Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/820551
42 P E R S P E C T I V E | M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 7 Above, left and right: The Kansas farmhouse interior was built onstage at Big Easy Studios in New Orleans. The exterior location was built in 1829 near the small town of Ferriday, Louisiana, two hundred miles north of the New Orleans production office. Below, left and right: A Photoshop ® sketch of the US/Mexico border crossing drawn by Joe Studzinksi. The Art Department transformed a New Orleans levee into a version of the border wall, supposedly in El Paso looking toward Ciudad Juarez. Logan. Two quick weeks of scheduling and prep in Los Angeles, and then the Art Department hit the road, arriving in New Orleans at the beginning of Mardi Gras. This was great for reveling…but not so great for jump-starting a design process that was seriously under the gun. The first order of business was to tackle Logan's hideout, an abandoned smelting plant somewhere in the Mexican desert outside of Ciudad Juarez, which would house wheelchair-bound Charles Xavier (again played by Patrick Stewart), an aging Logan (aka Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman) and the albino mutant tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant). The script called for each to have their own living space, and Production Designer François Audouy fell in love with an actual abandoned copper smelting plant in Deming, New Mexico. For health and safety reasons, the production could not shoot there; the location, however, did serve as great reference material. François originally conceived of Charles' living space as an empty oil or chemical tank with a makeshift elevated floor. After a couple of iterations and some new ideas from François and director James Mangold, the fallen water tank was born. Using reference of fallen tanks from Hurricane Katrina and a few other sources, I gave Set Designer Walter Schneider the task of building a 3D model that could be viewed online while scouting, giving François the ability to shape the interior and exterior simultaneously... and remotely. As soon as the office was opened in New Orleans, Art Director Luke Freeborn assumed the duties of vehicle Art Director in Los Angeles. The key vehicles for the movie had been designed earlier, with the help of Nick Pugh and Paul Ozzimo. Luke shepherded the realization and construction of those designs: three custom futuristic limousines, the Reavers' pickup-truck-like vehicles and their command truck (they are the henchmen/enforcers working for evil cyborg Donald Pierce, played by Boyd Holbrook). It was a sometimes frustrating process, getting custom near-future vehicles (the script says 2029) through the budget and fabrication process on a very ambitious schedule. Scouting for the smelting plant location was still ongoing, while the department addressed the interior of the plant. Based on a thumbnail sketch from François, the space was rough-modeled with the intent that the interiors would be built onstage in New Orleans and all exteriors would be on location. No one knew whether we would be matching an existing exterior or building from scratch, but a design was started that could be applied to either scenario. The film becomes a road movie when Logan is approached by Gabriela Lopez (Elizabeth Rodriguez), a nurse for biotechnology corporation Alkali-Transigen, who wants him to escort her and an eleven-year-old girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to a place in North Dakota called Eden. The shooting schedule had a hard-fixed start date of May 1. With that in mind, Kevin Loo began a 3D model of the casino hotel suite where Logan, Charles and Laura would hole up for a night. This was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom deluxe suite with one whole side facing the exterior gambling town. There was also a bank of