I’m not sure whether it is the people, the locations or the story that make them memorable or a combination of all three when magic happens… Mad Max: Fury Road has to be one of them.
When I met Shekhar Kapur the director of Elizabeth… his description was so evocative that I could hear the music immediately.
On Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales we built massive concrete pods with gimbals on which the pirate ships rotate. I know more about concrete pods than I ever thought I’d need to know!
The best accolade for an art director is having people not know that you made the film on a constructed set.
When we started Mad Max: Fury Road I didn’t have any kids and by the time it ended my 12-year old son was one of the War Boys!
In India for the film Lion I was standing on a table in the slums of Kolkata trying to dress hundreds of extras in 80s costumes while calling out instructions to them in Hindi.
Day one on The Island of Dr Moreau … there were no floors in the makeup tent. A tropical downpour meant we were working in a muddy creek, a foot deep at 3am. Good times.
On Mad Max: Fury Road it was a fantastic thing to imagine a world going to hell in a hand basket and re-contextualise the original.
…the opening crash of Max’s car [in Mad Max: Fury Road] before he gets captured… I did the take-off and the crash and it was amazing to be in the exact same car I was in 30 years after the original Mad Max [film].
While prepping for Star Wars: Rogue One, I got to go through the Star Wars archives and play with the props that I saw in the movies when I was five.