Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490572
Spaces appear detached from both structural soundness and reality. Beyond merely shape and color, this world had to embrace the lack of a sense of direction and gravity. It encapsulated the illusion of suspension, a connection to environment, contemplation over stability and symmetry. For some, the more separated in time you are from a memory, the more subjective it becomes, and so the creative team followed this in form and structure. The main Talokan set, Namor's throne room, maintained this idea of memory as form, inspired by the great temples of Palenque (The Temple of Inscriptions), the walls bear the story of the travels of the Talokanil in Mayan hieroglyphs, the gestures of shapes reminiscent of Chichen Itza, Tulum and Tikal. His throne seat, a Megalodon jaw with jade teeth, features a hieroglyph carved into the bone which reads, "This Jade Tooth Bites." Many Maya Ajaws associated themselves with the powerful, semi- divinity of sharks (Xoc in Mayan, pronounced shohk) by incorporating them into their names. Shark teeth have been found in early Maya going back to 100 CE. Namor sits in the core of that power. This is not to say that the ocean played no part in dictating the design. The Talokanil settled in the Abyssal zone of the Puerto Rican Trench, and our use of hard sci-fi dictated necessities such as warmth, light, transportation, sustenance, shelter, protection and safety, both tangible and intangible. Each of these areas were also necessary to research, understand, design and build into the language of the aesthetic. Wakanda Through memory, we were able to capture the protopian values of community, tradition, ritual, food and family that reflect Wakanda. Ryan and I talked extensively about how we might extend the Production Design in the world of Wakanda. A lot of the world building had a foundation from the previous movie. The design language, the costumes, the tribes and their districts, the capitol of Golden City, the palace, and a good deal of the Wakandan technology had been developed. We were able to refer to the guide created from the first film as a foundation. This story was about the transitions of grief, overcoming loss and healing. We wanted to build those elements into the design world in Wakanda. All this combined, of course, with lighting and camera lenses, such as using anamorphic lenses and atmosphere to visually connect the fog of grief, the desire for revenge and the journey to healing by distorting the edges of the frame and distorting the clarity in any given space. I knew we were going to open in Shuri's lab, a scientific and technological design center, and then cut directly to T'Challa's wake in the Sacred Grove, a lush green forest where the spirits of the ancestors lived. Shuri in her lab, trying desperately to heal her sick brother, is surrounded by glass B C A. NAMOR'S THRONE. SKETCH BY HANNAH BEACHLER. B. HANNAH BEACHLER ON NAMOR'S THRONE C. THRONE MEGALODON JAW. HIEROGLYPH READS "THIS JADE TOOTH BITES." SET PHOTO. A