Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
1 0 4 P E R S P E C T I V E | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 3 Barbie. Away from the DreamHouses, on a slight rise, surrounded by a high dark hedge, it is a house avoided by the beautiful Barbies. But one immediately wants to know what happens in this house of jarred angles, dense with color and pattern. A ghostly remembrance of a classic DreamHouse, now distorted, out of kilter. It is the opposite of the perfection of Barbie's DreamHouse. As Greta referenced, "It's as if you put Jeff Koons, Murakami and Gaudi in a blender." But of course, there is nothing to be afraid of here and there is real heart and community in this Weird Barbie household of Mattel misfits with their terrible clothes, hair and ideas. This house is used for many things, a place of refuge for the rejects, a place of uprising against the Kens and a place of celebration. So, it should not feel gloomy or grim; it is a riot of anarchical fun and color and abstraction; it is mixed up and varied but not a horror show. It still has a patio and a pool, it's just a bit…different. Again huge credit to Eva Kuntz and Jo Finkel for an amazing job done. Beach Imagine swimming in the sea and never getting wet. Water is not real in Barbie Land and perhaps best epitomizes the design challenges on the film. But here is also a massive opportunity for humor, a recognizable parody of everyone's beach experiences. For the production's Barbie reality, we had to build our beach and ocean on a sound stage. Our sky is a massive, perfect painted sky. Our sea? Perfect rolling waves… but static. We magnify the make-believe when we contrast it to the reality of Venice Beach in the real world. Art Director Hugh McClelland did an incredible job wrangling that great pink beach! It had to be so many things, including being three times the size to accommodate filming. It was an amazing feat to technically figure out the approach and then fabulous fun overseeing the physical creation, especially the sculpting of the waves, the seahorses and rolling sand. The various sequences on the beach include the invasion of the Kens (the film's own Private Ryan moment) where instead of landing traditional sea craft, we had our version of horse A. WEIRD BARBIE HOUSE CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY EVA KUNTZ. B. WEIRD BARBIE'S HOUSE INTERIOR. SET PHOTO. C. BARBIE LAND BEACH LAYOUT ILLUSTRATION BY VFX CONCEPT ARTIST GREG FANGEAUX. D. BARBIE LAND BEACH SET PHOTO SHOWING THE SCALED LIGHTHOUSE, THE ROLLING STATIC WAVE AND THE SEAHORSES. A B D C