Oscar 2012 - Art Direction

This week I intend to do a posting marathon (at least compared to the usual rate of one/week) despite the fact that it's the last thing on a long list I really must get done (yeah, obviously I'm complaining again at the start of the entry, I'll do that forever - or at least until I'll get my pension and retire, live with it :p). To get faster to the subject anyway .. today art direction aka production design & set decoration aka shortly .. actually I won't stay and explain like list year because as I said I have no time, so I'll just quote:

" From early in pre-production, the production designer collaborates with the director and director of photography to establish the visual feel and specific aesthetic needs of the project. The production designer guides key staff in other departments such as the costume designer, the key hair and make-up stylists, the special effects director and the locations manager (among others) to establish a unified visual appearance to the film. " (from Wikipedia)

.. with an accent on the scene setting (arrangement, props, etc) in regard to the Oscar category. So, who are the nominees ..

In "The Artist" we have here the recreation of the 20's Hollywood = the locations + the film sets include .. other film sets, streets with the aspect of that period (= cars, shops, etc), cinemas, etc. What is wanted after all is not just a look & feel supposedly identical to that epoch but even something more, something that should look also a bit like what you can see in the movies from that time. I can say that the outcome is quite ok and for me it would be probably the second here, but quite far from the top of the list ..



The last "Harry Potter" is excellent on art direction, but this is sufficiently supplemented by VFX (and I refer to the classic type, not only CGI). At some point, you get a bit confused where one starts and where the other ends. Besides this you might be tempted to say that being the last from the series is the best on this area but I wouldn't bet on it. However, it's a bit hard to start digging my memory about what and where I've seen in the other .. seven episodes ...



"Hugo" as winner for art direction is the safest prediction I can make this year (I'm even more sure about it than the score about I talked last time). And for me it's right to be so because what the couple Dante Ferretti & Francesca LoSchiavo managed to do here is absolutely delightful. They won some years ago the Oscar for Sweeney Todd which I liked almost exclusively for this part. What you get to see here is more than you had there. The train station, the Paris at the beginning of the XXth century, Melies' studio, the clocks, and many other stuff practically form more than two thirds of what creates the feeling of this movie. But it's probably better to stop with the writing and leave the clip below including a short summary to visually display what's been done.



I finished (alphabetically and not only) with the top of the list. I'll pass to the outsiders with "Midnight in Paris" which as "Hugo" has (if I would be mean I could say as a real disadvantage comparatively) the location setting also in Paris (obviously ...). Woody Allen brings a bit of fantasy in his characteristic social comic, the result being a story in which a screenwriter aspiring to become a novelist, gone in vacation along his fiancee and her parents, makes a transition night by night somewhere in other temporal dimension. More about this when we get to the best movie nominees. For art direction we don't have something terribly spectacular (= neither the originality in "The Artist", neither the variation in "Harry Potter", and I won't start talking about "Hugo"). Well, the movie doesn't require it. The result is anyway decent enough, talking about the interiors, the streets, etc, being quite nice to watch. For me actually, unlike other sections where I still got a bunch of "?", here I can say I agree with all the nominees.



"War Horse" ends the list for art direction placing the focus mostly on location setting, considering that probably more than 80% of the movie takes place in open air (filmed apparently almost entirely in UK). Besides this we have the specific stuff for the first WW .. guns .. canons .. other guns .. And that's pretty much about it ..



Next time = very soon -> film editing ;)