames as she is seen behind the screens. Modern techniques would make this easy to stage, but the eff ect of the scene fl owing smoothly from the Recitor reminding the girl of her marriage by seeing the Samurai on the screen, to the illustration of the dress, and then the girl in the dress itself at the wedding, works
because of its real physicality. This is highly indulgent, but great fun to conceive.
This could have been done with cuts, but it wouldn’t have had the lyricism, in the way that music often segues from one theme to another. Transformation scenes on stage always impress me, not just because of their technical trickery but because of how they move the action along, telescoping it, making visual links between the overlapping images.
I’m not always happy working with literal sets, preferring to play with illusion. A favourite shot in Hamilton Mattress is Hamilton and Feldwick walking happily in front of a blue sky, which turns out to be a gigantic poster for the ubiquitous mattress. In the nightclub, the murals of the baddie, Balustrade, picture him as a game hunter. Set into this are numerous hidden doors. The murals make a colourful comment on the characters’ perceptions. Likewise, Rigoletto is often shadowed by an enormous rock carving of the Duke. The Duke’s palace has a painting of
Achilles, an easy set to work on, and an image most indicative of my work.
My fi rst theatre job was in the stage crew on the big 1976 stage musical of Hans Andersen, which contained a sequence that I never tired of watching. Alone on an empty stage, Hans sat on his trunk, ready to leave his cosy hometown for Copenhagen. He looked like a little boy lost. A piece of set emerged out of the darkness suggestive of a carriage. The trunk was tossed up and the rocking movement, caused by yours truly, gave a convincing impression of a horse and carriage. Without losing sight of Hans this carriage unfolded to become the rails of a ship. Billowing silks suggested sails and the wild sea. As these were whisked away, the lights of wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen were seen glinting in the distance, before all the lights came up and there was Copenhagen bustling away with forty people. In the middle was Hans still with his trunk. He had not moved, but all around had. It was shameless theatrical storytelling, but with the lighting and choreography it swept the audience along on a complete arc, and by having Hans hardly moving among the midst of all this activity you never lost sight of him. He was still the focus. A lesson learnt about making sure the audience knows where to look. The real lesson is to always collaborate with the set designers, telling them how the sets will be used. Too often, beautiful puppets disappear in front of similarly coloured or fussy sets.
a gloriously idyllic pastoral scene; a façade that hides the terrors inside. Floating newspaper headlines say much about Gilbert and Sullivan while other action is going on. Using such visual devices, it is easy to convey information about the characters or plot when time is short. All the plays I have designed give the actors a colourful, almost graphic space to play in, bursting in and out of invisible doors. An architecturally solid set, with no stylistic tweaking, on stage or in animation makes my heart sink, as the enormous potential is not realised. In all I do, I make sure every colour, every prop, every item of set has a reason to be there or makes a comment. If that reason is that it’s just pretty, that’s not enough. It has to add to the story or atmosphere or go.