Latest in Production Design

Lawrence G. Paull, a production designer and art director whose work on the science fiction classic Blade Runner earned him an Oscar nomination and won a BAFTA Award, died Sunday in La Jolla, Calif. He was 81. No cause of death was given. Paull had a long history in Hollywood, designing for such films as Robert…

Tonight, in her first go-round at the Oscars, Hannah Beachler took home the statuette for Best Production Design, for her contributions to Ryan Coogler’s Marvel phenomenon, Black Panther. Visibly stunned as she appeared on stage, and later in the press room, Beachler thanked her fellow nominees for the “extraordinary…

An expert when it comes to films of epic scale, Nathan Crowley ventured into the unknown with First Man, his first outing with Damien Chazelle, which finally got him to the Moon. Centered on astronaut Neil Armstrong, and the many missions leading up to the historic success of Apollo 11, the pic was a massive technical…

For production designer Eugenio Caballero, Alfonso Cuarón's Roma was a project unlike any he'd worked on before. Nothing could truly prepare him for this black-and-white epic, the director's most personal project to date, which he'd been thinking about for over 15 years. In the case of the Netflix original, Caballero…

The production designer of Mary Poppins Returns—Disney's follow-up to a 1964 musical classic—John Myhre knew about the project for at least 10 years, sitting for a long time with the responsibility and opportunity in taking this film on. Discussing it with Marshall on the set of 2009 musical Nine, following…

Legendary production designers Anthony Masters and Ben Carré, whose work appeared in some of the most iconic films of the 20th century, will be inducted into the Art Directors Guild’s Hall of Fame at the organization’s 23rd annual Excellence in Production Design Awards. Masters, who died in 1990, was Oscar-nominated…

In his first collaboration with Wes Anderson on Isle of Dogs, Paul Harrod translated an auteur's live-action style to stop-motion, a medium that allowed for a spectacular visual presentation, but came with a set of limitations that proved problematic. Gathering reference materials and establishing certain visual…

On Suspiria, her first project with Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino, production designer Inbal Weinberg faced challenges that were almost insurmountable, on creative and practical levels. An homage to Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic, rather than a straight remake, Guadagnino's film demanded boundless…

Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos' first period outing, The Favourite imposed immediate, practical challenges upon its below-the-line team, a film where extreme vision, finances and other realities would collide. Set in the immense court of Queen Anne in 18th century England, the black comedy called for all the detail and…

The standout episode of Atlanta‘s second season—generating considerable discussion across the web—”Teddy Perkins” wouldn’t have been the peculiar, chilling episode it turned out to be without the acquisition of a very specific practical location. A haunted house tale featuring a bizarro Donald Glover, obscured by…

While there was an overwhelming amount of challenges to face with Season 7 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, in production designer Deborah Riley's mind, all roads lead back to Dragonstone as the crux of it all. Daenerys Targaryen's arrival at her ancestral home in the season opener was "a massive moment for the character and…

Michael Howells, a production designer for TV, film and theater who also worked on fashion shows for the likes of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, died Thursday. He was 61. Born in 1957 in Staffordshire, England, Howells began his showbiz career as an assistant art director on The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lo…