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The Production Design Thread
jake24
Sitting at your desk, kissing your lover, eating supper with your familyModerator
In honour of one of the most talented and gifted people ever to grace our screens, the legendary Sir Ken Adam, I though I would create this thread as a place to discuss the importance of production design on the film industry, but more importantly its impact as an integral part of the Bond franchise. A place to keep Adam's influence and legacy alive, a man who gave the Bond films class, elegance and beauty during the glory days of the 60s and 70s.
Feel free to discuss all aspects of production design - past, present, future, Bond, non-Bond, etc.
Sir Ken Adam's legacy in pictures:
Feel free to discuss all aspects of production design - past, present, future, Bond, non-Bond, etc.
Sir Ken Adam's legacy in pictures:
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In fact, there are many scenes in that film, including some in the UN, that remind me very much of Adam's efforts on Bond (including the famous Mt. Rushmore finale). Same goes for Vertigo.
Vandamm house
Vandamm house
UN
Community Parks building near Mt. Rushmore
Vertigo
Vertigo
I'm including some text from what looks to be an interesting book: The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock
"Depicting a chase through a succession of spectacular locations, North by Northwest has been considered a precursor of the James Bond series – this certainly applies to the Vandamm house as well. The Bond films, in which a master criminal with foreign accent inhabits remote and precariously sited ultramodern hideaways, confirmed the connection between modern design and dastardly doings. Undoubtedly, the Vandamm house could have been designed by Ken Adam, the production designer responsible for famous Bond set pieces such as the in-rock-carved ultramodern hideout of Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962) or the laser room in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964). Adam’s peculiar combination of contemporary shapes with antique furniture and his strange mixture of metal and wood are reminiscent of the tension between the ‘googie’ cantilevered structures and modern surfaces on the one hand and the telluric embedment that characterizes the Vandamm house on the other."
They also had the foresight to name me after Connery.
Anyway North is absolutely one of my favorites as well ...and I beautifully designed film.
=D> wouldn't know where to begin to praise you for that great post and the accompanying pictures of North By Northwest.
Hitchcock is my favourite director and I'm lucky to own all of his movies that were released on Blu-ray and/or DVD.
I just purchased the new Criterion Edition of 4 of his early classics on Blu-ray.
I got that book The Wrong House The Architecture Of Alfred Hitchcock. It's a fascinating book, again thanks for posting this.
I haven't got that book, having just read about it for commenting on this thread, but I'm definitely ordering it this evening, along with "Ken Adam Designs the Movies: James Bond and Beyond", if I can find a reasonably priced copy somewhere.
Gattaca is a work of art.
I agree. The use of colour is superb.
Table ( under the Moonraker ) which all folds away into the floor. I've read a scene was filmed
using it ( hence why such an elaborate set for such a short sequence ) but I think the design
was so imaginative.
Apparently it was a meditation room. It was built but never shown.
sees a couple getting down and dirtu in zero gravity ?
Take a cliff, cut a cube out of it and put a swimming pool with glass floors as the roof. Voila, be your own Blofeld! Producers take note, this would be ultra-cool to see on film.
Taking pictures was...uhm...unwanted, and certainly not with a flash, so I only took VERY few pictures when I couldn't resist, and some of them turned out blurry. Nevertheless, here they are. These show models for the set design of Moonraker. In case anyone wonders, the second is the centrifuge, and if I remember correctly none of these are larger than maybe 50 centimeters across.
Great, great pictures! Isn't 50 centimeters across very small for models like these? Not that it shows!
Seconded! Thank you to @j_w_pepper for sharing these great pictures! :)
It's still available (among others: via Amazon), but in spite of the impression the title makes, it's only in German.
Michael Douglas's office in A Perfect Murder.
Does this actually exist someplace?
Nvm, found some documentation on it. It's planned to be built near Beirut, Lebenon (Faqra Mountain). Totally would fit in the Bond world. http://aasarchitecture.com/2016/03/begins-construction-of-casa-brutale-the-cliff-house-by-opa.html
The DAF production is worthy a book alone! Haven't actually heard about how they (Adam) scored the penthouse for the production. How did they get it?
"The Elrod House, a design by architect John Lautner, is where the fight between Bond, Bambi and Thumper is staged as 007 attempts to rescue Whyte from his own home. For uninitiated Bond fans, the space feels exactly like a Ken Adam set. It has an elemental feel and uses earthy materials in its construction, with a minimalist style when it comes to spacing to accentuate a feeling of wideness and a wonderful ceiling with an unconventional design that makes it look like an alien spaceship has crash landed on top of a rich man’s villa.
Adam noted that the design of the Elrod House seemed like something right out of his own imagination, with its floor made entirely of natural rock, a large vaulted ceiling and a mix of natural material and manmade design elements. These design choices weren’t just stylish looking, however: they had function. The vaulted ceiling was positioned to shield the inside of the space from the rays of the hot desert sun and the giant rocks Thumper is seen resting on in the movie were real rocks that were removed from the ground as the construction of the home began and Lautner’s contractor uncovered them as the digging of the earth progressed. Because of this, the space co-exists with the nature that birthed its materials.
While he was scouting for locations to shoot Diamonds Are Forever around, Adam was joined by Sidney Korshak, a Los Angeles lawyer who had a reputation for being able to make any deal come through even in the toughest of negotiations. Korshak was able to exert his influence around California, getting EON permissions to shoot at all sorts of locations, including the Elrod House, after he was able to persuade the right people to give carte blanche to Adam, who was allowed to see any house that caught his eye. Originally, the owner of the Elrod House wasn’t willing to allow EON to film there, but once Adam called Cubby and Cubby called Sidney, it took just thirty minutes on the phone for the man to give his full permission. It’s like something out of a Bond film."
I think the big factor that demanded less sets from Adam during DAF's production was the hefty check going to Connery, whose participation used up so much budget money that cuts had to be made elsewhere to make up for it. We can see this in the effects, but I'm sure Cubby and the other overseers also had tight control over the money for the production design after seeing how expensive Adam's work was for the last movie he worked on. DAF then feels perhaps the least Adam-like of any Bond movie he led the set design on, but I still find his part in it fascinating and positive.