Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
Katie and I had many conversations like this with Greta prior to preproduction starting. This allowed us to really delve into the script and realize visually what Greta and Noah [Baumbach] had written on the pages. It is not about CGI Barbie, it is about using the classic world of cinema, simpler "in camera" techniques referencing the big sound stage musicals of the 1950s and '60s. Greta wanted a sense of the tactile, the real. The sound stage musicals are a good reference point for this insular world—the films of Ernst Lubitsch are examples of elegant, sophisticated comedies of manners. What we call "Lubitschland" is a world apart, where no characters from these worlds would fit in the real world. Barbie Land is a world apart, too, and quite surreal in its juxtaposition. For example, the DreamHouse in the film personifies that feeling because we took into consideration all the elements of the toy's scale, proportions, openness and Barbie's movements in our designs. But to begin at the beginning, after our initial talks between Greta, Katie and I started by collating many images and, working alongside visual researcher Phil Clark, we had such fun finding the fit. We always cast this initial net wide—and wider still—curating images that were seemingly not relevant, in order to provoke conversations and questions. This was a critical time, where Katie and I talked and talked and found the visual keys, and then we turned to Eva Kuntz, an amazing concept artist who I've worked with on all my films going back to the first Sherlock Holmes. She just completely gets every mad vision I talk about. She is a pivotal person to communicate ideas, the visual explanations go back and forth between us. Eva is absolutely resolute and tireless in her exploration of the concept. She completely came into her own and shone when it came to Weird Barbie's house, understanding my crazy architecture ideas and references. This design was solved early on in development. but as it was the last set to be built, it was a tantalizing carrot for us all to get into at the end of an extraordinary film. Brilliantly overseen by Art Director Jo Finkel. Barbie DreamHouses and Barbie Land Barbie Land was built within the world of a sound stage. The sky is a painted cloth (780 feet x 50 feet); behind a painted cutout of the San Jacinto Mountains set behind separated 3D ground rows reaching 20, 25 and 30 feet, all contained within the 360-degree set. Defining the sense of space and negative space were key: the reflective and framing quality where the views and landscape become the walls; a water slide from floor to floor; an outside lift; and excluded elements (no stairs, no toilet, but there is a shower), no light sources meant not lighting it from a lamp or even the sun. For this last point, it should feel like the lights came on in the studio—endless magic hour in Barbie Land! Defying all logic, physics, time and space, Barbie Land feels wide and perfect, a hyperreal/plasticized world where the lighting is perfect, A. BARBIE DREAMHOUSE STAGE FINAL DRESSING. SET PHOTO. B. STAGE PLAN OF M STAGE FOR BARBIE DREAMHOUSE. COMPOSITE DRAWN BY ART DIRECTOR MARK SWAIN. C. BARBIE DREAMHOUSES. SET PHOTO. D. BARBIE'S DREAMHOUSE INTERIOR. SET PHOTO. E. BARBIE DREAMHOUSE STAGE FEATURING CHELSEA'S TREE HOUSE. A PURE REPLICATION OF THE MATTEL TOY. IT FEATURED AS AN IRONIC "HERITAGE PIECE" PROTECTED BY A PICKET FENCE. A B