Madison Stephens (17) from Film in Revolt spoke with Fiona Crombie, Oscar nominee and winner of a BAFTA, for her work as the production designer for The Favourite. They spoke about her work on the film, her inspirations, and what led her into the film industry.
Hi Fiona, I’d like to start with a broader question: what has been your career trajectory so far, and what advice would you give to someone wanting to work in production design?
Well, I trained in theatre, so I was a theatre designer for ten years in Australia. And then I started doing short films, video clips, and commercials – anything I could get experience on – to learn about filmmaking because I didn’t go to film school. It took a few years; I remember thinking ‘ I’d like to move out of theatre and become a film designer’ around 2005 – but in reality, I didn’t make my first feature until 2010. I was also a costume designer for theatre, so I was hedging my bets – I was designing costumes and sets, and also doing production design. Even for my first feature, I did both costume design and production design.
I think there are benefits of going to a film school, but I don’t know what that’s like so I can’t really speak of that. But the most important thing is to get practical experience, and also to try to find a community of people – you end up becoming a little gang – and then you can travel together. My theatre friend (I went to school with him) was Justin Kurzel, and I worked on his video clips, TV commercials and his short film. And then when he had his first feature film, it was just natural that he asked me. So we spent years doing our learning together, and then I continued to work with him. I think getting a little community together is good.
In terms of The Favourite – my understanding is that the film was shot predominantly at Hatfield House. Would you say your designs built themselves around the location?
Oh, absolutely. Getting figures out probably doesn’t mean very much – it also sounds like an awful lot of money when I say that I had just over a million pounds, it sounds like ‘oh wow you could buy a really amazing house with a million pounds’ – but in film terms that’s not a lot of money, because that covers every single thing that’s part of the art department. So we were a low budget film, and so I had to work out how to capitalise on that location, and how to make the story work – because you can’t walk into Hatfield House and tell a story that we told; you know, there are no secret passageways, secret doors, or servant quarters. There’s any number of things that don’t exist at Hatfield House, but to make the film feel bigger, I had to take the best bits of Hatfield and grow them. And it’s a really amazing location! So I copied lots of things, I copied the wood panelling and put in fake walls.
We were kind of invisible – I mean, I know that we’re not invisible because everybody’s talked about the design – but in reality, a lot of the actual design elements are invisible in that you don’t know that there are fake walls, and you don’t know where the passageways are.
And how did you create a balance between design and historical accuracy – which did you find more important, or more valuable?
In many ways, we were trying to create an atmosphere, and we were trying to create an environment for that story. So that story is historically inaccurate; it’s very anachronistic. We kept saying to ourselves, and Yorgos kept saying: ‘how does anyone know how people spoke’. Just because the written word is so formal, we assume people spoke with formality, but in reality, they probably didn’t. None of us really know what went on – but we do know that certain things hadn’t been invented, like wheelchairs weren’t invented. So, we invented those things; it was much more important to facilitate the story than it was to be historically accurate. The most important thing is that it felt like a time, a consistent time. Yorgos never even gave us a date, so we could do our own thing.
I also heard that the whole film was shot with authentic lighting; how did you navigate that?
We did two main things; one obviously was supplying all the candles and working out how to believably put those candles in rooms; historically they wouldn’t have had that many candles. And also, I didn’t want it to look messy; I wanted it to very compositional. There are also practical things with a location like Hatfield House – like you can’t have wax going on the floor and you can’t, you know, set the house on fire! So, you have to have a certain amount of distance to a wall or a tapestry.
The other thing we did – which I think was one of the best choices – was that we stripped the floors, so that there was nothing soft on the floors, so that the would reflect light, we made sure everything was shiny, we used fabrics that kind of had a ‘kick’, we put in lots of mirrors, we used a lot of marble-top tables – all these things that bounce light. It all was contributing to illuminating the space. Plus, we always had fires; every single scene I think, there was a fire going, which does help to throw light into a room.
Were there any other artists, photographers or films that guided your artistic decisions?
Yes. Yorgos told me to watch a couple of films that were his references; they were Cries and Whispers, which is a Bergman film, a period film – but again it’s got a very contemporary feel about it. The other thing about Cries and Whispers is the camera, the way that the camera was being used in extreme close-ups. And we did also look at The Draughtsman’s Contract, which again is a period film, but it’s got a contemporary vibe about it. They were the main two. Lots of people have compared the film to Barry Lyndon, but we actually didn’t look at Barry Lyndon, it wasn’t something that we talked about.
And then for me, I always do a massive amount of research – I have a person who I work with on every project, who pulls all my references. There was something interesting to me about the formality of rooms. There’s a photographer, called Candida Höfer, who I looked at – and her stuff doesn’t necessarily directly speak to The Favourite, but I love the presentational qualities of her photography and the architecture. We also used hand-drawn pictures of rooms from the 1830s – like architectural drawings, and we were interested in how empty the rooms were. They were almost educational – educational is the wrong word – but they’re not expressive, they’re just simple line drawings showing how rooms were laid out. There was one drawing of the Cartoon Gallery – and we shot in the Cartoon Gallery – so it was just interesting to see how little furniture there really was, how bare those rooms were. Because so often in period films it’s an impulse to make everything frilly and fill it with stuff, but we wanted a lot of empty space in our film.
I’ve seen lots of Yorgos Lanthimos’s films – he’s such an interesting director What was it like to work with him?
I think he’s completely fascinating; I like him enormously. He’s got a real warmth about him – which is interesting because his films can be seen as so cold. I think he is extremely observational of humans and has a very interesting take on them. In terms of our collaboration, he was unbelievably trusting – he is across the board. He has this thing, I think, where he hires the person who he thinks will do the right job, and then is really hands-off. Whether it’s hair, makeup, costume design, even performance, he’s just standing back. It’s very minimal; he’s certainly not standing over you telling you what to do, at all. Which is good!
So many scenes in this film were unique – as they always are in his films – which was your favourite?
I loved the kitchen scene – there’s a scene where Abigail is washing up and she’s asked to bring the bandage box, and you follow her from the kitchen all the way up into the Queen’s bedroom. And I remember thinking – when I was watching the film – that that was so wonderful because you get a full travel. I also remember thinking that the spa scene was an important beat for the film. And we really pushed hard to have enough money to build that set because we really didn’t have much money. And also, that dance! Yorgos had shown me some of the choreographer’s work, but I had no idea that the dance was going to be like that. We were all hidden up in the gallery, so you couldn’t see us, and we were just in hysterics. And they did it so many times, they must have been so tired!
Finally, to finish up with more personal question, what was a film that made an impact on you during your youth?
Oh, I think seeing Orlando – which actually was shot at Hatfield House funnily enough. I remember seeing that film and thinking ‘ah! This is possible in cinema.” This is such a complicated film, such a complicated story to tell in film, and I remember being excited that you could have that kind of artistry in film. So many films have influenced me, I’ve learnt from so many of them, but I do remember that one in particular. Also, My Brilliant Career – I remember seeing that when I was a kid, an Australian film – and just again thinking ‘wow’. I watched that maybe forty-five times!
I’ll have to add that to my list! Thank you so much for speaking with me – it’s really been the highlight of my week. And, congratulations on the film, and the BAFTA, and the Oscar nomination!