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All rights reserved on ALL content, including photographs and text. THIS MATERIAL IS FOR THE SOLE USE OF SETDECOR MAGAZINE and the SDSA. Reproduction or use of the material in any way or by any means for any purpose without permission from the Set Decorators Society of America is strictly prohibited.
(Click to enlarge)
Photos by Bob Marshak, Twentieth Century Fox (©) 2002,
Set Decoration,
Kristen Toscano Messina
(Click to enlarge)
Photos by Bob Marshak, Twentieth Century Fox (©) 2002,
Set Decoration,
Kristen Toscano Messina
(Click to enlarge)
Photos by Bob Marshak, Twentieth Century Fox (©) 2002,
Set Decoration,
Kristen Toscano Messina
(Click to enlarge)
Photos by Bob Marshak, Twentieth Century Fox (©) 2002,
Set Decoration,
Kristen Toscano Messina
(Click to enlarge)
Photos by Bob Marshak, Twentieth Century Fox (©) 2002,
Set Decoration,
Kristen Toscano Messina
| Decorating the Future For SOLARIS
by Kristen Toscano Messina
Photos by Bob Marshak provided courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox (©) 2002
Solaris was my first experience decorating “the future”. Although I had
decorated other “period” projects, the thought of attempting the future
was, I admit, at first somewhat intimidating. When you look to the
past, you can find plenty of photographic research to assist you in
your choices as well as rely on your educated sense of what a certain
period looked like. But the future. That is a different story. The only
research available for the future is what other people have imagined it
to be and any ideas you have about what it may look like are shaped by
your recollection of others attempts at creating it.
The
Production Designer (Philip Messina) and I discussed how to create a
look that would be both believable and as timeless as possible without
being self conscious. We decided to take a naturalistic approach to the
sets on earth. Assuming life 30, 40 or 50 years in the future will not
be so much different from today than life 30, 40 or 50 years ago, we
blended periods and styles from a seventeenth century secretary to
contemporary Italian light fixtures to create an eclectic and,
hopefully, timeless look. Most of us have homes that represent a
blending of periods from our own personal histories. That was true of
our grandparents homes as well as our parents and now our own. We added
a some minor elements of technology with built in home system monitors
and modified kitchen appliances, but since the path of technology seems
to be becoming more integrated into the environment and invisible, we
didn’t want to draw attention to it.
Space was an other matter
entirely and this is where the challenge really began. Our biggest
inspiration was the International Space Station. First, we downloaded
photos of it from the Internet, then the entire art department and set
decorating department went on a field trip to view the IMAX movie about
it. Although we were trying to portray a space station several
generations beyond what exists now, it was the source for many kernels
of ideas.
Soon it was time to move past the theoretical and
start with the design and acquisition. My crew and I combed through
thousands of pages of industrial catalogs for interesting items that
could be integrated into various space devices.We shopped everywhere
from restaurant supply stores to KMart where we sometimes found common
household items, which, taken out of context, could be
transformed
into something unrecognizable. Vacuum cleaners evolved into water
purification systems. Industrial trash can lids became ceiling panels.
Custom car oil reservoirs assembled to become oxygen recirculators. I
became enamored of salvage yards. Computer salvage, aerospace salvage,
all kinds of wonderful treasures could be found for relatively small
amounts of money. These parts, disassembled & modified became the
basis of some wonderful constructions.
We bought truckloads of
parts that became vocabulary from which we would draw the details of
the interior of the space station. While time and budget wouldn’t allow
us to manufacture every element of every piece of dressing, these
pieces provided an exciting variety of forms and finishes as well as
inspiration. Sometimes a single found part would be perfect if only we
had 50 more. If they weren’t available or cost effective then we might
either make a mold and cast the additional ones out of resin or have
our prop shop machine them out of aluminum.
Through a somewhat
linear process of computer aided design as well as a more organic
sculptural approach we designed and assembled the components that would
become the textural details of the ship. Gravity monitors,
environmental quality control, oxygen emergency units, some pieces were
based on a thread of reality, others were inspired by a wonderful found
shape or texture and the desire for a repetitive element on a certain
surface. A talented and creative crew of set dressers and prop makers
brought all the parts together to transcend their often humble origins
and become, I hope, believable elements of the space station
“Prometheus”.
In the end I looked back happily enlightened that
what had begun as a daunting and foreign task had in many ways been not
so different from any other set. Decorating is always a matter of
combining elements: shapes, textures and colors, to create an
environment that is visually pleasing and incorporates the
functionality that the space and the script demands. (By visually
pleasing, I do not necessarily mean beautiful, but with an eye for
color and composition and texture much like a painting or sculpture.)
This may mean combining the right elements of furniture, say a sofa, a
chair, drapes and a television to make a living room, or the right
crates and industrial equipment to create a warehouse. With the
“Prometheus” space station, the difference was that those elements had
fewer boundaries than normal. While they had to be created rather than
found, the basic visual rules remained the same. Spaces still needed
textural balance, colors still needed to be coordinated, shapes still
needed to placed with an eye for composition. This made for an exciting
and satisfying creative experience where in many ways the constraints
were fewer than usual and we were able to follow our creative impulses
more freely. |
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