Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/859699
Opposite page, top: A white study model by Camille Bratkowski and Alec Contestabile of the hair salon, built on location in vacant raw space on Wilshire Boulevard. Center: A production photograph of the hair salon set, finished and dressed. Bottom: Another production still, this time showing Billie Jean (played by Emma Stone) meeting Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) in the hair salon. Note the set's fleshy pink palette. This page, left: Plan and elevations of the Bonaventure Hotel room and hallway, drawn in Vectorworks ® by Camille Bratkowski, and built on Stage 10 at Fox Studios. Bottom, left and right: A white study model of the Bonaventure Hotel room and connecting hallway sets, again built by Ms. Bratkowski and Mr. Contestabile. This candid photograph of Ms. Becker, hard at work on her phone in the Bonaventure Hotel hallway set, was taken by cinematographer Linus Sandgren. takes the audience into the world of professional athletes in that same era, leading a relatively unglamourous life in motels and sports arenas. I wanted to represent the 1970s through the film's narrative, not specific props. What was the life of these characters really like? For example, the minimalism of their press conferences and the overall shoddiness of the show business hoopla surrounding them not only embodied the period, but was also true to the events as they happened. I was definitely interested in recreating these in a realistic way. The characters in this story––Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs and others––were celebrities and their lives were well-documented in photographs and in news footage. That made the job a little easier. I nearly always start a job discussing the color palette with the director. Honing in on the palette for Battle of the Sexes with directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris was a particularly interesting process because— from the start—we had to incorporate the bright, almost fluorescent, primary and secondary colors that come with the territory of tennis courts and gear. Another important palette decision came from the essence of the story, which is about both the public life of a top woman athlete and the private life of a closeted lesbian discovering her sexuality. Jonathan and Valerie spoke of how they wanted to visually represent the world of the flesh, the flesh of athletes and the flesh of sexuality. For example, they wanted to contrast a scene where Billie Jean's husband Larry was icing her knee with another