Under the Gunn
Posted in: AnimationMon 10th Nov 2014, by Trevor Hogg | Peoplestudios
All images © Copyright Marvel Studios
“I was given a tremendous amount of freedom and encouraged throughout the whole process,” states Charles Wood who was the responsible for the production design featured in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). “Marvel and James Gunn [Slither] wanted to do something bold, new and adventurous. When we started the process quite some time ago we produced a large amount of artwork to try to establish the look. Everyone would say, ‘Push it. Keep going. Let’s see what’s around the corner.’ We were given a plenty of free reign.” Bright colours appear throughout the space opera which was helmed and co-written by Gunn. “I’ve rarely worked on a film where a director had such a clear vision of what he wanted the look of the film to be. From day one James wanted to explore the use of colour. We spoke about it a lot, particular colours and colour combinations. There would be one particular colour combination for one particular world or environment. Quill’s [Chris Pratt] ship itself had a particular colour arrangement of turquoises, blues and oranges. The prison systems were much more yellow, Ronan was in a much darker, greasier pallet and the Nova Corp was another colour system also.”
James Gunn
“When James and I first met at his house in Los Angeles, he gave me a rough outline of what the film was visually,” states Charles Wood. “James wanted us to build sets that were realistic enough so when you stood in or worked within them they were plausible.” Previs had a critical role in the design process. “We’d come up with a basic concept of the set to see if James was happy with it and if he was then we’d put that concept into a model. The team would takeover our 3D model sketches and put them into their previs models. The film was carefully planned to establish what needed to be physically built and what would be extended and changed using Visual Effects.” Rocket and Groot had to be accounted for when constructing sets. “The only way to do that is through previs because they would put the characters into your environments. Using the prison as an example, that was built as a complete 3D model and as it was developed we were constantly reminded of where Rocket and Groot needed to be. Critical things like step heights needed to be considered. But we also had to be careful not to design it too conveniently as that would lead to an unnatural performance by the character.”
“Xandar needed to be completely different from the world of Morag in the opening scene,” explains Charles Wood. “We decided early on to do something watery. We designed the large island in the shape of the Nova Corp symbol. We looked at the Great Barrier Reef. From there, we tried to come up with a variety of different building shapes and spaces and started development. It was something that needed to serve well for the big action sequence in the third act with the Dark Aster crashing into the city.”
The original concept for Morag was that it was a drained ocean. “The idea being that the Orb had been in this temple under the water for hundreds if not thousands of years,” explains Wood. “We ended up looking at a lot of geology and desert landscapes. We wanted something white and bone-dry. We ended up taking a lot of our reference from the White Desert in Egypt. We looked all over the world and took hints from everywhere. James wanted to create this crazy architecture through strange geological formations. The sky was also important. We had a lot of concept artists come up with these beautiful purple and off-white pallets for that particular world. We built quite a lot of that in the UK on a back lot which was surrounded with green screen and we configured it for other parts of that sequence as well.”
A 360 degree set known as the Kyln was built consisting of three levels, tons of steel, and a system of corridors connected to a main area. “It was a prison in space,” notes Charles Wood of the largest environment physically constructed for the production which was supposed to be massive, hot and full of outlaws. “We built up to about 36 feet of it and then the VFX team continued the set extension [another 200 feet]. All of the corridors that led into the main space were modular so we could rearrange them into other corridors systems.”
On the outer fringes of the universe is a port of call and observatory for intergalactic travellers. “Knowhere was heavily influenced by the comics,” remarks Wood. “It had to be completely bonkers. The idea is that the city you see is within the inner cranium of a [decapitated] Celestial. It’s a tiered city. We looked at lots of oil rigs and places like Rio where you get a high density of population. We tried to bring a lot of life, colour, interest and fun into it.
“For many of the environments in the film, James always wanted to try to evoke a sense of history.” remarks Charles Wood. “The Boot of Jemiah was an old bar that had been around for hundreds of years. It was a bit Moorish in its concept, had a lot of tile in it, it was supposed to be a dangerous place.” Located in Knowhere close to the Boot of Jemiah was The Collector’s Lab. “It was one of our smaller set pieces; we put a lot of set extensions into that. The Collector’s Lab had to work alongside Benicio Del Toro’s [The Usual Suspects] character, who was one of the craziest in the film; he was brilliant in the movie. It is a spacious environment which evokes this enormous never ending collection of pieces and artefacts that he had collected from the Universe.” The much sought after MacGuffin of the story almost became a part of the expanding collection. “The Orb went through many different concept stages. That was something which from the get-go had to look intrinsically valuable and mystical to an extreme. It’s probably the size of a large grapefruit; that was something which needed to be layered when you looked into it, like a beautiful piece of jewellery.”
With any adventure tale that unfolds out in the universe, spaceships are needed to be able to get around from one planet to another. “The Milano was something I enjoyed more than any of them,” reveals Charles Wood when discussing the craft piloted by the protagonist Peter Quill. “It was the first thing that James spoke to me about which was where he wanted the cockpit to be and the basic layout of the ship. We talked a lot about the early space race missions. Things like the world of Chuck Yeager, and the NASA missions. The idea with that ship was that it needed to be every boy’s dream. The Milano was a proper rocket ship which had parts from the past. It had big engines. The Milano was showy and retro, full of leather, chrome and cushions.”
An imposing vehicle was the one commanded by the nefarious Ronan (Lee Pace). “The Dark Aster was a challenge because it had to be a different thing from the Milano,” states Wood. “It was a complete 180 degrees from that. The Dark Aster was the one which we scratched our heads on for quite a while; that was based on a bull’s horn in its original idea. We kept doing many versions of it but we liked its severity and scale. We tried hard to do shapes that hadn’t been seen in other films.” The spacecraft took inspiration from Brutalistic architecture. “There was a particular concrete structure that exists somewhere in the Soviet Union, it may even be part of a war memorial. James looked at it and straightaway loved its weight and how solemn the massive piece of concrete felt. The ship developed from that.”
The Necrocraft came from looking at the Dark Aster as a starting point,” states Charles Wood. “We tried to figure out what the building material would have been. We looked at a lot of broken stone finishing, carbon, and coal. The outline of the Necrocraft came from a particular drawing that we did right at the beginning of the show. James and the studio liked its shape and silhouette. It was something you could play against the more manufactured vehicles like the pods or Milano. When you saw the aerial battles in the film you could easily understand what you’re looking at and who the good and bad guys are.”
Several artists worked on the Eclector. “That was supposed to be more like a junkyard type ship. It’s an inside out ship, mainly a flying combustion engine. The Eclector needed to look crazy. It needed to capture the strange character of Yondu [Michael Rooker] and his henchmen. It’s allied in our story to the Milano, meaning that Quill and the Ravagers are from one cultural background. It was the greasy and stripped down version of what the Milano would have been.”
“We had a great graphics team on the film from early in pre-production and it was something that informed many things in the film,” states Charles Wood. “Often in these types of films it’s all green screen and then laden in post, but we did a lot of the graphics in-camera. There’s benefit for that with lighting and the actors themselves. The graphics built for the character of Peter Quill and the Milano had a particular look and colour system. The graphics for the Ravagers’ ships were a version of that but contained a lot more static and were broken down. The graphics for the Dark Aster were opposite from that. As much as the ships had a concept and a visual language to them, the graphics did too.”
Weapons had to be designed for a CG character and the live-action actors. “We worked for a long time on Quill’s and Rocket’s guns because we knew that they would be featured heavily,” notes Wood. “We tried to come up with silhouettes that hadn’t been used before but also served the purpose of the story. Quill’s character was much more from the Serge Leone world of the Old West with his Colt .45 [at least was our version of it]. Rocket had a fantastic weapon which was far bigger than he was and that was part of the comedy that he could go to an even greater gun.”
“All of our props were built by our fantastic model shop at Shepherd Studios,” remarks Charles Wood. Some of the props were highly detailed and through 3D printing you can obtain a level of accuracy that was rather fantastic. It was something we started to use on the film.” The collaboration between the Visual Effects and Art Department was a successful one. “I thought the outer limits of Knowhere with Gamora dying in space and Rocket and Quill going to her, the nebulas created by the visual effects department were done in an extremely beautiful way. I was constantly surprised watching the film that they did take our concept art where it worked, were faithful to it and made it look better than what we passed over to them.” Humour was also a big part Guardians of the Galaxy. “It was trying to find that right tone where you needed all of the humour but not push it too far. We wanted to make it our own film that’s what Marvel wanted us to do. There is interplay with other Marvel movies but Marvel was cognitive of trying to do something new and fresh; they were brilliant that way.”
Constructive Concepts: A conversation with production designer Charles Wood
“I started my career in restoration and conservation of fine arts,” recalls Charles Wood who is responsible for the production design for Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Dr. Strange (2016). A lucky break led the native of England to make the transition into the world of cinema. “A friend of mine was working on a film in Los Angeles back in 1991 called Army of Darkness. I went to help out in the Art Department. My background in restoration and conservation helped me to segue into the film business.” Army of Darkness was a great experience. “Sam Raimi [A Simple Plan] was a brilliant Director to work with; he was everything you expected to be and more. Looking back on it I think to many Army of Darkness became a bit of a classic.”
Fearless (1993) afforded Charles Wood the opportunity to collaborate with Australian filmmaker Peter Weir (The Truman Show). “Fearless was a totally different proposition. I worked with a visual effects company at that time called Introvision. It was a tremendous experience working with somebody of the level of Peter Weir.”
“The Italian Job [2003] was one of my first proper design jobs,” remarks Charles Wood. “It was interesting to me because it was a reboot of an English classic and I thought I was going to get murdered over in London if we did a bad job but it was a well-made film. Working with that highly talented group of actors and Paramount Studios for the first time was wonderful. That was a big movie for me with a lot of challenges.”
“Thor: The Dark World [2013] was my first film working with Marvel,” states Wood. “Working with a studio like Marvel when you first walk through the front door is scary but they were great. They invited me in and helped me feel comfortable quickly; they are very good like that. Thor: The Dark World is a world of gods, demigods and fantastical landscapes and that’s where one can spread your wings and see what you’re made of. I loved making that film.”
As for what is essential to be a successful production designer, Charles Wood remarks, “You have to be completely immersed in it all the time because if you’re not you’ll suffer and so will the film. If you’re willing to give a 1000 per cent all the time then one will get on well within it.” Wood contemplates, “How would I define great production design? When you look at something which you feel has really been able to capture the moment. If the environment surrounding the actors relates to them and the world they’re in then you can relate to them as an audience. A lot of the challenge for production design is trying to make it believable and tangible. Even if it’s unreal to produce something that as an audience you can look at and really believe that it exists. If you can pull that off that’s the best you can do. I love the old classics, particularly Sergio Leone films Once Upon a Time in the West [1968] and Milos Forman films [One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]. The Coen Brothers [Fargo] are brilliant filmmakers and their approach to the look of their films is always something I’ve greatly admired.”
Starting off as a Visual Effects Art Director assisted Charles Wood in creating the production design for Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Thor: The Dark World. “Its been a helpful background because when you start the design of these types of films you need to have an inherent knowledge of visual effects because the worlds of production design and visual effects have a symbiotic relationship, one feeds off the other. I was talking to someone the other day and we were wondering when the time would come where movies didn’t need sets any more. It’s probably a long way off because you’ll always need environments for actors and directors to work within. But I do think that the world of Art Direction and Visual Effects are becoming more allied. I know it’s true because our offices are located closer to each other.”
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