Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1485934
The final member of the team was famed chef Dominque Crenn of the three-star Atelier Crenn in San Francisco. Chef Crenn and I spent weeks with her pastry chef Juan Contreras going back- and-forth over the design of the courses. While we agreed they needed to parlay Slowik's internal story, at first we didn't see eye to eye. These are chefs of the world's highest proficiency, but their focus is on both food and taste. Taste just can't be experienced on film. Chef Crenn would later say we had to learn to dance together, combining the storytelling of cinema and food. I learned the importance of vessels—the plates on which dishes are served—as an extension of the dish themselves. Prop master Luci Leary and I spent months drawing, casting and welding the vessels to house our courses, and Kendall Gensler, the film's brilliant food stylist, positively dazzled the crew with tricks of the trade. Likewise, chef Crenn and her team ran a two-week bootcamp, scrutinizing the extras for authenticity. By far the most challenging course to design was the desert. Without giving away any surprises, I was tasked with conceiving a 60-foot by 30-foot interactive meal. How could it be sustained for several shoot days? Lindsey and I had a wonderful brainstorming session experimenting with gelatin and powder pigments. We arrived at a resin-dying technique which we mirrored on a separate stage. Hanging GoPros on the ceiling to guide us, we poured real food onto one floor and resin on the other. I stole a technique from live theater, tracing the shapes with color- coded blacklight markers. Each of us wore UV headlamps in our corresponding color, guided by numbers hidden beneath our shapes. The cast and crew watched incredulously as we divided and conquered, wordlessly constructing a Jackson Pollock. We practiced and practiced till we got the install down to minutes. We must have looked insane. Perhaps the greatest surprise designing this film was what happened after. A few months after wrap, chef Crenn called from San Francisco and asked me to redesign her restaurant. "Let's keep dancing together," she said. Talk about art imitating life imitating art, as our fictional restaurant has informed a real one. This was, without a doubt, the happiest film set and the strongest and most creative Art Department I have ever had the joy of working with. Each member imbued the sets with loving detail and unexpected choices. On the last day of shooting, we shot all night till the sun came up. I stumbled home, depressed to be back on earth, certain I'd been in the presence of gods. Let's establish it is impossible to speak about satire without food metaphors. We skewered the culinary industry. It was baked into our design. It was a fundamental ingredient. Please don't spoil the final act. My apologies, it was impossible not to. ADG A. CHEF DOMINQUE CRENN IN THE ART DEPARTMENT. B. DESSERT REHEARSAL. C. SPICE WALL. D. DESSERT. DESIGN LAYOUT. E. SMORES, THE FINAL COURSE. PRODUCTION STILL. A B