Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512164
1 2 0 P E R S P E C T I V E | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 3 Director Bradley Cooper had a clear vision from the start that the movie was at its core a love story, an epic romance with a beating heart, rather than a routine biopic that checked all the boxes of the iconic musician's life. He compared the movie to an orchestral piece of music in terms of its rhythm, with crescendos and rests, and varied tempos. I often thought back on this metaphor during my and Bradley's early conceptual discussions about tone, palette, locations, and when we were looking at reference imagery. The idea of the movie flowing from scene to scene as a piece of music flows from one passage to the next was a touchstone during the entire production process. Bradley's leadership throughout the project (we first started talking about the movie before COVID, which pushed us by a full year, so we had a lot of time to incubate our ideas) was critical for every department. He was, like the conductor of an orchestra, blending the work of so many individuals to create one unified whole, a whole greater than all the parts. His engagement in the material and interest in every aspect of the design was probably heightened by the fact that he was A V i s u a l S y m p h o n y M A E S T R O B Y K E V I N T H O M P S O N , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A