00:00 The production design is an incredibly important part of the story and what the
00:04 production design leads have created is something unlike anything that's ever
00:08 existed before that I've seen.
00:11 I think the script is quite pure and funny that felt quite a free place to
00:26 start and it felt there was a place for beauty, humor, art. It felt sort of
00:32 timeless which is something that really appeals to me. Your mind just starts
00:36 racing of where it could go. London, Lisbon, Paris. We've built a composite set
00:41 epic in scale. You're obviously one in a 1930s film but with today's technology.
00:46 I always envisioned it like this. I always thought that we should build a
00:51 world according to Bella and her understanding and perception of it. You
00:56 have this idea of the Grand Tour, this 19th century idea that you left the
01:01 place you were born and you had to tour the world and see the world in order to
01:05 come of age and we see through her eyes how amazing the world is and how messed
01:10 up it is. I do think that there's a spiritual connection that happens in
01:14 these practical sets and you can feel it. With Shona and James I thought that
01:18 maybe if I put two people that have you know very different minds together and
01:22 if it worked out and if they got along it would become something very
01:26 interesting. They worked very closely in tandem. I remember seeing the early
01:31 lookbooks of what they were working on because they have two very different
01:34 sensibilities that seem to have met up so beautifully. I met Shona in a studio.
01:39 So I wanted to see her in a natural inhabitants hat. So I was worried she might be mental.
01:46 My experience on film is zero so this wouldn't be standing if it wasn't for
01:51 James and the whole process of building something so enormous so beautifully.
01:55 We're in Budapest in Hungary shooting on many sound stages. Our world has been
02:01 built. This house is fantastic in every sense of the word. It is a thing unto
02:08 itself. It shapes how you act, it shapes how you feel. Dressing and the detail is
02:13 quite extraordinary. There's so much originality. There are fish on Bella's
02:18 ceiling and there's seaweed and a mirror that has ears and these padded silk
02:23 walls with cityscapes sewn in and I want to copy it. I want to live in that bedroom.
02:28 Bella's an adult but she needed sort of soft corners and things that she
02:33 couldn't hurt herself on. So her room is incredibly soft and very beautiful and
02:37 there's a secret door. I got scared for a second. I thought we were trapped in here.
02:44 They did a lot of work in coming up with references and then you would pick and
02:50 choose. We also tapped into some old-school techniques like miniatures,
02:55 painted backdrops. I think it was an interesting combination of techniques.
02:59 The functioning shops, the doors lead to actual rooms. It's incredible. You don't
03:06 have to make anything up. Everything's there. Everything that you need is there
03:10 and then there's more. It feels like something of the era but also it has so
03:16 many nods to the future. It's a fine line between feeling real and fantasy. We've
03:20 created lots of different little alleyways. You can walk into the hotel
03:24 and walk up the hotel stairs and come out and stand on the balcony. This is my
03:29 favorite place, the vodka bar. It was quite tricky. There were crews working 24 hours.
03:34 There were night clustering teams, painters to come in the next day to paint.
03:37 The ship had to feel like an enormous moving Victorian garden. An impractical
03:43 boat designed to make it practical. So we had quite a lot of fun with the boat.
03:49 This is Paris, the main square in Paris. You can come in off the street into the
03:54 interiors. When I first met Shona and we started talking about this project, Shona
03:59 had already said there should be red trees in Paris, which was just a
04:03 brilliant idea. We've tried to take the classic Paris vibe, Art Nouveau vibe and
04:08 give it a twist. I mean you could see they have created a world. It's Victorian,
04:13 it's a dream, it's gorgeous and it really does serve the vision. It really defines
04:21 the story we're telling. It's got a refined aesthetic but it's also got a
04:26 sense of humor. I've never seen anything like it and it is as big as it looks
04:29 even in a four millimeter lens, which is the widest possible angle. It's bigger
04:35 than that. The designing and the building, it makes the scale of the logistics of
04:42 the film a huge undertaking and just takes so long and it was a great
04:46 collaboration between the two.
04:51 you
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