Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1514626
5 2 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 4 I first started talking to Wes Anderson about Asteroid City in the summer of 2020. He was still finishing the script, but it was far enough along that he was ready to start talking about what this town was going to be and where we might go about shooting. The town itself is a fictional place—a setting in the stage play of Asteroid City taking place in the Tarkington Theatre, which itself is part of a teleplay presentation. There are a few layers here and our first conversations revolved around how to make a town that isn't really a place. Should we go to a location in the Southwest? Should we try the Spanish desert—following in the footsteps of many Westerns before? We looked at both, but something wasn't quite right. Being in a real location made it hard to feel the sense of being in an entirely created space. The location versions didn't quite feel like they matched with the stage half of the story. We had to create the space entirely. We started watching movies as reference, studying in particular, the main town set from Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid. The gas station centerpiece of the town is surrounded by layers of forced perspective elements and ultimately, a painted surround. We thought the same tricks would work for us but on a much larger scale and shot outside. We started at first, designing the town to be built on the backlot at Cinecitta in Rome. Unfortunately, the trees and buildings surrounding the lot are tall enough that blocking them made Asteroid City feel more like Asteroid Canyon. We had to move the town somewhere with a low horizon. After a quick recalibration, Wes settled on Chinchón, a historic town on the edge of Madrid. The fields outside of L a y e r e d S t o r y t e l l i n g A S T E R O I D C I T Y B Y A D A M S T O C K H A U S E N , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. SET PHOTO OF THE FORCED PERSPECTIVE HIGHWAY LEAVING TOWN. B. PENCIL SKETCH OF ROCK FORMATION BY TURLO GRIFFIN. C. & D. PROGRESS PHOTOS SHOWING THE ITALIAN SCULPTURE TEAM CARVING ROCK FORMATION MAQUETTES BASED ON TURLO'S PENCIL SKETCHES. A