Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1495092
8 2 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 2 3 Babylon follows intersecting stories of multiple characters over a period of time when the movie industry is transitioning from silent films to sound, similarly and intentionally reflecting the same events as the legendary movie musical Singin' in the Rain. When I first met with writer/ director Damien Chazelle, he expressed to me his love of cinema and his love of that 1952 classic. But he also spoke of the challenges and crises that people went through in the late 1920s during this seismic transition, and of wanting an authentic depiction of how the filmmakers grappled with the transition—in a visceral and unapologetic telling of the real pain and heartache that ensued. This was the basis for all of the creative decisions on Babylon. Development got underway, and immediately Damien and I were watching an extensive list of movies spanning film history and sharing thousands of research images. We wanted to push the extremes and emphasize contrasts to show the excess, dirt, opulence and grotesqueries of the world these characters inhabited. We aimed not to do what Hollywood had historically done, which was to negate hardships and ignore hurt in favor of escapism. We had to push the storytelling and the visuals toward a wild narrative that was stranger than fiction…but, based on actual accounts. The crux of our creative conversations was trying to get at the real story of what would later become our shared cultural memory of that time. O p u l e n c e a n d D e b a u c h e r y i n B y g o n e H o l l y w o o d T H E D E S I G N O F B A B Y L O N B Y F L O R E N C I A M A R T I N , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A