The Set Decorator

“I am sure you’ve seen barren sets on empty sound stages come to life under the set decorator’s touch. Compare it to the architect who has completed a house, but it is the interior decorator who breathes life into the rooms.”

--Henry Grace, longtime set decorator at MGM


They report to a budget minded production designer, take their design cues from the pages of a script, accommodate the needs of a director and cinematographer, juggle a variety of decorating demands and often design a fantasy setting all in a day. Their workspace can be the size of a football field on a backlot or in the middle of nowhere on location. Just think of them as the glamorous cousin of the interior designer -- the set decorator.

Set Decorators are part of a creative design team for a film, television, commercial or video and responsible for the overall design and decoration of the sets. This can include everything from furniture and accessory selection to working with furniture craftsman and scenic artists. Their jobs are as diverse as the medium itself  which can range from decorating a high-end interior for a period film to a high-tech lab for CSI:pick a city.

And while their responsibilities are similar to those of interior designers (budgets, fabric selection, floor plans, demanding clients, etc.), the job differs when fantasy has to overstep reality. Such was the case for the Moroccan meets Park Avenue kitchen in A Perfect Murder (1998)-- look closely and you will see those fabulous travertine floors are actually wallpaper and the lampshades throughout the house are cork paper. While some budgets allow visits to the to-the-trade-only design centers, others require scavenger hunts on ebay and visits to the proverbial prop house. (Design concessions are made on every film so I won't spoil anything else for you.)

The sets are a beautifully decorated mixture of antiques, artwork and contemporary furnishings for the world of a Wall Street titan (Michael Douglas) and his heiress/UN translator wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). The completely convincing Fifth Avenue abode was decorated by Beth Rubino (who also gave us Something's Gotta Give, 2003) and of course, the film's interiors were shot on a soundstage.

For those interested in a career as a Set Decorator, a background in interior design and studies in set decoration, production design and filmmaking in general are strongly advised. While it is not a career for everyone -- many find themselves off on location or living on a studio backlot for months on end --  seeing your work on the silver screen can be pretty rewarding.

For more information on Set Decorators, check out the Set Decorators Society.

Photo credits: Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures

Cinema Soundtracks

While I admittedly will see just about any movie to check out the sets, I have also been

known to race out of the theater to buy the soundtrack too. Here are a few of my favorite film soundtracks (some classic and some quirky but  always great for background music). I would love to hear your picks ...

A Man and A Woman

Almost Famous

August Rush

Best of James Bond

Bridget Jones Diary

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Chinatown

Cinema du Monde

Cinema Italiano

Cinema Paradiso

Dances with Wolves

Disclosure

Doctor Zhivago

Fabulous Baker Boys

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Gone with the Wind

Good Night, and Good Luck

Havana

Indecent Proposal

John Barry Moviola

La Vie En Rose

Legends of the Fall

Love Affair

Love Story

Mamma Mia

Manhattan

Marie Antoinette

Married Life

Message in a Bottle

Moonstruck

Mulholland Falls

North by Northwest

Only You

Out of Africa

Paris je t'aime

Sex and the City

Sneakers

Something's Gotta Give

Somewhere in Time

Sunset Boulevard

The Graduate

The Holiday

The Reel Quincy Jones

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Way We Were

Thomas Crown Affair (original and sequel)

Tortilla Soup

Twenty First Century Film Classics

Unfaithful

Varese Sarabande 25th Anniversary

Waiting To Exhale

West Side Story

The Designing Director

One of my favorite writer/directors in Hollywood is Nancy Meyers who gave us the romantic comedies What Women Want, The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give.

Her female characters are smart yet vulnerable, funny yet quirky and always classically chic. A Meyers film will almost certainly have a powerful woman, a love triangle and to-die-for interiors.

Besides being a master with the pen and the camera lens, she is a devoted design devotee as well. Her imprint is seen in every painting, club chair and window treatment from the Los Angeles bungalow of character Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) in The Holiday to Erica Barry's (Diane Keaton) Hamptons beach house from SGG. Both films were huge hits with the design community (and the general public), both widely envied and ultimately copied.

Many of SGG's furnishings came from Clarence House, Lee Jofa, Mimi London and Rug Loft. Laura Holland, Director of Marketing Services for Hickory Chair, noted Erica's Chelsea Bed from their Thomas O'Brien Collection was very popular with their customers (the film's designers requested the nail head trim be left off). Incidentally, the Chelsea Bed gets another fifteen minutes of fame as designer Michael Smith has ordered it for none other than the Obamas in the White House.

Inspired by designer Marcel Wolterinck's book, In/Ex (Antique Book Collectors Club, 2005, available on Amazon), the tailored contemporary interiors of The Holiday give new meaning to the terms sleek and serene.

Rooms in earth tones of gray, brown and green mixed with modern furnishings for a Spanish Colonial house in Brentwood (via soundstage) fit the bill as Meyer's wanted "Cameron's home to be classic and elegant and only slightly edgy and young."

Along with production designer Jon Hutman and set decorators Beth Rubino of SGG, Cindy Carr, Anna Pinock and David Martin Smith on The Holiday, Meyer's own interior designer James Radin of Los Angeles was a contributor to the design aesthetic as well. For more of his cinema style interiors, see the website www.jamesradin.com.

Meyers is hard at work in New York on her next romantic comedy with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin vying for the attentions of Meryl Streep. Not to divulge any plot lines but I hear there is an architect/character involved -- no doubt there will be a strong design element as well. The film premieres Christmas Day and I can hardly wait.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures, Courtesy of Hickory Chair and The Holiday/David Smith

Many thanks to Jayne Chase for plugging Cinema Style on her radio show A Fashionable Life.

Be sure to check out her fashionable website too!

Cinema Style is ready for its close-up Mr. DeMille

This marks the debut of Cinema Style, my blog that will chronicle, celebrate and detail both the past and present in design, inspiration and trends in the movies.

The spark of this idea actually came to me in the eighties (long before blogs were invented) when a client asked me to duplicate a movie interior. The set in question was the sensual yet elegant Park Avenue via Queens soundstage apartment in the Tom Berenger-Mimi Rogers film Someone To Watch Over Me.  I didn't have to rent the video as the sets left an indelible image. Of course today the over-the-top master bedroom is a bit dated but gives us a great snapshot of Manhattan interiors during what I call the "Bonfire of the Vanities" period -- a time when Wall Street, abundance and chintz were king.

Since this time  I have married my two passions of film and design into a writing career, covering the topic of film and television production design and set decoration for both national and international magazines. I have also been working for the past several years on a book on the history of Hollywood art direction for Harper Collins (one of these days it will be finished). My travels have taken me everywhere from a backlot in Burbank to Fox Studios in Australia and it has been quite an education.  

While movies are one of the greatest forms of escape, they also entertain, educate and in many instances, set the trends.  In future posts,  I plan to cover the influence and inspiration of the cinema through set decoration (think interior design), architecture, fashion and style.

Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures