William Cameron Menzies Production Design Sketches

https://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/755713676700483584/william-cameron-menzies-production-design-sketches

Always Goodbye (Sidney Lanfield, 1938)

https://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/746274829205946368/always-goodbye-sidney-lanfield-1938-art

Ben van Os#1

 

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/155619866247/pages-from-ben-van-oss-design-reference-book-for

 

An interview with Mark Digby, the Production Designer of Ex Machina

From Sketch to Screen: 
Production Designer Mark Digby Discusses "Ex Machina"

A striking contrast in the outset: an abundance of glass walls and virtual images (monitors, mobile screens) in a modern office building is cut to an aerial shot of solid, glacial mountains. Immediately after arriving at the main location where Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) meets his hi-tech tycoon employer Nathan (Oscar Isaac), Ex Machina's production designer Mark Digby sets the tone for what follows in a series of spatial and design contrasts between virtual and real, organic and artificial. Every window in the film, whether an architectural one or a computer window, opens to new images, to landscapes, physical and mental.

Set almost entirely in one house, in Ex Machina the space of the film is also a parallel narrative supporting the main storyline. This is, among other things, a post-digital variation on the theme of “mad scientist.” There’s the eventual dysfunction of the scientist's over-designed laboratory, his competition with God, and the inevitable grandiose plans that go awry. It is Frankenstein’s lab channelled through Silicon Valley ambitions. Yet, Mark Digby deliberately eschews the design traditions that come with that whole genre. Instead, he opts for subtle paradoxes: there’s glass, but there’s no transparency, there’s concrete, but there’s no sense of security. Nothing is as it seems.

Digby’s close and lasting collaboration with British directors Michael Winterbottom, Danny Boyle, and recent screenwriter turned director Alex Garland has touched different genres and design styles, enriching the visual experience of films while always adding something new to the narrative. One evening at the BFI Southbank in London, I spoke with him about Ex Machina.

READ THE INTERVIEW ON MUBI NOTEBOOK

From Sketch to the Screen: Jacques Colombier

The enormity of screen space in films shot in the extra-wide cinemascope format tends to intensify the power of architectural lines and volumes shown within the frame. No matter how many characters are crammed in a shot, there is always some room for the immobile architecture of the film to be seen, felt, and even attain a narrative function. Look at the first two images above—elevation of a three-story building and the plan of the alley in which the building is located. They belong to the production of a swashbuckling vehicle for French star Jean Marais, La Tour, prends garde! (1958), designed by Jacques Colombier. Now, if one compares them to the images of the constructed sets below, there are some revealing facts about the nature of film architecture to be noticed: the camera and lighting are extensions of an art director’s imagination, and thanks to them a partly constructed set comes to life and finds an instant identity.

Read the full essay on Notebook

Sketch to the Screen: Moontide

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/141949351817/sketch-to-the-screen-moontide-archie-mayo

Ex Machina

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/135322985282/the-hi-tech-house-in-ex-machina-alex-garland

Frame Assemblage: Lola Montes

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/134977000922/lola-montès-max-ophüls-1955-l-production

Murnau's 4 Devils - Production Design Drawings

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/127147462097/4-devils-f-w-murnau-1928-lost-film

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/128907291512/part-ii-4-devils-f-w-murnau-1928-lost

From Sketch to the Screen: Alfred Junge

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/117338926472/from-sketch-to-screen-the-man-who-knew-too-much

Film Architecture As Texture: Yoshinobu Nishioka

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/116016591637/film-architecture-as-texture-yoshinobu-nishiokas

From Sketch to the Screen: Ken Adam's Citty Chitty Bang Bang

http://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/114402930077/from-sketch-to-the-screen-ken-adams-set-design

Jacques Saulnier's sketches for The Life of Riley

The Life of Riley

The Life of Riley, Alain Resnais' last film, is the sublimation of all the visual ideas Renais ever explored, from his photography to his fascination with Louis Feuillade, comic strip books and American musical. Set in the Yorkshire countryside, the story takes place in four homes with four gardens - mostly gardens. Yet, when Resnais found it too difficult to raise money for the film, he decided to make it in the only way he knew, turning the shortcomings into the film's most charming features.

That's why and how Jacques Saulnier, the production designer of the film, came up with the idea of making the sets just out of hanging painted screens, wide sheets of colour plastics, and painted backdrop of a sunset in England --  everything more theatrical than theater. The images below are Saulnier's illustrations and design ideas for his 19th and sadly the last collaboration with Resnais.