Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/859699
50 P E R S P E C T I V E | S E P T E M B E R / O C TO B E R 2 0 1 7 features, which we were able to avoid shooting, but there's a decorative steel grate half way down the main room which was the backdrop for an establishing shot that I wanted to make unique to this film. I ordered some vintage postcards of Hawaiian airports, and found decorative motifs on an airport café, which were translated into a metallic ALOHA and flowers. They helped transform the generic airport into the world of Battle of the Sexes. Because much of the film takes place during tennis matches, I worked with Jon, Valerie and Linus to find locations which either grew or diminished in scale throughout the story so that the courts would be easily visually distinguished from each other. It was difficult finding period-correct tennis courts with the correct colors. The bright blue of modern-day tennis courts has only come about in recent years; an early '70s court was either green or green-and-clay. In a few cases, we had to paint over the blue of the contemporary tennis courts. For the Virginia Slims Tour, which is mostly told in a montage, an idea was drawn from the actual tour that made the process easier. The tour's promoters used one banner with a crude logo of the Virginia Slims name which they took from city to city, just adding the name of the city right over the banner. I used our banner in exactly the same way. "Any decade contains many worlds. The story and characters often reveal how a time period can best be represented. BATTLE OF THE SEXES takes the audience into the world of professional athletes in the 1970s, leading a relatively unglamourous life in motels and sports arenas. I wanted to represent the 1970s through the film's narrative, not specific props." This page, top: The Ontario Airport, dressed as Honolulu, for a scene where the Virginia Slims women's tennis team watches the "Mother's Day Massacre," at which Bobby Riggs easily beat Margaret Court, the top female tennis player in the world at that time. The ALOHA and flower metal cut outs were inspired by a vintage airport postcard. Opposite page, top: Set construction in progress on Stage 10 at Fox Studios where all of the film's stage production was done. The photograph shows Bobby Riggs' platformed office set. Center: The men's locker room was shot on location in the men's room at Ambassador College in Pasadena. The dark marble was the key element, important in contrasting the men's grooming rituals with the different women's rituals at the fleshy pink hair salon.