Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1514626
6 0 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 In the fall of 2020, Nia DaCosta was tapped as the youngest director and the first Black woman to helm a Marvel film. The film was to be centered around Captain Marvel, a female galaxy-hopping superhero. Nia and I had just finished Candyman and had really enjoyed being a creative team. When she approached me about working with her on the film, I had never even considered the possibility of designing a colossal studio film and I wasn't sure it was something that I even wanted to do! My admiration of Nia though made me pause and consider the opportunity. Not many women are given the chance to direct or design big-budget tent-pole films and the list of women who have been the Production Designer for sci-fi or fantasy films is even smaller. The film, entitled The Marvels, would also be led entirely by a diverse female cast—a trio of powerful women exploring and battling in other worlds—and debut Marvel's first female villain. The ideas that came in the synopsis given to me for the pitch were surreal and, frankly, very weird. It had a lightness and fantasticalness that felt less like a superhero film and more like a space opera in the vein of The Fifth Element—a film that I have always loved. I came to realize that it was a challenge and an opportunity that was full of potential. A challenge it most certainly was. Visual development meetings were scheduled every two weeks for review with "The Trio"—Marvel Executives Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso and Louis D'Esposito—in which I presented about two hundred or so photo-real illustrations of new sets in each meeting. At the height of preproduction in the UK at Pinewood Studios, we had around sixty members of the Art Department with fourteen Art Directors and thirteen Concept Artists working across all sides of the globe. For someone who was used to working with an Art Department of about five or six people, working with such a massive team—developing a diverse array of alien architecture and spaceships at a breakneck speed —could be relentlessly exhausting. I very much wanted to create clear visual directions for each of our worlds, with well thought out conceptual A S c i - F i S p a c e R o m p T H E M A R V E L S B Y C A R A B R O W E R , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A A. ILLUSTRATION OF CAROL'S SHIP, A 3D MODEL OF THE DESIGNED SET WAS USED BY PAUL CHANDLER TO CREATE FULLY REALIZED CONCEPT ART.