Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1043753
3 6 P E R S P E C T I V E | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8 year-old Lewis, how to strike a tone which would satisfy the dual demands of a horror director and a studio known for warming hearts, and how to make the house a character in the film. I had used that reliable pitch for years, but in this case, the house literally comes to life—the stained-glass windows and wallpaper animate, the La-Z-Boy recliner is a favorite pet, and the walls contain a mysterious clock-like mechanism that ticks with a relentless urgency. In short, the house really IS a central character in the film. Eli wanted the town of New Zebedee to convey a sense of classic 1950s warmth and optimism, and the house itself needed to have an inviting sense of comfort on the inside—notwithstanding its overgrown and dilapidated exterior and creepy, antiquated furnishings. The plot follows a shy and bookish ten-year-old orphan named Lewis (Owen Vaccaro), who comes to live with his uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in a scary old Victorian house in an idyllic Midwestern town. From the moment he arrives, Lewis suspects that something's not right. Every surface in the house is covered with clocks, which seem to be concealing some deeper secret. Eventually, Lewis discovers that Jonathan and his neighbor, Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett), have magical powers, which he begs to be taught so that he can help solve the mystery that threatens to destroy the world. At Eli's suggestion, I looked at a lot of haunted house movies—from Robert Wise's The Haunting to Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands. I was surprised to discover that the houses themselves are not inherently scary—the mood and tone tend to be driven by dramatic lighting and suspenseful action and cinematography. Across the genre, Victorian houses seem to lend themselves most readily to haunting. After some research, I learned that the connotation of Victorian architecture as dark and spooky began in the 1950s, as new materials and technologies changed the contemporary ideal of domestic comfort and security. Colorfast fabrics, carpets and wallcoverings allowed homes to be flooded with light. Older homes with heavy curtains were perceived as dingy, outmoded and frightening. The search began for shooting locations among the usual suspects of rebate-friendly states that could double as Michigan. Fantastic locations were found in Pittsburgh for both the house and the town of New Zebedee, but due to a delay in the ratification of the state budget (which included the rebate for this film), the production was forced to shift gears and find a new shooting location with only ten weeks of preproduction left before shooting. With strong support from line producer Mark McNair, and from the production team at Amblin, the production ended up (perhaps inevitably) in Atlanta, where the stars aligned for a second time and the key locations fell into place as readily as they had in Pittsburgh, thanks to the efforts of the Georgia Film Commission, location manager Brad Smith and his strong team. The house and the town locations were found in Newnan, which is about thirty minutes south of Atlanta. I was fortunate to be able to bring my key Art Department from Los Angeles, led by Supervising Art Director Dawn Swiderski. Dawn and I had worked together many years ago on a Lawrence Kasdan film called Mumford, when she was a Set Designer. Though she has moved up through the ranks in the intervening years, she has not lost the fastidious attention to detail that she mastered on the boards. This allows her to not only organize the smooth and efficient flow of drawings from the Art Department to construction, but to genuinely engage with the other designers in their creative processes. Dawn divided the work among Set Designer Paul Sonski, who took the lead on the house interior, along with Thomas Minton and Bria Kinter. Art Directors Andres Cubillan and Tristan Bourne handled the practical locations, and Art Director Walter Martishius took charge of the clockworks set where the final sequence of the movie takes place. I was able to find three amazing Illustrators to translate my SketchUp models into richly detailed renderings. Fernando Acosta, Jamie Rama and Andrew Kim each managed to bring their personal styles into a dramatic and evocative style that became the visual style of the film. A. ILLUSTRATION OF THE FRONT HALLWAY BY FERNANDO ACOSTA. B. PRODUCTION PHOTO OF THE FRONT HALLWAY. STAGE SET AT ATLANTA METRO STUDIOS.