befores & afters: Here at befores & afters, we don’t often get to discuss how films are made with the production designer. But, we were given the opportunity to interview production designer Ramsey Avery about his role on director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World for an insight into his art department on the film.
6 comments:
Gonna start this one off by saying I absolutely hate marvel and its military propaganda and cheap overdone comedy. We get it. 80s music was good. You don't have to solely play it in each movie. I usually don't engage with marvel and dc at all anymore since their formulas became so repetitive, and never really marveled (pun intended haha) at their production design or visual effects because i just assumed it was all cgi or ai. I mean they do just cgi all their crowds now, which honestly who could blame them. In this specific movie, I think it's super cool how they took inspiration from 70s thrillers. However I think its extremely hypocritical to try to execute a 70s thriller feel with a character grappling with weakness and confusion by still using mainly cgi, and the same storytelling techniques as any other marvel movie. Like that's a direct contradiction. Using more physical sets and effects would be so awesome to portray this film. I wish marvel played around more, it's not like they need more money to make anyway.
I love seeing how the production design evolved over time, starting with color key frames. I think it’s so interesting that they assigned a color palette to an emotion/energy level within the scene. It was also interesting to read about how he recreated and manipulated real-life places to fit the time period, such as the White House’s Rose Garden. Looking at the photos, it’s really crazy to think how much blue screen is used to recreate famous backgrounds and places without actually being there. Also when he was talking about the linework when discussing with sculptors and designers. It makes sense that you only have to care about where the camera is pointing, but it’s cool to hear about how they address it. I’m intrigued about the part where he says that the “realer” it is, the less time it takes. I wonder what the time difference is, especially when building/painting something with so much detail.
I love love love process and was thoroughly immersed throughout the course of reading this article. This is such an intimate and amazing perspective and conversation that they are having here and sharing with the public. It’s almost like I am picking a designer's brain myself by reading this, and it was really interesting to see how Ramsey Avery thinks and works. The first thing that grabbed my mind while reading this article was the “emotional palette” of colours, and then how they worked them into their colour script. Standardizing colours with emotions throughout the film is such a strong visual indicator to the audience, but also something that they will almost never realize happening right in front of their very eyes. Next, I was very enthralled with the whole in depth process of how they created and built the Rose Garden. First, of course, starting with research is such a big part of this, and you can really see how much research went into it to make it as accurate as possible, with them relying partially on scouring press conference videos for views of the garden. Then, of course, the next question being what scale you want to produce the environment and to what extent of accuracy you want, and I like to see how they did this set committing fully to the same size and general look and feel of the Rose Garden. It was also interesting to see that they use a combination of both digital and physical models, and that neither can work without the other. I feel like especially in our program right now, there is a huge debate about the difference between digital and physical, so it is nice to see that in a professional setting both of these still matter to an equal extent and inform each other in the best way possible. The final thing that I found so unique about this interview was the nature of the film, as these beautiful sets that are built also need copies of them built for destruction during the big battles. I found it very interesting that Avery said that they actually built the destruction set before they built the undestroyed set— I wouldn’t envision that would be the case, I thought it would be the other way around! Seeing the processes of other designers is so invaluable to beginning and seasoned designers alike, offering a new perspective, and it just leads to better art and design in the grand scheme of things.
First thing I really liked about this article was the color palette they created to create a sort of mood chart for key frames in scenes. This is something that I’ve done in the past with previous lighting more subconsciously when programming but an explicitly created chart is very interesting to consider. I do wish that more movies went back to actually building their sets rather than using CGI for as much of it. That was honestly my favorite part of watching the movie version of Wicked after reading up about it and hearing about how it was almost entirely built and realized, they used significantly less special effects than most movies do nowadays. I do understand it in the case of Marvel though, with the kind of extreme shots they’re trying to get constantly, I just still wish CGI was less heavily relied on. I definitely have an interest in learning more about scenic and production design for film and how that varies compared to live theatre.
Because my experience is in theatre and not the film and tv industry, I often forget that they have the luxury of post production and editing and CGI among other things that help sharpen the image and make the film come to life. I think it was super interesting to read about what actually goes into making a film come true and the considerations that designers and other production members have to consider when making choices to either film it for real or edit it in post. Something that I wonder about is what is more cost effective because I would think that editing things in post is more cost effective because it takes less people even though it is more time and technical in nature but also because it is imitating real life, maybe it is best to have the real thing when possible. This makes me wonder what the possibilities are in theatre and how we can use these tools and apply them to our field.
This was very cool process to read about and hear how they went through each step and how that flowed into the end result. Watching something go from simple key frames to a final result is super interesting. I have learned about how humans have different associations with colors, so seeing that being utilized in a movie that they want to tie emotion to the coor highlights the importance of this effect. This kind of knowledge and pre production thinking transfers well to theatre and live event production. We also have to think about how color will affect the audience. Additionally I really liked reading about the construction and process of the cherry blossom trees. Its not something that many people think about, but background set pieces can be really challenging because of time, location, availability, etc. I was impressed by the level of attention and process revision that went into this set piece and the collaboration that had to happen to realize their vision.
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