Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
B A R B I E | P E R S P E C T I V E 1 0 5 pedalos! It really was the beach that had to be everything, but with no real water, sun or sand! Real World/Los Angeles Off to the script's real world, Los Angeles. (The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow!) To shoot the US part of the film, the production landed in the most capable hands of Supervising Art Director Andrew Max Cahn, Art Director Gordon Stotz, set decorator Ashley Swanson, and supervising location manager Robin Citrin, who looked after us brilliantly. It was such a great pleasure to work again in the US with such talented, professional and personable teams. And it was also such a treat to be able to look at the frame and not to see pink! E. MATTEL BOARDROOM CONCEPT ART BY ANDREI RYABOVICHEV. F. MATTEL BOARDROOM. SET PHOTO. G. LUCKY VENICE STORE LOCATION VENICE BEACH LA. PRODUCTION STILL.. H. GRAFFITI PALM TREES LOCATION VENICE BEACH LA. PRODUCTION STILL. The film shot three weeks in California, twenty or so locations, the hero location being the exterior version of the Mattel Corporation HQ in Downtown L.A. at the Bank of America building (the interiors were builds back in the UK). And Venice Beach is where Barbie and Ken arrive as complete aliens. I loved the fact that the first things our heroes see are Venice's fabulous graffiti palm trees, the complete antithesis of Barbie Land beach. Mattel HQ In Greta's mind, this set lay halfway between Barbie Land and the real world/L.A., visually a bridge between these places and a stylized part of the classic movie musical world. Described in the script as being a "six-year-old girl's pink and fluffy heart," at Mattel is where everything really starts breaking down and the real world gets weirder because Barbie appears. There is even the ghost of Ruth Handler (the creator of the first Barbie in 1959), who "keeps an office" on the seventeenth floor. Another set in this Mattel sequence, wonderfully realised by brilliant Art Director Joe Howard. The design team wanted the "perfect" representation of Los Angeles outside the windows from the top floor, so (with many apologies to Los Angeles) we played fast and loose with the city's architecture and layout, nudging the Hollywood Sign closer and slightly to the left, representing downtown as the Emerald City and putting Warner Bros. Discovery center E F G H