Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/916056
P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 8 79 wanted the film to be grounded in the reality of early 1960s cold war America. Once the base layers were set, I was able to visually enhance the environments to help define the characters and the fantastical romance of the story. COLOR Color is very important in this film and is even mentioned in dialogue. "Teal is the color of the future" is quoted by a Cadillac salesman to Michael Shannon's character, and you will see that teal permeates all of the accent colors in the government laboratory facilities. The film opens with an underwater scene in Elisa's apartment, which is dominated by a multitude of cyan and dark blue hues. Golds, beiges and browns permeate the more empathetic characters' apartments. Red is used sparingly in only special instances involving the heroine's character. THE LAB The main scripted location was the OCCAM science and research facility. A kind of future-thinking government facility, which felt like it should be housed in a Brutalist concrete building, as was often the style of governmental buildings from the 1950s to the 1970s. My focus fell on the Andrews building at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. Although the building was finished in 1964, it was still an appropriate style for the period, and provided interior spaces to expand on the stage sets to create the world of the film. I originally showed a reference picture of an abandoned tile clad French sanatorium as a starting point to designing the "Lab" proper. I wanted to incorporate a lot of tile and concrete into the creature's lab and tank as it was meant to be a humid and wet environment. The original circular arches from the reference evolved into what was built for the film after deciding on the University of Toronto location. The language of the various styles of poured concrete board formwork was replicated by Head Scenic Artist and longtime collaborator Matthew Lammerich. The idea of the lab was that a pressurizing tank and pool had been adapted from previous research use to house "the Asset" (the merman creature). He had been captured in the deep Amazon, where he had been worshiped like a god by the local indigenous tribe. He had to be transported in a pressurized portable tank by ship and sea to New York, and then trucked to the facility at the beginning of the story. Scripted as an "iron lung," I decided to reference actual iron lungs from the 1950s as inspiration, even though this involved pressurized water and not air. The idea was that this portable rolling tank was built to mate with a larger steel pressurized chamber in the lab that had a connection to an exposed pool or tank. This chamber's design was influenced by a hyperbaric F. Finished "iron lung" for transporting "the Asset" from the Amazon. Heavily distressed from the long journey to the US. This key prop with working gauges was modelled in Rhino by Assistant Art Director Jane Stoiacico and built by Walter Klassen FX. It played both horizontally on its wheels and then vertically with the cover removed and "plugged" into the larger permanent tank in the lab. D E F