Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/747534
P E R S P E C T I V E | N OV E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6 73 If the film took place in the 1970s, the Trolls would be the hippies, living in nature, sleeping in yurts, living communally, probably vegetarians creating macramé plant hangers. On the other side are the villains in the story, the Bergens. The Bergens are more like the grotesque monster Trolls from Nordic folklore that live under bridges. They are human scale, giants to the six-inch-high hero Trolls. They are a miserable lot, unhappy and unpleasant. Bergens eat Trolls every year on a holiday called Trollstice. They eat Trolls to ingest and feel their happiness, even for the short time that the feeling lasts. In the 1970s, the Bergens would be the polyester-wearing, shag carpet, brutalist types, living in suburbia, littering, eating fast food and polluting the air, really miserable and relatable. They'd probably smoke like chimneys too. To evoke this idea in the Production Design, I dug into the past, pulling in all the shag carpet, velvet wallpaper, avocado-green appliances, Formica, fondue pots, green bubble glass and velvet paintings I could find. And if that wasn't creepy enough, we combined it with a storybook, medieval village vibe and monster flare inspired by the work of the New York neo-expressionist artist Philip Guston. This mash-up of visual ideas became the basis for the look of Bergen Town, purposefully in direct contrast to Troll Village. Bergen Town's color is also based on the '70s palette we know and love: burnt orange, gold and avocado greens. Black is introduced into the palette for the first time when we first see the Bergens. Before that, the lighting is very high-key, nothing goes very dark in Troll Village. Unlike the Troll forest, every surface in Bergen Town is real: Formica is Formica, metal is metal, pavement is pavement and cinder block is cinder block. The only felted element in Bergen Town is the Troll tree in the center of town and the skin of the Bergens. Their skin is less velvety and translucent than the Trolls, it's more rough and woolly, like Kermit the Frog. We wanted to stay comedic and as light as possible; eventually, the audience needs to love the Bergens, they have to be redeemable. The wonderfully ugly, funny designs for the Bergen characters were imagined by Craig Kellman as monsters in fancy '70s clothing. We discovered that if they were covered in realistic skin and animated realistically, they became grotesque Opposite page, top to bottom: A visual development sketch of the Bergens, giant monsters who feast on Trolls in order to enjoy fleeting tastes of their joy, drawn by Ritchie Sacilioc. Avner Geller's design for Bergen Town Castle. A frame capture of the finished Bergens. This page, top to bottom: An environment exploration drawing by Alex Puvilland of Bergen Town. Two sketches by Peter Zaslav, a color key for Bergen Town, and his lighting development sketch for the town. Timothy Lamb drew a separate color key for the coloring up Bergen Town at the film's finale.