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<title>Production design of “The Penguin” – interview with Kalina Ivanov</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/08/15/production-design-of-the-penguin-interview-with-kalina-ivanov.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 16 Aug 2025 03:06:56 +0000</pubDate>
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<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Kalina Ivanov. In this interview, she talks about what production design is, our need to tell stories, the meteoric rise of episodic productions over the last decade, how she sees generative […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome <a href="https://www.kalinaivanov.com/"><strong>Kalina Ivanov</strong></a>. In this interview, she talks about what production design is, our need to tell stories, the meteoric rise of episodic productions over the last decade, how she sees generative AI, and what keeps her going. Between all these and more, Kalina dives deep into her work on “The Penguin”.</p>
<p>This interview is the first part of a special initiative – a collaboration with the <a href="https://www.productiondesignerscollective.org/">Production Designers Collective</a> that Kalina founded about 10 years ago together with <a href="https://www.dadafilmdesign.com/">Inbal Weinberg</a>. This collective brings together over 1,500 members from all around the world, sharing ideas, experiences and advice across the industry. We talk about how it came to be, its goals, and the upcoming second <a href="https://productiondesignweek.org/">International Production Design Week</a> scheduled in mid-October this year.</p>
<p><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-left: 18px; float: right;" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/kalinaivanov.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/kalinaivanov@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="360" height="469" /><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I am originally from Bulgaria. I came to the United States when I was 18, and I wanted to study theater design. I studied and practiced to become a theater designer, and I couldn’t find a job in theater in America. It was completely different than in Europe, and it was a quick switch to storyboarding movies for me. Once I was in, I was hooked.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Looking back at the time when you started in early ’90s, what would you say are the biggest changes for you in this field since then?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s clearing moving more and more towards special and visual effects, and now we have AI is coming for us. We all have to be prepared for it. That’s coming, and I find it challenging, but also great. And at the same time, I’m hoping that young filmmakers will find their way to tell a good story with this new format. I keep up with new technologies, like drawing on computers, but I still draw a lot of it by hand.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you feel that it doesn’t matter if it’s a physical tool or a digital tool, and that the art is more important than the tools?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Absolutely. Every production designer brings a unique point of view. No two people are the same, even identical twins. There were two production designers who were identical twin brothers – Richard and Paul Sylbert, and they were not the same [laughs]. We bring a unique point of view to the field, and no technology can take that away from us.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-sketch-redlightdistrict.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1363" /><br />
<span class="caption">Sketch of the Red Light District for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Can anybody be an artist? Can art be taught?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It depends on what kind of artist you want to be. I don’t consider myself a phenomenal artist in terms of drawing, but people find my sketches evocative. I look at them as working drawings. I don’t look at them as a piece of art at all. It all depends on your point of view. An artist has the sensibility, and that can be expressed in many different ways.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How would you define what production design is? What kind of an art form is it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s about creating the environment. Every project is different. Every journey in every project is different. For me it starts with a script. As long as I can get under the skin of the character, as long as I can become that character, I’m good. If I can’t become that character, there’s trouble brewing on the horizon [laughs]. My process is quite intuitive. I read the script carefully, I think about the characters, and then I draw. Then, through these drawings, the atmosphere starts showing in.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-render-redlightdistrict.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1238" /><br />
<span class="caption">Render of the Red Light District for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Sounds like you are in the camp of a picture is worth a thousand words.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Absolutely. I’m not eloquent, so I prefer the drawings to talk.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What is the biggest misconception that people have around what production designer is or what do they do?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Most people consider us set decorators. They don’t see production design for what it is, especially in contemporary movies. Sometimes I also feel that the cinematographer gets credited with production design, believe it or not. All sorts of people get credited, but production design is a unique art. It requires the mental capability of thinking of all the colors, and all the textures, and all the shapes and forms that come in into the world.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-sketch-prison.jpg" alt="" width="2790" height="972" /><br />
<span class="caption">Sketch of the Blackgate Eye Prison for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><span id="more-19753"></span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: <a href="https://www.productiondesignerscollective.org/">Getting to Production Designers Collective</a>, how it came around to be and what is it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It was me and Inbal sitting down in a coffee shop, and discovering that we had the same idea, but with different titles. I wanted a society, she wanted a collective, and we ended up with collective. We started with 50 of our friends, and slowly growing the organization over 10 years to have over 1,500 members. There was a tremendous amount of vacuum out there, and nobody thought about connecting production designers all over the world. The international aspect of our organization is vital.</p>
<p>Our newsletter is widely read, and over this decade the advances in technology made it easier for our organization to exist in this digital world. A big focus of our work has been on transforming the collective into organizing gatherings and the <a href="https://productiondesignweek.org/">International Production Design Week</a>. Our <a href="https://www.productiondesignersgathering.org/">first gathering</a> of 250 designers was in Spetses Greece in 2024, and it was a monumental task for two people to put together.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What are the primary goals of the Production Design Week?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: The main goal is connecting people from all over the world and exchanging ideas freely. We want ideas to flow without any boundaries. We want to find out how similar the processes are, even though technology is different in different countries, and also how unique they are to each person. It’s been an extremely rewarding journey in that way.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-sketch-iceberg-lounge-exterior.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1456" /><br />
<span class="caption">Sketch of the exterior of Iceberg Lounger for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: In this context, is there such a thing as universal art, or do we have cultural differences that make it a little bit difficult to make a story that resonates around the world?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I think we all are becoming borderless. A story in Russia nowadays today is equally as valid a story in America. Take Japanese films as an example. I love Japanese films, including the animated ones. They are made in Japan, but they’re also wildly influenced by French art. You can look at all the influences, but what matters in the end is the story. The story is the heart of everything, and stories are universal.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you feel that we are hard wired to need stories, to tell them and to listen to them?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Absolutely. As production designers, every day we tell stories through color and architecture. And other people tell the stories differently, but the goal is still the same – tell that story in the most unique way you can.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-render-mausoleum.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1637" /><br />
<span class="caption">Render of the Falcone Masoleum for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Going back to this initiative of sharing ideas and spreading awareness, do you want to have it reach beyond the field of production design? Do you want to have people inside and outside of the industry to be more aware of this specific craft?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Yes. One part of our goal is to educate everybody about production design. It doesn’t matter if you work in the film industry. You can be absolutely a person who simply loves film. We’re here to educate you about production design and what it means. It’s a misunderstood art.</p>
<p>It used to be more respected at some point. It feels that it’s starting to lose its core on one hand, but on the other hand, bigger movies get bigger budgets for design. When you look at small stories, production design sometimes gets lost, but the amount of work of the production designer in a small movie is the same as in the big movie.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: It feels like over the last 10-12 years the rest of the big streaming networks took the midsize budget feature films and “turned” them into episodic shows. You have the big movie blockbusters, and a lot of indies. But then, something like “The Penguin” that might have been a mid-budget feature a decade ago is now an episodic show on HBO.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I wouldn’t say that the midsize feature is disappearing, but it’s certainly shrinking. I’m constantly traveling between film and television. I’ve been in the television world for two years, and now I’m back to doing a midsize budget feature with Brad Pitt’s company that can afford to be in that space. How many people are able to afford that? I don’t know.</p>
<p>You can get a hundred million for an action movie, and you’ll fulfill the needs of the market, but you won’t win any awards. And you can make a movie like “Anora” for $6M and win the Oscar. In a strange way, what we are seeing is the smaller budget movies that have a bigger impact.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-onsets0.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1100" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How do you feel about this explosion streaming episodic productions?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s a natural state that everything is changing all the time.</p>
<p>If we talk about “The Penguin”, it’s a big budget that takes over from the movie, setting it specifically in New York. Doing it in the episodic format allows you to develop the characters. If we make the movie called “The Penguin”, it wouldn’t be the same. His story would be maybe one quarter of the story that we were able to tell. You’d need four movies to fulfill that. Television allows you to give a complex portrait of the character. That’s why people are loving the show. It’s also probably the first time that we so realistically portrayed Gotham, and people are really taken with it.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Now that we’re officially talking about “The Penguin”, how did you get to it? Did you chase it, or did it happen to fall into your lap, so to speak?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I did not even think about it. It was a call from a producer that I worked with. I did “Lovecraft Country”, a beautiful and imaginative show for HBO, and later I got a call from its line producer about “The Penguin”. I made a look book, I interviewed, and I got the job. Lauren LeFranc the showrunner wanted it to be realistic, and I was quite intrigued by that aspect of it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-onsets1.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1238" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Did you know that you would be doing all the episodes, and that you would have different cinematographers on it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I did know that. I knew that I would do all eight episodes, but I didn’t have all eight scripts straight away. We started with two scripts, and then Lauren was asked two more to get the show greenlit. Then in number five she brought the trolley depot, and that surprised everyone [laughs] inducing the producers who had to find a million and a half for that set.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How much time did you have on pre-production and production itself?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It was an unusual because the strike happened in the middle of it, exactly at episode 5. I had a lot of time in prep, from August 2022 til January 2023. Then we started shooting, the strike came, and we finished in February 2024.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Was it impacted by the lingering effects of Covid restrictions?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Yes, but it wasn’t as extreme anymore. It was more normal than when it started in 2020.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-onsets2.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1238" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: You had some big sets on this show.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: The interior of the Falcone mansion was a big set, and it took a lot of time. The trolley depot is a 4,500 square feet set. We had so many sets on the show. Sometimes I would design it as a set thinking that I would build it, and then they would tell me that we’d be going on location. And then ironically, I would transform the location into the set that I had in mind [laughs]. They all ended up looking like what I wanted it to look like.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Was there enough time and enough money, or are you always running short on both?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: You always wish you had more money, but the producers had to do what they had to do.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-falcone-house1.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1237" /><br />
<span class="caption">The set of the Falcone House of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is the Falcone house a single set, or multiple places stitched together in camera?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s one single set. Then we had the practical location for the exterior, where we had some individual rooms that we wove into the narrative – a corridor, the basement, the greenhouse. Those were shot in such a way that they’re all mimicked the built set.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: I loved when Sofia talks about the interior design of the Falcone house and asks “You afraid of color or something?” What was the idea behind the interior styling of it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I had created all this backstory of the characters. I didn’t share it with anybody, but I had it all mapped out. So the great grandfather started bootlegging in the ’20s and the ’30s, then the grandfather came, and then we meet Carmine. By the time we meet him, he’s almost a legitimate person. He’s wearing bespoke suits. Look at John Turturro in “The Batman” and how well dressed he was.</p>
<p>I went with the idea that he took upon himself to find a mansion of the great Gatsby era – the ’20s and the ’30s Italian style villa – to bring stuff from Italy, and to make it all Italian. That’s why I had all these Renaissance and pre-Renaissance frescoes in there, and Simone Martini’s “Duke of Padua” famous painting behind Carmine Falcone. The most wonderful thing about it is that the set was a two story set. That gave it the scope that you needed to have, and I got to do the biggest fireplace that you can possibly have in a house like that [laughs].</p>
<p>The solarium came from the actual location, and it was exciting. I changed the textures and everything, but the general shape of it was quite evocative.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-falcone-house2.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1100" /><br />
<span class="caption">The final still of the Falcone House of “The Penguin” with the painting behind the characters, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Was the crypt a set?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: The crypt was the basement of a real church. Some of it was in VFX, but you won’t know that.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: The story is about the Penguin’s insecurities and ambitions, failures and successes. How do you approach designing an apartment for a man like that?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: He’s a conundrum. He has a lot of anger in him. Most of the time, he seems to be OK with everybody and everything and where his place is, but he’s not OK. He desperately wants to be on the top.</p>
<p>He likes to be like Carmine. He likes to think of himself as Carmine Falcone, but not quite. That was the whole idea for his apartment. Here you are on the third floor of the diamond district – not on the top, and you’ve taken over an abandoned jewelry repair shop. I gave it all this backstory, including an ad for the jewelry shop that used to be there.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-penguin-apartment3.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1238" /><br />
<span class="caption">The set of the Penguin’s Apartment of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p>You set your bedroom in the safe room of the jewelry shop. It has all the drawers and the compartments. It’s shiny and it’s right to him, but it’s not Carmine. Carmine has an excellent taste. Carmine probably went to Harvard [laughs]. He’s a very well-educated gangster, but the Penguin isn’t. The Penguin likes shine. That’s what I went for there.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What about the Arkham state hospital? Was it a location or did you build the set for it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It was both. We recreated a part of the movie meeting room set, and the cafeteria was in another church basement location. We added two walls, one for the security area, and one for the cafeteria area to tie it into Arkham. I didn’t want it to feel a different space.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-onsets3.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1238" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What went into thinking how the underground trolley facility is “supposed” to look like?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I did two different concepts. One was a working class space, and the other was a working class cathedral, and Lauren chose the cathedral. She loved those vaulted ceilings.</p>
<p>This was an easy set. By that time I knew who the character was and what he would like. I had in mind this very specific location where we put the set to marry it to the lobby and extended the set. By marrying it to that lobby, we got to bring in some of the details that the lobby had, and it worked out perfectly. The combination between the set, the lobby and the tunnels were important. The trolley cars were important, and we built all of those cars. The last trolley car in New York was in 1959, and those don’t exist anymore. So we got to recreate a lot of that.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-onsets5.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1238" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: And then you have the Monroe club set in two different time periods separated by what looks like about 30 or so years. Was it the same set?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s the same set, and we were given one day to change it. We started with the old time when it was new and pristine, and then destroy some of it to get to the present time. We did the changeover on a Sunday, something like six hours. There was a lot of prep and rehearsals involved beforehand. It was marvelous. I had this idea of the chandelier because I wanted a giant gesture there. It came up very well.</p>
<p>The backstory is that this jazz club is there since the ’30s. I brought in columns, and I covered the stage with a curtain. The space had murals of Bosch, and I ran the blue drape in from of them because it didn’t match what we needed. We changed the shape of the stage, and a lot of other things. When it was all done, it really looked like my original sketch from when I thought I would build it as a set.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-sketch-monroes-1988.jpg" alt="" width="1472" height="909" /><br />
<span class="caption">Sketch of the Monroe’s Jazz Club in 1988 for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-sketch-monroes-2022.jpg" alt="" width="1497" height="902" /><br />
<span class="caption">Sketch of the Monroe’s Jazz Club in 2022 for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How do you approach deciding what gets built physically, and what gets extended with VFX?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s up to the budget. Every VFX supervisor that’s worth their money will tell you that you need to build to 15 to 20 feet around the actors, depending on how big the scene is. You build it for real, and extend from there. I do all my concept work, and I give the concepts to the VFX for what it should look like at the end.</p>
<p>I did the concept sketch for the “La Couronne” hotel for the end scene of the last episode, and I convince Lauren to use that name. It’s important to the story. It’s the crown. It’s on the verge of Crown Point. Let’s make it the hotel to be the crown.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: It’s a beautiful shot, and it’s a poignant one. He’s reached the peak, and yet he is a world away from where he wants to be.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Exactly. There is a great amount of sadness in the last scene. You feel what an empty man this guy is. He goes with a prostitute who’s pretending to be his mother. There is no relationship between his mother and him left. I wanted for that moment to have all these pissed off women looking down on him. That’s where you have the furies looking at him angry.</p>
<p>This location was basically a white box, but it had the windows we needed. I took it over and I completely transformed it. If you look at that location, it doesn’t look anything like what we ended up with.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-sketch-cityscape-couronne.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1575" /><br />
<span class="caption">Sketch of the cityscape with the La Couronne hotel for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: In this gritty story, was there any color that you wanted to stay away from?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Lauren told us that we should be careful about purple, because it’s Penguin’s color, so we stayed away from it most of the time. In general, I used jewel tones for the show. Those tones work well with dark stories.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: After all these productions, is it still sad or difficult to walk away from all these magnificent sets, to know that they are going to be torn down?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: When I was younger, I cried the first time when I saw the scenery being thrown in a dumpster. Now I just walk away and it’s onto the next one.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: You mentioned the rise of AI earlier. Do you see it as an existential threat, or as another tool that will be used by artists to bring these stories to life?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I really see it as a tool. I find that it can be very helpful in the brainstorming period. I don’t think we’re going to end up with ChatGPT stories [laughs].</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-render-mushroom-growing-tent.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1246" /><br />
<span class="caption">Render of the mushroom growing tent for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: If you had a time machine and you could travel back to when you were starting out to give an advice to your younger self, what would you say you thought was important, but it turned out to be not as important?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: Back then I thought it was very important to be an artist. But that is not so much so in production design. What is important is to get along with people, and to get along with the producers, and to work cohesively as a team. The environment is always different on every movie, and you have to find your way to fit in that environment.</p>
<p>I would say your artistry is going to be always there. Work on your people skills. That is my advice. Don’t worry about the art. The art is there. You are the artist, but how you get along with people – that will make or break that movie.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-still0.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1076" /><br />
<span class="caption">Final still of the mushroom growing tent for “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Which movies would you consider to be the golden standard of your craft?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: I will take Bertolucci’s “The Conformist”, and then Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and the first two “Godfather” movies. Dean Tavoularis is my favorite production designer, I worship that man. Those movies are remarkable.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What keeps you going in this field?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kalina</span>: It’s the hunger for learning new things. I always want to be surprised, and I have been fortunate to do wildly different projects. If you look at my resume, you won’t see the same kind of movie or the same kind of project done. I’m very fortunate that way, and that’s what keeps me going.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/thepenguin-penguin-apartment2.jpg" alt="" width="2200" height="1237" /><br />
<span class="caption">The set of the Penguin’s Apartment of “The Penguin”, courtesy of Kalina Ivanov.</span></p>
<p>And here I’d like to thank <a href="https://www.kalinaivanov.com/"><strong>Kalina Ivanov</strong></a> for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of production design. I also want to thank Javier Irazuzta for making this interview happen. “The Penguin” is <a href="https://www.hbomax.com/shows/penguin/5756c2bf-36f8-4890-b1f9-ef168f1d8e9c">streaming on HBO Max</a>. To stay up-to-date on the latest news from the International Production Design Week, <a href="https://productiondesignweek.org/participate/">click here</a>. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/inmotion/">click here</a> for additional in-depth interviews in this series.</p>
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<title>Production design of “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” – interview with Toni Barton</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/26/production-design-of-fight-night-the-million-dollar-heist-interview-with-toni-barton.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2025 23:42:35 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[inmotion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19708</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Toni Barton. In this interview, she talks about what she sees as the biggest change in this industry in the last 25 years, her approach to creating the worlds for her […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome <a href="https://tonibarton.com/index.php"><strong>Toni Barton</strong></a>. In this interview, she talks about what she sees as the biggest change in this industry in the last 25 years, her approach to creating the worlds for her stories, building layered sets that reflect the history of the place and the characters, how she sees generative AI, and what keeps her going. Between all these and more, Toni dives deep into her work on “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist”.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19742" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-left: 18px; float: right;" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonibarton.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonibarton@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="360" height="366" /><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: From a very young age I had a fascination with architecture – and was very excited when my cousin introduced me to her youngest brother in law, Julius Haley, who was the first architect I would meet. A few years later while on summer break, my mother directed a children’s theater production of the musical “The Boy Friend”. She enlisted my sister and I to paint all the sets. I did not know what I was doing, but this experience planted a seed. That seed grew in high school, where I took many drafting classes and eventually interned at an architecture firm.</p>
<p>With the sole purpose of becoming an architect I attended the University of Southern California, but that singular focus broadened quickly. Songfest was an annual fundraiser held by students at the Shrine Auditorium. While practicing with the Black Student Union, someone asked if I could design our backdrop. So, in the middle of the night I was painting a large backdrop on top of the parking structure. Once again, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was having fun. Over those years I learned more about architecture, designed more plays and musicals, worked in the scene shop, and designed several short films. After graduation, I moved to New York and studied scenery for stage and film at NYU. For a few years I assisted several Broadway set designers and worked at a couple of industrial set design firms – and once I was accepted into the union, I started working in film.</p>
<p>I was an assistant art director for many years, drafting, learning while crying and trying to figure it out [laughs]. I worked with some amazing people, including art director Patricia Woodbridge. She brought me on “Mona Lisa Smile”, “Hitch”, “Freedomland”, “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Bounty Hunter”. She taught me what to do as an assistant art director and put me in places to learn. Patricia was my film mom, and I will forever be grateful for her. Later, I started art directing on a lot of different TV shows, and eventually collaborated with the production designer Loren Weeks. He was hired to design the first seasons of the Marvel Netflix series “Daredevil”, “Jessica Jones”, “Luke Cage”, “Iron Fist”, and “The Defenders”. After that, as a good boss does, he pushed me out of the nest, saying “Now go fly and design”, which was scary, but wonderful. All of this thankfully lead to production designing “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist”.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonibarton-artdepartment.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Toni Barton and the art department of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Looking back at the first 25 years of your career, what do you see as the biggest changes in this field?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: The biggest change for me is how we consume media. When I was growing up, the entire family would sit down and watch a show, whatever was on. There were 4 or 5 channels, and everybody would want to have that water cooler moment the next day. You didn’t want to come in the next morning without seeing what happened on your show the night before, because everybody would want to talk about it together.</p>
<p>Now, everybody is in their private space – watching it live or for the fiftieth time on their phones or three seconds after it’s left the movie theater and is streaming.</p>
<p>My preference for episodic shows is to drop weekly – giving the audience a chance to breath with the story and to anticipate what’s going to happen the next week. I like that much more than digesting content all at once.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonibarton-lancetotten.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="2100" /><br />
<span class="caption">Toni Barton and Lance Totten, the set decorator of “Fight Night”, on the set. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: From design perspective, did you start designing on paper, or was it already in the world of digital devices and tools?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: When I was in architecture school I mainly drew by hand, not learning much on the computer until later when my studio professor told us “I don’t want anybody to think of AutoCAD as the designer. It is merely a tool. It is no different than using a pencil on vellum or ink on mylar”. Realistically, when I was an assistant art director drafting sets, I drafted only on the computer. But as a designer, I think with my hand. When I’m designing a set, a lot of times I’m on my drafting table. I’m figuring it out with a pencil, trace paper and a scale ruler. I’m constantly moving the pencil, sketching through ideas, or tearing off a piece of trace and taping it on top of another to develop my ideas from concept to reality.</p>
<p>At a certain point, I may hand off a sketch to my set designer. And sometimes they give it back digitally so I can modify my ideas in AutoCAD, thinking through the details. Designers use all sorts of tools today for 2D and 3D modeling. These tools might be on a computer or iPad. It might be the set designer or the illustrator making a 3D model or fly-through animation. It’s just the tools that we utilize to tell the story, but they’re not designing it. They are simply how we communicate our ideas.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hyatt-regency-plan-materials.jpg" alt="" width="3052" height="1716" /><br />
<span class="caption">Floor plan and materials for the Hyatt Regency set of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><span id="more-19708"></span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you find that viewers today have higher expectations from episodic productions than it used to be 15-20 years ago?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: As an artist and a designer, I’m translating the written word to build a world visually for the audience. On “Fight Night”, my task was to build Atlanta in the year 1970. I do not want the audience to think about what I am doing, if that makes sense. I want them to think about the story. The audience will hopefully believe in the created world, in which these actors are wearing the costumes, hair and makeup. The director and the cinematographer are telling that written story in this world. With more money and time, one can build a lot more, but it still needs to tell the showrunner’s story.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chickenman-party-house-floorplan.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2036" /><br />
<span class="caption">Floor plan for the Chicken Man party house set of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Isn’t it a bit disappointing when you spend all these long months on a show, and the audiences only talk about the characters and the story?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: That’s OK with me. A couple years ago I designed Netflix’s “Archive 81” .We built a lot of sets, because we could not shoot safely on many locations in 2020 due to the pandemic. One of the sets that I designed was a massive two-story, Brutalist concrete compound for the main character Dan. Everybody that watches it assumes it’s a location. Honestly, I take this as a compliment because they don’t believe it’s a set on a soundstage. That’s a testament to the design, to the lighting, and to how the cinematographer and director are filming the sets. I want people to feel that they’re real. And if this means they focus on the story – then great.</p>
<p>On “Fight Night” I filled four soundstages with scenery, and even more scenery was built on location. There are no aspects of current day Atlanta that we can shoot as is without making major changes to fulfill the needs of the script. One of the many settings in the script was the Hyatt Regency Hotel, originally built in 1967. We filmed inside the lobby at the real location, recreating its original design, but had to build its iconic rotating rooftop, Polaris Bar and penthouse suite on the stages. When you look out the windows the skyline is nothing like it was in 1970, so a VFX set extension was also added to match that time. I hope the audience believes it’s real, but I don’t want them to dwell on it. I want them to get engaged and engrossed in the story. Of course if they love it, that’s awesome too.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/police-department-still.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="960" /><br />
<span class="caption">The police department on “Fight Night”.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: The ’60s and the ’70s are two of the more formative decades in our recent history, and there are quite a few stories set up in those periods. How do you find the balance between what the audience expects, so to speak, of the look of that time and carving out your own visual space for this story?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Here’s where it gets interesting. “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” mainly takes place in October and November of 1970, but that really means most of the architectural spaces are from the ’40s, the ’50s, and the ’60s. This story is based on the 10-episode podcast with the same name by Jeff Keating. He interviewed many of our characters before they passed. One of the interviews was with Detective J.D. Hudson’s daughter, who said that his favorite color was blue. Detective J.D. Hudson, played by Don Cheadle, integrated the Atlanta Police Department in the late ’40s. I didn’t have any photos of his police station, but that timeline was my starting point, to start building the architecture that goes back to his early days. I designed blue linear glazed tiles with grout lines for the police station walls with various blue colored VCT floor tiles. When I was designing that set, I asked the set decorator for schoolhouse pendant lamps to hang down from the ceiling. The gaffer requested a dropped ceiling instead, since that would be so much easier to control the light. But knowing that drop ceiling retrofits would have probably been added to our building a few years later, it was important to stay true to this time period.</p>
<p>Continuing with JD Hudson’s house we added the blue palette throughout his house. It’s in the wallpaper textures that were prevalent in the late ’50s, and in the textiles and dressing throughout. It’s a tight palette, but it’s not necessarily so methodical. It feels real for the ’50s and the ’60s. This family didn’t just redecorate their entire house the previous year, and it’s a family that is a little older compared to Chicken Man.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/jd-hudson-living-room-set.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1781" /><br />
<span class="caption">J.D. Hudson’s living room set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p>Chicken Man, played by Kevin Hart, was a hustler with a fourth-grade education. He is a guy that is taking care of the entire neighborhood. He’s taking care of his church-going family, and he knows how to connect anyone in his hometown. Chicken Man drives a gold Cadillac. So, to push this, we created a red and gold palette in all his settings: the party house where the heist occurs, his family home with muted pinks and ochres, and even the Clermont Lounge.</p>
<p>These are not necessarily ’70s colors, because I’m building a world of ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s leading up to it. The showrunner, Shaye Ogbonna, said Chicken Man purchased the Party House in 1968, only two years before the heist. We used several colorful reflective mylar wallpapers in the living room and kitchen, and a created a shag carpet with oranges and yellows and browns. And the same colors were used to build the linoleum flooring in the kitchen and hallways. This tight palette works in the time period. Not only using the color palette to define each character but also building an arc to tell the entire story.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chickenman-party-house-model-materials.jpg" alt="" width="3082" height="1446" /><br />
<span class="caption">Model and materials for the Chicken Man house party set of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p>During the penultimate episode, the robbers travel to Jekyll Island, about a five hour drive from Atlanta, close to the Florida border. In the early ’60s it was a beach destination where the southern portion of the island was the segregated St. Andrew’s Beach. That’s where the chitlin’ circuit Dolphin Club was located where Black artists could perform for Black patrons. In our timeline, this venue has been boarded up and abandoned since integration closed many of the clubs. It is also a point in our story where JD Hudson and Chicken Man are working together so I mixed blues with reds and golds in this club.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What about the Hyatt Hotel? Did you want to have it a little bit more modern to 1970?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: We shot on the first floor in the Hyatt Regency’s lobby and replicated the space to its original John Portman 1967 design. Currently, there are chrome railings and glass walls all over the lobby floor, all high-end and very different from before. We built low plastered walls to cover the existing, built tree structures, added red carpets, and white and gray modern furniture. Above the main escalators, there was a beautiful glass and metal sculptural Parasol Bar, which was removed a while ago. We made a 3D model of this sculptural bar structure for a VFX set extension. When we filmed the lobby, there were some Hyatt Regency employees that had been there for over 40 years, and said it is just how they remembered it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hyatt-regency-penthouse-still-materials.jpg" alt="" width="3078" height="1722" /><br />
<span class="caption">The set and materials for the Hyatt Regency penthouse set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p>Then we go upstairs to the Penthouse and the Polaris Bar where the architectural structure is the same as the existing hotel: doors, terrace balcony, elevators and windows. But we had freedom to play with everything else – creating a sunken living room with zigzag carpet with red, gold and black wallpapered walls, terrazzo floors and a burl wood and black marble bar. Sometimes you just have to play, because it’s fun and an interesting way to tell a story. When I read the first drafts of the scripts, to determine what to build, there were only two scenes in the penthouse, in only two episodes – that was it. But once the showrunner saw the set, he added more scenes in later episodes.</p>
<p>The same thing happened with the Polaris Bar. Initially it was in the first three scripts, and it was more of a restaurant. You came up out of the elevator, and the carpeted area closer to the windows rotated. I designed the main bar in the center near the elevator so that the backdrop of the skyline would be in most shots. It doesn’t mimic John Portman’s original design, but it plays with it well.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hyatt-regency-polarisbar-set.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2133" /><br />
<span class="caption">The Hyatt Regency Polaris bar set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: I’m not sure what’s the right term for it, but it’s these heavy mahogany panels that you see inside old houses all throughout. When did we lose them? When did they go out of fashion?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: You see them throughout architecture in the ’50s and the ’60s, and they span a little bit into the ’70s. I refer to them as peekaboo panels.I started on the “Fight Night” in early December of 2023. During Christmas, I flew to Los Angeles to visit my family. My grandparents moved into their house in the early ’60s, and up until my sister moved in about 15 years ago, the house had panels with the circle cutouts between the living room and the kitchen. I referenced these panels for Chicken Man’s Party House, passing along photos to Justin Jordan, assistant art director, who then translated them into our world. He also designed decorative panels for the Hyatt Regency in Frank’s Penthouse, Lola Falana’s Suite and in the Polaris Bar which I painted iridescent black.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/municipal-auditorium-floor-plan.jpg" alt="" width="2752" height="1678" /><br />
<span class="caption">The floor plan for the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What went into making the venue for the boxing match?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: The Municipal Auditorium was the venue for the fight, which still exists in downtown Atlanta. It was built in 1909, and resurfaced I believe in the late ’40s. About 45 years ago Georgia State University purchased and built inside the large interior, breaking up the massive arena, only allowing our production to film the exterior location. When Muhammad Ali fought Jerry Quarry, there were hardwood floors and simple wooden chairs, with two tiers of balconies above low walls that lead into dressing rooms.</p>
<p>Most sport venues today have fixed seating and ballroom spaces required major building on location, so we opted to build this on the soundstage. We couldn’t find the blueprints with the true dimensions of the arena at that time, so we had to guestimate based on the exterior and the many photos and videos from the fight. My proposal to the director, showrunner and cinematographer was to build the first balcony, two entrances, and about 120 degrees of wall between the entrances. Almost all of the floor seats surrounding the boxing ring would exist and the rest was bluescreened for VFX set extension. Then, during the shooting, our director Craig Brewer rotated the audience and kept shooting mainly into the built scenery walls.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/municipal-auditorium-plan.jpg" alt="" width="2546" height="1874" /><br />
<span class="caption">The floor plan for the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p>In the boxing ring each fighter has their own corner. One corner has three red ropes on either side and the opposite corner has three dark blue ropes on either side. The set dressing team matched the research perfectly from the Everlast padding, exposed turnbuckles, draped electrical cords on the balcony walls, to the colors and placements of the rope. But due to the constant rotation of the audience, we had to make sure the ropes were the same on all sides. It worked well, and it allowed us to have what was necessary to film the fight.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/municipal-auditorium-set1.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1800" /><br />
<span class="caption">The plans for the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Which set took the longest chunk of your time?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: From the very beginning we had about two months to build around fifty sets for the first two episodes. I don’t know that I was breathing at all during that time. The set that I spent the longest on was the set that I had the most time to do design and breath at the same time – the Dolphin Club for episode seven.</p>
<p>About two months out, I went to Jekyll Island with writer Erika Johnson and line producer Dianne Ashford to gather as much research as possible since the venue was torn down more than fifty years ago and very few photographs remain. We walked the beaches where these buildings used to stand, to understand how big they were, understand the culturally context and the climate of this beach community. Of course, at this same time I was prepping and shooting episodes three through six designing new smaller sets, but the Dolphin Club was by the far the largest set since all of the initial built sets created for the show were completed. I took those two months to make sure that my research was correct, that I was telling the right story.</p>
<p>I designed the Dolphin Club ground plan and presented it along with the research to the team. The director Craig Brewer took my ground plan and digested it, calling me later stating all works perfectly for the script, with a few small additions. This process was wonderful, because we could really get to the gist of what was needed and make sure that it worked for every single aspect of the story.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hyatt-regency-penthouse-set2.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1970" /><br />
<span class="caption">The Hyatt Regency penthouse set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: You have this beautiful and immaculate penthouse set in Hyatt, and this abandoned club that lays in ruins. Is one more interesting to work on than the other?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Not at all – they are both just as exciting. From the beginning, the first assistant director said that he wanted the party house to be ready early. I designed and built the first floor and the basement on one of the sound stages, to meet the schedule. The next sets I designed were the Hyatt Regency Penthouse and the Polaris Bar, doing those at the same time. And the last set that I designed, because it was supposed to be the last set we were supposed to shoot during the first two episodes, was the Atlanta Police Department. Then I got a call saying that they were going to shoot the APD set in two weeks, and I had not even begun to design it. I drew it in one day, and the next day handed it off to my set designer, and then two weeks later, we were shooting on that set – which was absolutely crazy, but we made it happen.</p>
<p>The Penthouse was refreshingly fun. I was exploring some interesting patterns and shapes that I shared with Lance Totten, the set decorator. Justin Jordan, assistant art director found a zigzag patterned carpet, and Lance found a trapezoidal seating that were upholstered in a gorgeous, maze patterned fabric. This seating became the basis for the sunken living room. We mixed deep reds, golds, chromes, burl wood, zigzag carpet with the black iridescent peekaboo panels.</p>
<p>At one point we were standing there on the soundstage with all the white walls around us, looking at all the samples before anybody had started painting anything, and Lance turned to me and said “Toni, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I’m down for the ride”.</p>
<p>I do wonder how different our Dolphin Club set would have been if it hadn’t been influenced by the Hyatt Regency Penthouse set. Truly many of the concepts and patterns inform one another.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hyatt-regency-under-construction.jpg" alt="" width="3080" height="1652" /><br />
<span class="caption">Construction in progress on the Hyatt Regency sets on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is there such a thing as the most challenging set that you’ve worked on for this production, or did they all have their own different aspects to it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Everything in the beginning of production is challenging. The challenges are about building all of it and building it within a budget. When I start, I try to get as many scripts as written, so that I can read through them, break them down and I look at all the sets that the showrunner and the writers are requesting. A lot of times they may write more sets than we can realistically build or spaces that may be duplicated in one. Maybe, instead of building a bedroom in the penthouse, the scene could happen in the sunken living room. Those are the lovely discoveries of what we do. All those challenges are good challenges because then they hopefully lead to many more interesting solutions.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chickenman-party-house-set.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1800" /><br />
<span class="caption">The Chicken Man party house set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is it still painful to see these sets that you build get destroyed or dismantled after you are done with them?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Absolutely not. I love it, because that means that there’s something else that we have to do next. When I was in grad school, I designed the play “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”. It was such a small production that the actors had to help me build, paint and wrap the set. They were young undergrads that put their heart and soul into this show.One of them asked me your exact same question through tears. And I told them that there’s another show that’s coming soon. There’s always new stories to tell, new worlds to build.</p>
<p>Now what is sad is the amount of waste that can be created at wrap. I try to be as sustainable as possible, reusing materials, repurposing, or providing salvaged windows, doors, flats to another production or non-profit organization at wrap.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hyatt-regency-penthouse-set1.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2133" /><br />
<span class="caption">The Hyatt Regency penthouse set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is there any artwork from the show that is still around? My personal favorite is the painting that hangs on the back side in the penthouse.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Oh, I will have to tell Lance, the set decorator. I believe his parents had a similar postmodern painting in his childhood home. This painting in Frank’s Penthouse was a rental from Omega Props in Los Angeles. Due to clearance issues, many of the artwork is either made by our scenics, graphic designers or rented.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: I love the aesthetic of the ’70s, the interior design, the graphic design, the fashion. You don’t see that anymore. The modern interior design is so boring. It feels like we lost that richness along the way.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: There’s an interesting thing about the Hyatt. It was built in 1967, so it’s the most recent thing in our show. We are recreating John Portman’s work, and that’s where I spent the most money. I can’t necessarily do that in a detective’s house or a number runner’s party house, but I can do that at the Polaris Bar and in the Penthouse suite for the Hyatt Regency. But we also had fun in Cadillac Wheeler’s, NJ Warehouse. A deep purple shag carpet office filled with stolen goods with camel colored leather sofa and painting of Wheeler’s father which was a creation by the Shaq Simmons, graphic designer and Keenan Chapman, scenic meshing Terrance Howard’s look with an early 1960’s Adam Clayton Powell.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/cars.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cars of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: There’s one more thing that I love about the ’60s and the ’70s, which is the cars. We don’t see those long bodies, those beautiful lines, the chrome highlights and the colors anymore. It’s all just the same raindrop shape, and the same grey or beige everywhere these days. What goes into getting all those cars from that period on the screen?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Jason Geigerman was our picture car coordinator and he’s lovely to work with. When we sat down to discuss options, the most essential thing for me was a clear color palette, but it was just as important to determine economically and culturally the correct options for each character.</p>
<p>In addition to Chicken Man’s 1966 gold Cadillac DeVille and JD Hudson’s blue Ford Galaxie 500, the robbers, as organized by McKinley, was in a green palette. The first time we see the two guys scoping out the party house, they are in a 1961 rusted green Chevrolet van. Jason searched for the right vehicle and painted it to match my original illustration of the Ext. Party House.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chickenman-party-house-exterior-illustration.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1418" /><br />
<span class="caption">Exterior illustration of the Chicken Man party house (with the green van) on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p>Jason would carry 12 to 20 different cars and rotate the non-hero cars in and out between episodes. He had to increase his quantity to fill a drive-in movie theater in the early episodes, and for a nighttime street scene where Detective Hudson is walking with Muhammad Ali.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/atlanta-street-night.jpg" alt="" width="3000" height="2001" /><br />
<span class="caption">The nighttime street scene on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you feel that productions such as this become a visual reference of how, in this particular case, Atlanta looked like in 1970? Is there a certain responsibility to portray this period and this place in a way that becomes a reference for the next generation of artists that will be using you as their visual reference?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: That’s an interesting question. The mantra that Lance and I kept repeating to ourselves was that we are not making a documentary, that we’re creating entertainment. Our Art Department had two long walls, about 100 feet long each filled with research. We had research on Ali’s fight, on the Hyatt Regency, on African American homes in Collier Heights, Pascals, chitlin’ circuit venues and everything else. We did as much research as we could on what was real of the time. We are doing entertainment, but our scenery is still real. We’re still building real worlds. I don’t think that people can watch this show and take it as a documentary. It’s entertainment.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: A week or so before this interview opportunity came along, I was watching “Dolemite” from 1975, and now I’m thinking about how do I know what the ’70s looked like. That is all from entertainment – the movies and TV shows that were either filmed back then or are portraying it, or from glamorous magazine covers. But I don’t really know how much of it is true, and how much of it is an elevated version of how it was.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Wow, “Dolemite” and one of my favorites, “Cleopatra Jones” are so rich with textures, but because they are filmed after our dates and the stories do not relate, I cannot use it as research. “Dolemite” was filmed and takes place in Los Angeles in the mid ’70s. It’s not that long after “Fight Night”, but architecture, art and fashion has changed during those few years, plus it has nothing to do with Atlanta and the world I need to create.</p>
<p>However, since this is based on a true story and there were two films that referenced this time, I did take an initial look at them. At the fight, there were many Black celebrities, two of which were Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. Sidney Poitier wrote and directed “Uptown Saturday Night” in 1974 and “Let’s Do It Again” in 1975, both of which are a based on the facts surrounding the fight and casino night heist. But once again, this is 5 years after my story takes place. You must be very clear on where you’re getting your research, and make sure that the time period is correct.</p>
<p>The same goes for architecture. When I go to Atlanta now and I look at the wrought iron railings, many are painted black. But in 1970 it was all painted white. I need to recreate that look or bring in metal window awnings to return it to that time period to make the Collier Heights neighborhood in our story believable for 1970.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/dolphin-club-greenroom.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Dolphin Club green room set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: You mentioned that Covid caught you right after your work on “Invasion”. Looking back at these five years, do you feel that the industry is back to what it used to be and how it used to do things?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: Well, not only did the pandemic change things, but the writer and actor strikes of 2023 had a major factor in the industry over the past five years. One of the things I mentioned earlier was how differently audiences digest media. The amount of content that is coming out has decreased. Where studios are filming now, including which cities and countries have changed significantly.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/dolphin-club-location-before.jpg" alt="" width="3078" height="1642" /><br />
<span class="caption">The location for Dolphin Club before work started on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How do you see generative AI? Do you see it as an existential threat? Do you see it as yet another tool? Or is it too early to say?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: I don’t think it’s too early to say. I do not currently use it because I have not seen proper regulation of it yet. I do want to see the precautions in place for all unions – not only artists working in film, but artists outside so that their work is not stolen. I must go back to that conversation that I had in architecture school with my professor. The key is that AI cannot be the designer. It must be a tool only. When we have regulations in place that protect the designer, then it becomes an extension that helps the designer, and not a replacement for the person doing the job. When that is in place, I see it being an asset. I don’t see it going away. It’s all in how it’s regulated.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: It’s all changing and evolving so fast, and I’m not sure if regulators, here in the States or abroad, will be able to match that pace and catch up to it.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: It has to, without a doubt. On every single union project, it falls under a contract signed by a studio, the producers and the unions. Within that, there are rules and regulations that protect copyright and other legal matters. Every contract, every union project, no matter where it is, has a regulatory signature of whatever studio and whatever union that represents whoever is working on it. And that is there to protect the studio as well as the artist. So, yes, I think it needs to be there.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/dolphin-club-plan-graphics-materials.jpg" alt="" width="3078" height="1726" /><br />
<span class="caption">Dolphin Club floor plan and materials on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Your job takes you to new places and new cultures, but it also takes you away from your family and friends for those long periods of time. What keeps you going? What makes you stay in this field?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: I don’t know how to do anything else [laughs]. Do you ever love something so much? I remember walking down a street here in New York probably 25 years ago, and I passed this police officer who was talking about his retirement plans. He was about 45 years old and set to retire in a few years, and when I asked him why he would retire, he said that his job was for money, and then he wanted to open a business of his enjoyment later.</p>
<p>And here I am, sitting at my drafting table right now, and that’s where I want to be for as long as I can. I love what I do. Now, don’t get me wrong. I cry when it’s hard, when I’m not getting enough sleep because the hours are long. When I’m working, I’m waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about what we can do differently in that set or something. But when I’m not doing it, I don’t know what else to do.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/municipal-auditorium-set-construction.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1800" /><br />
<span class="caption">During construction of the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: If you were born 500 years ago and you could choose what to do, without restrictions, what would it be?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Toni</span>: What a lovely question. I don’t think I want to be Da Vinci, but I’d love to be able to be a painter – someone working on a crew, to paint a mural or something else. I imagine that it would be a collaborative job, working to complete another artist’s vision. That would be quite interesting. I don’t know why that came to mind.</p>
<p>There’s another thing. I was a professor at NYU for many years, until I started production designing. I love seeing the next generation of designers. I don’t think there would be such thing as teaching design back then, but maybe as part of that crew I could also participate in the education process.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/clermont-lounge-materials.jpg" alt="" width="3054" height="1714" /><br />
<span class="caption">Visuals and materials of the Clermont Lounge set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.</span></p>
<p>And here I’d like to thank <a href="https://tonibarton.com/index.php"><strong>Toni Barton </strong></a>for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of production design. I also want to thank Marilyn Lintel and Sarah Meyer for making this interview happen. “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” is <a href="https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/fight-night-the-million-dollar-heist">streaming on Peacock</a>. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/inmotion/">click here</a> for additional in-depth interviews in this series.</p>
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</item>
<item>
<title>Chroma color system – part IV, surface containment</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/24/chroma-color-system-part-iv-surface-containment.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2025 19:11:01 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ephemeral]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Radiance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Swing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19691</guid>
<description><![CDATA[After looking at how Radiance draws Swing components using container color tokens, we’re going back to the surface color tokens available for each container type (active, muted and neutral): containerSurfaceLowest containerSurfaceLow containerSurface containerSurfaceHigh containerSurfaceHighest containerSurfaceDim containerSurfaceBright Why do we need multiple surface color tokens? Why not provide a single containerSurface and be done with it? […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>After looking at <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/17/chroma-color-system-part-iii-drawing-radiance-components.html">how Radiance draws</a> Swing components using container color tokens, we’re going back to the surface color tokens available for each container type (active, muted and neutral):</p>
<ul>
<li><code>containerSurfaceLowest</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceLow</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurface</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceHigh</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceHighest</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceDim</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceBright</code></li>
</ul>
<p>Why do we need multiple surface color tokens? Why not provide a single <code>containerSurface</code> and be done with it?</p>
<p>For quite some time now, Radiance supported the concept of <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/painters/decoration.md">decoration area types</a> – recognizing that application menu bars, toolbars and status bars are common examples of special containers found in most user interfaces. These containers create functional grouping of application controls and bring order to complex screens.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/decorationareas-radiance-dust-coffee.png" alt="" width="2252" height="1692" /></p>
<p>This is the main Radiance demo app under the Dust Coffee skin. At the top, we have the window title pane and menubar, rendered in a darker shade of grey. Under that we have the toolbar, rendered in a slightly lighter shade of dark grey. At the bottom we have the status bar, in the same darker shade of grey. The main application content is divided into two panes – control pane on the left and main / general pane on the right.</p>
<p>The visual grouping and separation of application content into distinct decoration areas follows the logical grouping of application content. The so-called “chrome” parts of the UI – title pane, menu bar, toolbars – are grouped to be visually distinct from the main app content. The same applies to the bottom status bar.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/decorationareas-radiance-mariner.png" alt="" width="2252" height="1692" /></p>
<p>This is the same demo app under the Mariner skin. Here, a different design decision has been made. The title pane and the menubar are rendered with dark brown. The rest of the “chrome” – toolbars, control pane on the left, and the status bar are rendered in medium shade of grey. The main content is rendered with a noticeably lighter shade of grey.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-intellij-light.png" alt="" width="3264" height="2382" /></p>
<p>Here we have <a href="https://blog.jetbrains.com/platform/2025/06/testing-a-fresh-look-for-jetbrains-ides/">the latest iteration</a> of JetBrains’ IntelliJ, the so-called One Island style. The visual styling of various areas follows the logical grouping of relevant functionality – the title pane at the top, the tool window bars on the left and the right, the left sidebar with project and structure views, the right sidebar with the Gradle view, the bottom tool window with the Run view, and finally the main editor pane in the middle. This new styling uses different shades of grey to convey the logical hierarchy of the different tools and panes, from darker shades along the edges, to medium shades for tool windows, to the lightest shade for the editor.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-intellij-dark.png" alt="" width="3264" height="2382" /></p>
<p>The same visual grouping and separation is applied in the One Island dark variant, starting with slightly lighter shades of dark grey along the edges, to the darkest shade of dark grey for the editor.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-claude-desktop.png" alt="" width="2504" height="2002" /></p>
<p>The Claude Desktop app is another example of staying with the same desaturated yellow tones, using slighly darker one for the side bar, medium one for the main panel, and the lightest one for the user reply panel in the bottom right.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-nav-drawer-jackie-brown.png" alt="" width="2567" height="1984" /></p>
<p>This is a concept mock of a sidebar by <a href="https://x.com/CJfromJBW/status/1934572089744539694">Jackie Brown on X</a>, visually separating the product bar on the left from the inbox / selected product bar to its right. Using a slightly darker shade of grey for the product bar provides a clean separation between the two, without being too distracting.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19701" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-weekstack-ios.png" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-weekstack-ios@2x.png 2x" alt="" width="720" height="562" /></p>
<p>And finally, the minimalist note taking Weekstack iOS app uses a gradation of shades of grey to separate the days of the week, both in light and in dark mode.</p>
<p>The common thread between all these examples is that this visual grouping and separation is achieved by using a variation of shades (or tones, in the language of Material and Radiance Chroma) of the same main color. Let’s take a look at how the different surface roles look like in Radiance:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19699" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-mariner.png" alt="" width="620" height="636" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-mariner.png 1240w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-mariner-292x300.png 292w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-mariner-998x1024.png 998w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-mariner-768x788.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></p>
<p>These are the surface roles under the Mariner skin, for neutral and muted containers. On the left is the hierarchy of surface roles from lowest to highest, and on the right is the hierarchy from dim to bright.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19698" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-nightshade.png" alt="" width="625" height="630" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-nightshade.png 1250w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-nightshade-298x300.png 298w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-nightshade-1016x1024.png 1016w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-nightshade-150x150.png 150w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-nightshade-768x774.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px" /></p>
<p>And here are the same surface roles under the Night Shade skin.</p>
<p>Comparing the Radiance surface color tokens across light and dark containers, it is important to note:</p>
<ul>
<li>The hierarchy of dim to bright will <strong>always</strong> have the bright token at a lighter tone</li>
<li>The hierarchy of lowest to highest will have the lowest token closer to its “side” of the tonal spectrum, and the highest token going “towards” the opposite side of the tonal spectrum. For light containers, it means that the lowest token is the lightest, and the highest token is the darkest. For dark containers, it flips – the lowest token is the darkest, and the highest token is the lightest.</li>
</ul>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19697" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-greenmagic.png" alt="" width="628" height="633" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-greenmagic.png 1256w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-greenmagic-298x300.png 298w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-greenmagic-1016x1024.png 1016w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-greenmagic-150x150.png 150w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-greenmagic-768x774.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px" /></p>
<p>This also works for more “colorful” skins such as Green Magic – all surface color tokens are taken from the same tonal palette, preserving a strong visual connection between them.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/surfaces-radiance-visormail.png" alt="" width="2092" height="1292" /></p>
<p>This demo app bundled with the Radiance shows the related concepts of decoration areas and surface containment working together. This app has three decoration areas – the light blue destinations on the left, the medium grey thread list in the middle, and the light grey thread on the right. And then, inside the thread panel on the right, this demo is using surface containment – <code>containerSurface</code> role for the overall panel, and <code>containerSurfaceHighest</code> for each one of the smaller nested boxes.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/decorationareas-radiance-gemini.png" alt="" width="2252" height="1692" /></p>
<p>Going back to the main Radiance demo app, it is using the <code>containerSurfaceLow</code> color token for the nested configuration panels in the left-side control pane. This creates a visual separation for everything related to configuring the demo table, without being too distracting (since it’s using the same tonal palette that is used on the overall control pane) – <strong>and</strong> without the need to define a separate decoration area type for it.</p>
<p>In the next post we’ll take a look at the world outside of user interfaces to see it through the lens of color tokens, containers, and surface containment.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Chroma color system – part III, drawing Radiance components</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/17/chroma-color-system-part-iii-drawing-radiance-components.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2025 00:17:18 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Desktop]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ephemeral]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Radiance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Swing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19679</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Picking up where the second part ended, let’s take another look at the same application UI rendered by Radiance and its new Chroma color system, in light mode and in dark mode: Recapping, Radiance has three types of containers – active, muted, and neutral. In this particular UI, the selected toggle button is drawn as an active container. […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Picking up where the <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/09/chroma-color-system-part-ii-color-tokens-and-containers.html">second part ended</a>, let’s take another look at the same application UI rendered by Radiance and its new Chroma color system, in light mode and in dark mode:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components.png" alt="" width="305" height="228" /></p>
<p>Recapping, Radiance has three types of containers – <strong>active</strong>, <strong>muted</strong>, and <strong>neutral</strong>. In this particular UI, the selected toggle button is drawn as an active container. The enabled button is drawn as a muted container. And the panel that contains the buttons is drawn as a neutral container.</p>
<p>Each container has three parts – <strong>surface</strong>, <strong>outline</strong>, and <strong>content</strong>. Radiance provides multiple color tokens to draw these parts, giving the apps the flexibility to choose a flat look, a gradient look, or any other custom look. In the particular example above, the surface part of each button (inner fill) is drawn with a vertical gradient that emulates the appearance of shiny plastic.</p>
<p>Let’s see how this approach extends to other Swing components rendered by Radiance</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-19680 aligncenter" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mariner1.png" alt="" width="340" height="258" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mariner1.png 680w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mariner1-300x228.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px" /></p>
<ul>
<li>The title pane and the menu bar are drawn as neutral containers, using dark brown as the seed color for the surface tokens</li>
<li>The toolbar is also drawn as a neutral container, using medium gray as the seed color for its surface tokens</li>
<li>The active tab is drawn with a combination of surface color tokens for the active container (the top yellow strip) and outline color tokens for its outline</li>
<li>Selected checkboxes and radio buttons are drawn as active containers, same as the default “OK” button</li>
<li>The scrollbar is also drawn as an active container</li>
<li>The combobox is drawn as a muted container</li>
<li>The text field is drawn as a neutral container, using a different / lighter surface color token for its inner fill</li>
</ul>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-19683 aligncenter" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mariner2.png" alt="" width="340" height="258" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mariner2.png 680w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mariner2-300x228.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px" /></p>
<p>The same approach extends to renderer-based containers, such as the tree on the left and the list on the right</p>
<ul>
<li>The striped background is drawn with surface color tokens of a neutral container, alternating between <code>containerSurface</code> and <code>containerSurfaceHigh</code></li>
<li>The highlights are drawn with surface and outline color tokens of an active container</li>
</ul>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19685" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/multiple-skins.png" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/multiple-skins@2x.png 2x" alt="" width="720" height="550" /></p>
<p>The usage of containers and color tokens is not skin-specific. The UI delegate for a specific Swing component, let’s say a button, does this:</p>
<ul>
<li>Get the <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/painters/surface.md">surface painter</a> and the <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/painters/outline.md">outline painter</a> from the current skin</li>
<li>Determine the <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/painters/decoration.md">decoration area type</a> of this component (menu bar, toolbar, control pane, footer, etc)</li>
<li>Ask the skin for the container color tokens that match the decoration area type and designated container type. For example:
<ul>
<li>The button UI delegate will ask for neutral container tokens for enabled buttons, or for active container tokens for buttons in active states (selected, rollover, pressed, etc)</li>
<li>The checkbox UI delegate will ask for neutral container tokens for an unselected checkbox, or for active container tokens for active checkbox (selected, rollover, pressed, etc)</li>
<li>The scrollbar UI delegate will always ask for active container tokens – as a design choice in Radiance</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Ask the surface painter to draw the inner part of the component using the obtained color tokens</li>
<li>Ask the outline painter to draw the outline of the component using the obtained color tokens</li>
</ul>
<p>What is achieved by this separation?</p>
<ul>
<li>Each skin defines its own colors for the different decoration area types, such as the purples for the title pane, the menu bar and the toolbar in the bottom right screenshot under the Nebula Amethyst skin.</li>
<li>Each skin also defines the overall visuals of surfaces and outlines across all components, enforcing consistent application of visuals across buttons, comboboxes, scroll bars, checkboxes, etc.</li>
<li>And at the same time, each component and its Radiance UI delegate is responsible for deciding how it combines the colors defined by the skin (for each decoration area type) and the visuals defined by the skin’s painters to draw its own distinct appearance.</li>
</ul>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-19682 aligncenter" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states1.png" alt="" width="275" height="279" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states1.png 550w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states1-296x300.png 296w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px" /></p>
<p>Radiance also provides support for using different color seeds for different active states. Seen above is the Office Silver 2007 skin and the visuals for the same button under rollover, selected, rollover + selected, pressed, and pressed + selected states. The application of the inner gradient fill is consistent, provided by the skin’s surface painter. The application of the outline visuals, including the slightly lighter inner outline, is consistent as well – since the skin’s outline painter uses the same color tokens – but from different color seeds provided by the skin.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-19681 aligncenter" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states2.png" alt="" width="281" height="279" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states2.png 562w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states2-300x298.png 300w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/extended-states2-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px" /></p>
<p>And the same skin can mix light and dark visuals for different active states in the same decoration area type. Here, under the Magellan skin, components in rollover, rollover + selected, pressed, and pressed + selected states use light fill and dark content (text and icon), while the same component in the selected state uses dark fill and light content.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/24/chroma-color-system-part-iv-surface-containment.html">the next post</a> we’ll take a look at the flexibility provided by multiple surface color tokens, and how they can be used to build up a visual hierarchy of content in your applications.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Chroma color system – part II, color tokens and containers</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/09/chroma-color-system-part-ii-color-tokens-and-containers.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 09 Jun 2025 21:42:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Desktop]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Radiance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Swing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19668</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Picking up where the first part ended, let’s take another look at how HCT colors look like across different values of chroma and tone, now keeping hue constant at 300: The next step is to introduce two related concepts – color tokens and containers. Radiance has three types of containers: active muted neutral A container has three […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Picking up where the <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/06/chroma-color-system-part-i-the-basics-of-color.html">first part ended</a>, let’s take another look at how HCT colors look like across different values of chroma and tone, now keeping hue constant at 300:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19669" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonals-300.png" alt="" width="614" height="655" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonals-300.png 1228w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonals-300-281x300.png 281w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonals-300-960x1024.png 960w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonals-300-768x819.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 614px) 100vw, 614px" /></p>
<p>The next step is to introduce two related concepts – <strong>color tokens</strong> and <strong>containers</strong>. Radiance has three types of containers:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>active</strong></li>
<li><strong>muted</strong></li>
<li><strong>neutral</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>A container has three visual parts:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>surface</strong></li>
<li><strong>outline</strong></li>
<li><strong>content</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Each one of these parts can be rendered by the following tokens (single or a combination, such as vertical gradient):</p>
<ul>
<li>For <strong>surface</strong>
<ul>
<li><code>containerSurfaceLowest</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceLow</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurface</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceHigh</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceHighest</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceDim</code></li>
<li><code>containerSurfaceBright</code></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>For <strong>outline</strong>
<ul>
<li><code>containerOutline</code></li>
<li><code>containerOutlineVariant</code></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>For <strong>content</strong>
<ul>
<li><code>onContainer</code></li>
<li><code>onContainerVariant</code></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s take a look at how these are defined and layered:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19672" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-containers.png" alt="" width="802" height="533" /></p>
<p>The top section in this image shows three tonal palettes generated from the same purple hue, but with different chroma values – 40 for active, 18 for muted, and 8 for neutral. The active palette has higher chroma, the muted palette has medium chroma, and the neutral palette has lower chroma. Even though these three palettes have different chroma values, the usage of the same hue creates a visual connection between them, keeping all tonal stops in the same “visual space” bound by the purple hue.</p>
<p>The next section shows surface, outline and content color tokens generated from each one of those tonal palettes. The tokens are generated based on the intended usage – <strong>light</strong> mode vs <strong>dark</strong> mode:</p>
<ul>
<li>Surface tokens in light mode use lighter tones, while surface tokens in dark mode use darker tones.</li>
<li>Content tokens in light mode use darker tones, while content tokens in dark mode use lighter tones.</li>
<li>Outline tokens in light mode use medium tones, while content tokens in dark mode use darker tones.</li>
</ul>
<p>The last section shows sample usage of these color tokens to draw a sample container – a rounded rectangle with a piece of text in it:</p>
<ul>
<li>The container background fill is drawn with the <code>surfaceContainer</code> color token.</li>
<li>The container outline is drawn with the <code>containerOutline</code> color token.</li>
<li>The text is drawn with the <code>onContainer</code> color token.</li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s take another look at this image:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19672" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-containers.png" alt="" width="802" height="533" /></p>
<p>There is a clear visual connection across all three tonal palettes that are generated from the same purple hue, but with different chroma values. This visual connection is then reflected in the final visuals of our containers, across all three types (active, muted and neutral), both in light mode and in dark mode.</p>
<p>The color system provides strong guarantees about contrast ratio between surfaces and content, and at the same time it keeps all container tokens visually connected.</p>
<p>And now we can take the next step – how Radiance components are rendered.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19674" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components.png" alt="" width="305" height="228" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components.png 610w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components-300x224.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 305px) 100vw, 305px" /></p>
<p><strong>Radiance treats every element as a container, and Radiance draws every element with container color tokens.</strong></p>
<p>For the main content area:</p>
<ul>
<li>The panel with the 3 buttons is a <strong>neutral container</strong>. Its background is rendered with the <code>containerSurface</code> color token.</li>
<li>The selected toggle button is an <strong>active container</strong>.</li>
<li>The enabled button is a <strong>muted container</strong>.</li>
<li>The disabled button is a <strong>muted container</strong>. The draw logic uses the three <code>xyzDisabledAlpha</code> tokens for rendering the background, the border and the text.</li>
<li>All buttons use the same color tokens:
<ul>
<li><code>containerOutline</code> for the border</li>
<li><code>onContainer</code> for the text</li>
<li>A combination of various <code>containerSurfaceXyz</code> tokens for the gradient stops of the background fill</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>What is different between drawing a selected button and an enabled button? The draw logic uses the same tokens (surface, outline and content). The difference is that a selected button is an <strong>active container</strong> while an enabled button is a <strong>muted container</strong>. In this particular case, an active container uses a higher chroma value as the seed for its tonal palette, resulting in more vibrant purple colors – while an enabled container uses a lower chroma value as the seed for its tonal palette, resulting in more muted purple colors.</li>
<li>What is different between drawing an enabled button and a disabled button? The draw logic uses the same tokens <strong>and</strong> the same <strong>muted container</strong> type. The only difference is in the alpha tokens applied to the surface, outline and content color tokens during the drawing pass.</li>
</ul>
<p>For the title area, the application of color is the same:</p>
<ul>
<li>The background is rendered with a gradient that uses a number of <code>containerSurfaceXyz</code> color tokens</li>
<li>The text and the icons are rendered with the <code>onContainer</code> token</li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, the window pane border is rendered with a combination of <code>containerSurface</code> and <code>containerOutline</code> / <code>containerOutlineVariant</code> color tokens.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19674" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components.png" alt="" width="305" height="228" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components.png 610w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/radiance-components-300x224.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 305px) 100vw, 305px" /></p>
<p>And one last thing – these two UIs are rendered with the same tokens, applying the same container types to the same elements (buttons, title pane, panels). The only difference is the underlying mapping of tokens in light and dark mode:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Active</strong> container in light mode maps <code>surface</code> color tokens around tone 80, while in dark mode the same tokens are mapped around tone 40. The same distinction applies to <code>outline</code> and <code>content</code> tokens.</li>
<li><strong>Muted</strong> container in light mode maps <code>surface</code> color tokens around tone 85, while in dark mode the same tokens are mapped around tone 32. The same distinction applies to <code>outline</code> and <code>content</code> tokens.</li>
<li><strong>Neutral</strong> container in light mode maps <code>surface</code> color tokens around tone 95, while in dark mode the same tokens are mapped around tone 26. The same distinction applies to <code>outline</code> and <code>content</code> tokens.</li>
</ul>
<p>In <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/17/chroma-color-system-part-iii-drawing-radiance-components.html">the next post</a> we’ll take a look at how the intertwining concepts of <strong>color tokens</strong> and <strong>containers</strong> are used to build up the visuals of other Radiance components.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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<item>
<title>Chroma color system – part I, the basics of color</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/06/chroma-color-system-part-i-the-basics-of-color.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jun 2025 18:09:08 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ephemeral]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Radiance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Swing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19657</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As I wrote in the last post, Radiance 8.0 brings a new color system, code-named Chroma. It’s been 20 years since I started working on Substance back in spring 2005. A lot has changed in the codebase since then, and certainly a lot has changed in the world of designing and implementing user interfaces around […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As I wrote in <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/02/celebrating-20-years-with-radiance-8-0-0.html">the last post</a>, Radiance 8.0 brings a new color system, code-named Chroma. It’s been 20 years since I started working on Substance back in spring 2005. A lot has changed in the codebase since then, and certainly a lot has changed in the world of designing and implementing user interfaces around us. The most prominent thing has been the meteoric rise of design systems, and the structured approach they brought to managing design consistency at scale.</p>
<p>One of the earliest concepts in Substance was the idea of <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/substance/blob/c437cdf3aef6702b9856e4bc37d919370921b038/src/org/pushingpixels/substance/api/colorscheme/SchemeBaseColors.java">a color scheme</a>. A color scheme was a set of six background and one foreground colors:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ultra light</li>
<li>Extra light</li>
<li>Light</li>
<li>Mid</li>
<li>Dark</li>
<li>Ultra dark</li>
<li>Foreground</li>
</ul>
<p>Substance used a combination of these colors to draw the visuals of buttons and other components:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19653" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/substance-aqua.jpg" width="720" height="86" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/substance-aqua.jpg 720w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/substance-aqua-300x36.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></p>
<p>Where the inner fill might be a gradient using extra light, light and mid, the specular highlight would use ultra light, the border would use a gradient with ultra dark and dark, and the text would use foreground.</p>
<p>Over time, the color subsystem in Substance and later Radiance grew more features, and with every customization layer it accumulated, it became more difficult to keep a simple mental model of how colors are defined. And so, about 3 years ago, I <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/400">started thinking</a> about replacing that color subsystem with a more structured approach. Eventually, I chose to start with the color system that underpins the <a href="https://m3.material.io/">Material design system</a>, along with customizing it to fit the needs of Radiance.</p>
<p>Material uses a <a href="https://m3.material.io/blog/science-of-color-design">new color space</a> named HCT, which stands for hue+chroma+tone. To introduce these axes, let’s take a look at the illustration of a perceptually accurate color system introduced by professor Albert Munsell in the early 1900s:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19666" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Munsell_1943_color_solid_cylindrical_coordinates.png" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Munsell_1943_color_solid_cylindrical_coordinates@2x.png 2x" alt="" width="720" height="540" /><br />
<span class="caption"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Munsell_1943_color_solid_cylindrical_coordinates.png">Courtesy of Wikipedia</a>. Source by SharkD, derivative work of Datumizer. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 License.</span></p>
<p>The human eye organizes color by three dimensions – hue, colorfulness, and lightness. In the cylindrical arrangement above:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Hue</strong> corresponds to the angle on the color wheel. Hue distinguishes between colors such as red, green or purple.</li>
<li><strong>Colorfulness</strong> is the axis that starts at the center of the cylinder and projects outwards. Colors closer to the center are less saturated and vibrant. Colors close to the edge are more saturated and vibrant – all the while staying with the same hue.</li>
<li><strong>Lightness</strong> is the vertical axis in this cylinder. Colors at the top layers of the cylinder are lighter, closer to white. Colors at the bottom layers of the cylinder are darker, closer to black. All the while, a vertical “stack” of colors stays with the same hue and the same colorfulness.</li>
</ul>
<p>This approach is the foundation of the HCT color space created for the Material design system:</p>
<ul>
<li>H is for <strong>hue</strong>. Hue is in [0..360] range – see below for the visual mapping.</li>
<li>C is for <strong>chroma</strong> (colorfulness). Chroma is a non-negative value, with a different maximum for a particular combination of hue and tone.</li>
<li>T is for <strong>tone</strong> (lightness). Tone is in [0..100] range, where 0 is full black and 100 is full white.</li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s take a look at how the HCT colors look like across different values of hue and tone, keeping chroma constant at 80:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19660" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-hues.png" alt="" width="599" height="575" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-hues.png 1198w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-hues-300x288.png 300w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-hues-1024x983.png 1024w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-hues-768x737.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px" /></p>
<p>And this is a look at how the HCT colors look like across different values of chroma and tone, keeping hue constant at 340:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19659" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-chroma.png" alt="" width="614" height="655" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-chroma.png 1228w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-chroma-281x300.png 281w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-chroma-960x1024.png 960w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonal-walkthrough-chroma-768x819.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 614px) 100vw, 614px" /></p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/09/chroma-color-system-part-ii-color-tokens-and-containers.html">the next post</a> we’ll take a look at the concept of <strong>color tokens</strong>, and how they are used to build up the visuals of various components in Radiance.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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<item>
<title>Celebrating 20 years with Radiance 8.0.0</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/06/02/celebrating-20-years-with-radiance-8-0-0.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2025 17:16:38 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Desktop]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Java]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Radiance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Swing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19650</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It started back in early 2005 with an idea to recreate the visuals of macOS Aqua buttons in Java2D and quickly grew to cover a wider range of Swing components under the umbrella of Substance look-and-feel, on the now discontinued java.net. The name came from trying to capture the spirit of Aqua visuals grounded in […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It started back in early 2005 with an idea to recreate the visuals of macOS Aqua buttons in Java2D</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19653" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/substance-aqua.jpg" alt="" width="720" height="86" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/substance-aqua.jpg 720w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/substance-aqua-300x36.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></p>
<p>and quickly grew to cover a wider range of Swing components under the umbrella of Substance look-and-feel, on the <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2010/12/21/status-update-on-java-net-projects.html">now discontinued java.net</a>. The name came from trying to capture the spirit of Aqua visuals grounded in physicality of material, texture and lighting. The first commit was on April 15, 2005, and the first release of Substance was on May 30, 2005.</p>
<p>A few months later in September 2005, I started working on Flamingo as a proof-of-concept to implement the overall ribbon structure as a Swing component. Later in 2009, common animation APIs were extracted from Substance and made into the Trident animation library, hosted on the now as well discontinued kenai.com.</p>
<p>After taking a break from these libraries in 2010 (during that period the various libraries were forked under the <a href="https://github.com/Insubstantial">Insubstantial umbrella</a> between 2011 and 2013), I <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2016/12/22/hello-substance-my-old-friend.html">came back</a> to working on them in late 2016, adding support for high DPI displays and reducing visual noise across all components. A couple years later in mid 2018 all the separate projects <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2018/05/23/hello-radiance.html">were brought</a> under the unified Radiance umbrella brand, switching to the industry standard Gradle build system, publishing Maven artifacts for all the libraries, and adding Kotlin DSL extensions.</p>
<p>And now, twenty years after that very first public Substance release, the next major milestone of the Radiance libraries is here. <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/releases/tag/v8.0.0">Radiance 8</a>, code-named Marble, brings the biggest rewrite in the project history so far – a new color system. Code-named <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/400">Project Chroma</a>, it spanned about 700 commits and touched around 27K lines of code:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19654" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chroma-commits.png" alt="" width="353" height="137" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chroma-commits.png 706w, https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/chroma-commits-300x116.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 353px) 100vw, 353px" /></p>
<p>Radiance 8 uses the <strong>Chroma</strong> color system from the <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/ephemeral">Ephemeral design library</a>, which builds on the core foundations of the <a href="https://github.com/material-foundation/material-color-utilities">Material color utilities</a>. Over the next few weeks I’ll write more about what Chroma is, and the new capabilities it unlocks for Swing developers that use Radiance as their look-and-feel. In the meanwhile, as always, I’ll list the changes and fixes that went into Radiance 8, using emojis to mark different parts of it:</p>
<p><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f494.png" alt="💔" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> marks an incompatible API / binary change<br />
<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f381.png" alt="🎁" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> marks new features<br />
<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> marks bug fixes and general improvements</p>
<h2>A new color system</h2>
<p><a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/400">Project Chroma</a> – adding color palettes in Radiance</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/skins/colortokens.md">Color tokens</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/skins/colortokensassociationkinds.md">Color token association kinds</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/theming/skins/colortokensbundles.md">Color tokens bundles</a></li>
<li>Dependency on <a href="https://central.sonatype.com/artifact/org.pushing-pixels/ephemeral-chroma" rel="nofollow">Ephemeral Chroma</a> library</li>
<li>The <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/blob/sunshine/docs/migration-8.0.md">migration guide</a> covers all the <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f494.png" alt="💔" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> breaking API changes in <code>RadianceSkin</code>, <code>RadianceThemingSlices</code>, painters and more</li>
</ul>
<h2>Theming</h2>
<ul>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/499">Use “Minimize”</a> rather than “Iconify” terminology for window-level actions</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/500">Fix</a> application window jumps when moving between displays</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/501">Fix</a> exception in setting fonts for <code>JTree</code> components</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/510">Consistent handling</a> of selection highlights of disabled renderer-based components (lists, tables, trees)</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/514">Always show scroll thumb</a> for scrollable content</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/522">Fix</a> issues with slider track and thumb during printing</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/527">Fix</a> visuals of internal frame header areas under skins that use matte decoration painter</li>
</ul>
<h2>Component</h2>
<ul>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f381.png" alt="🎁" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/476">Update flow ribbon bands</a> to accept a <code>BaseProjection</code> as components</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/474">Fix</a> user interaction with comboboxes in minimized ribbon content</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/477">Fix</a> application of icon filter strategies to ribbon application menu commands</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/478">Fix</a> passing command overlays to secondary menu commands</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/483">Fix</a> crash when some ribbon bands start in collapsed state</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/484">Fix</a> active rollover / pressed state visuals for disabled command buttons</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/487">Fix</a> command buttons to be updated when secondary content model is updated</li>
<li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png" alt="🔧" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance/issues/505">Fix</a> display of key tips in collapsed ribbon bands hosted in popups</li>
</ul>
<p>The new color system in Radiance unlocks a lot of things that we’ve seen in modern desktop, web and mobile interfaces in the last few years. If you’re in the business of writing elegant and high-performing desktop applications in Swing, I’d love for you to take this Radiance release for a spin. <a href="https://github.com/kirill-grouchnikov/radiance#radiance-artifacts">Click here</a> to get the instructions on how to add Radiance to your builds. And don’t forget that all of the modules require Java 9 to build and run.</p>
<p> </p>
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<item>
<title>Cinematography of “Andor” – interview with Christophe Nuyens</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/05/20/cinematography-of-andor-interview-with-christophe-nuyens.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2025 16:34:37 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[inmotion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19625</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Christophe Nuyens. In this interview, he talks about the transition of this creative field from film to digital, bridging the gap between feature films and episodic productions, learning from different cultures, […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome <a href="https://www.christophenuyens.com/"><strong>Christophe Nuyens</strong></a>. In this interview, he talks about the transition of this creative field from film to digital, bridging the gap between feature films and episodic productions, learning from different cultures, and what advice he’d give to his younger self. Between all these and more, Christophe dives deep into his work on the second season of “Andor”.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-sets01.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2133" /><br />
<span class="caption">Christophe Nuyens on the set of “Andor”. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: I finished a trade school as a general electrician, but I wanted to do something more, and I went to film school. During your first year you can choose between editing, sound and image – which is light and camera. So we had our first workshop, and I had the camera in my hands, and I knew this was it. I really loved the mix of technical and creative.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you feel that you can teach the technical part, but the artistic part comes from within a person, and if one doesn’t have it, it can’t be learned?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: No, I think you can teach both. When I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of cultural influences in my life, at home or at school. It is something that I grew over the years. When I started at the film school, I noticed that I needed to catch up on it. I spent a lot of evenings around that time watching movies with my friends, and it grew on me.</p>
<p>You can cultivate it the same way you cultivate the technical skills. There are also people who are more artistic than technical. Maybe I am more naturally inclined to be better at the technical side, but I grew and worked on my creative side over the years. I really believe you can grow the creative part of your brain.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is there such a thing as universally good art vs universally bad art, or is it all subjective?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: It’s subjective. There’s so many forms and styles of art. And that is good, because there’s something for everybody. Everything can be art, and people with different taste can find things that they appreciate.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-sets03.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2133" /><br />
<span class="caption">Christophe Nuyens on the set of “Andor”. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Was film still a thing when you were in film school?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: We did most of our projects on 16mm, either Bolex or Arriflex SR2. We did a few things on video, but it was really basic at the time. I remember those assignments to film something and edit it ourselves, and it was a nightmare. The computers were slow, the Video cards didn’t work, the software was basic. It’s incredible to see how all of that progressed since then. These days I teach at that same school, and the difference is night and day. They can edit it in DaVinci, they can grade it, and it’s so accessible. Sometimes I’m a bit jealous to see that [laughs].</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How was the transition from film to digital for you after you finished the film school?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: When I graduated, most of the productions were still on film. I was exposed to both mediums, and I’m happy about it. I know how to light for film. I still have an analog still camera, and I use it a lot.</p>
<p>But at the same time, I’m so happy that the digital revolution happened. It’s a bigger toolbox for your creativity, especially for night scenes. It’s much easier to light something natural, and to do something with less. I started my career in Belgium, and it’s a smaller market with smaller budgets for TV shows and films – but you still want to make good things. I did a TV show called “Cordon” about 10 years ago. It was an ambitious project for its small budget, and that project started my international career. I don’t think it would have been possible to make that project on film. We had a lot of night scenes on it, and it’s so much different to light a night scene on a digital camera.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still06.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1608" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><span id="more-19625"></span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: There’s a lot of ongoing technological advances in the field, from lights to lenses to sensors. Is it hard to stay up to date on all the latest developments?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: Not for me, because that’s my technical side that I’m interested in. I follow everything, and if there’s something new, I want to test it. But at the same time, I’m a fan of old glass. I like to dig into old equipment and to test new equipment.</p>
<p>Right now there’s a lot of interesting things happening with lights. Camera sensors are getting bigger and we’re getting more pixels, but I don’t think it matters that much. And the camera sensibility has been at a good level for a while now. The latest breakthroughs are all in the LED light space. I used a lot of LED lights on “Andor”. All the lights are RGBW (red, green, blue, white), and you can choose any color you want. There’s someone next to you controlling those lights on their iPad, and you’re almost painting the scene with these controllable lights. You can control the color of each one, you can control the intensity of each one, and you can do it all in real time.</p>
<p>When I graduated, it was all with gel filters, tungsten lights and HMIs. Those lights were shifting their color as they aged, and it was a more time consuming process to tweak the colors. Now you have such fine grained control over LEDs, and it’s the biggest positive change for me in the last few years. Sometimes I still use tungsten lights, but my first preference is LED.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still12.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1588" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is there anything today that is a big gap on the technology side?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: Right now everything is going wireless. Video is wireless. Lights are wireless. Sound is wireless. It’s all good, but there’s a lot of congestion on sets with all those things combined. Sometimes those nice tools don’t work because there’s too much technology on set [laughs]. That’s my only complaint.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Getting closer to “Andor”, you’ve spent around 15 years now working on various episodic productions. How do you see audience expectations and production ambitions evolving over that period of time? I look back at how it was in the ’90s, where we had the feature world and the TV world, and there was an almost unbridgeable gap between the two. And now in 2025 that gap is pretty much gone.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: It’s nice that you say that, because it’s something I fought against for years. Up until about 5 years ago people would say that if you do TV shows, you can’t do feature film work. If you wanted to do something creative on a show, with lights or with a camera, they would push back on it. They would say that it’s a TV show and that it doesn’t need that.</p>
<p>Right now, the audiences watching episodic shows accept and expect a higher level of quality. It’s such a good transition. There are TV shows that look better than films. I worked on some French TV shows where they gave us a lot of freedom even as the budget was not that big, and I’m so happy with what we were able to do there. I’ve been fighting against it for a long time in discussions with agents. They used to push me to go into the feature film world, and I’m happy with where these episodic productions are these days.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-sets02.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2133" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the set of “Andor”. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Getting to “Andor”, what brought you to it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: Thanks to David Meanti who is a producer on “Andor”. I knew him from the show “Riviera” that we did a few years ago in the south of France. He was an assistant director on that show, and we had a great working relationship. We kept in touch after that show, as he moved to the UK and started working as a producer. He tried to introduce me to the producers on the first season of “Andor”, but it didn’t work back then. But he kept on trying for the second season, and I’m grateful to David for that. At first I was offered the first 3 episodes, and after that it was extended to the next 3 episodes.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How did you approach bridging this arc between Season 1 and “Rogue One”?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: “Rogue One” is one of the best Star Wars films, and because of that I was so happy when they called me to work on “Andor”. “Rogue One” has a great story and great visuals.</p>
<p>I wanted to elevate “Andor”. The first season was shot on Panavision C lenses on VENICE camera with a cropped sensor. I wanted to use a full frame sensor with a full frame anamorphic lens to get a bit closer to “Rogue One” which was shot on Alexa 65 with anamorphic lenses. A bigger sensor gives you a different feeling, and you see it when you watch a movie in IMAX. With lighting, I wanted to have a natural approach to it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still08.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1592" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How much time did you have in pre-production to talk about ideas, visuals and inspirations?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: We had a lot of time, and it’s a rare thing. The director Ariel Kleiman and I went through the same process for each episode. We were reading the scripts together, and throwing ideas and brainstorming. We did that twice for each episode, and then we started making moodboards. After that we did another read through, and then we started blocking the scenes. We had a lot of 3D pre-viz with ILM, with our camera and lenses in those virtual sets. That allowed us to start looking for shots and to refine everything.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How difficult is it to stay practical, to capture as much as you can in camera on sets that are literally out of this world?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: On some sets it was more difficult, especially the ones with a lot of green screens. You have to imagine what’s behind as you’re lighting it and trying to see through it. There are limitations when working with green screens. You can’t use too much smoke or haze. You can’t use flares. It becomes less natural for me.</p>
<p>This is why for some sets we used either LED walls or painted backdrops. The wedding scene in episode 3 was time-lapsed. Every time we come back to the wedding, the light was slightly different as the Sun was getting lower and we were getting atmospheric effects. We wanted to create a feeling of an estate with the views on the mountains. Eventually we decided to not use green screens. They painted a nice backdrop of the mountains we used in Barcelona, and that was great. You see the final result in camera, and you can light it more naturally. Another set where we used painted backdrops was when Krennic gives his speech to take control of Ghorman. We had a painted backdrop of snowy mountains, and it worked well.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still04.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1608" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How was your collaboration with VFX? Was it mainly in post-production, or an ongoing process?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: It was ongoing. We were all in one office, including the art department and VFX. We had a lot of meetings to discuss how this planet should look, what we can do in pre-viz, etc. We had full VFX shots of the TIE fighter flying integrated into the larger sequences. Mohen Leo was the VFX supervisor, and he wanted every VFX shot to be physically grounded. You see that in every VFX shot, including the lighting. Some shots started full VFX and then became sets. Luke Hull, our production designer, was always in those meetings. It was a close collaboration between Ariel the director, myself, the art department and the VFX crew from ILM.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: In terms of sets, how much was built on stage and how much was built on location?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: There was a lot built on the stage and back lots at Pinewood and Longcross. Yavin, for example, was all at Longcross. It’s an old military test track, with some buildings and a lot of forest. We used that forest to build Yavin’s landing areas for the fighters. The Ghorman city and plaza were built on a back lot at Pinewood, including most of the interiors.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still09.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1608" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How much time did you spend shooting the wedding ceremony?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: It was about a week and a half, but we also had a set strike as we were getting close to the finish line. The last bit when they all start dancing like crazy was filmed six months later.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How many countries did this show take you to?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: We were in Barcelona where we shot the Coruscant Senate, and in London where we shot at Barbican and Lloyd’s building.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still02.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1610" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: For some of the bigger sets, is it a combination of a physical build and then digital extensions?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: Some of them were fully physical, and some were extended. The Plaza at Ghorman was built physically as one story, and everything above that is a digital extension. I remember how astonished I was the first time I arrived on that set. It was so big. Another example of combining the two was the Ghorman heist sequence. They built quite a bit of those streets, and then above it we had green screens for extensions. The VFX crew was so good at making extensions look so natural.</p>
<p>We had a great collaboration on this show. We knew how we wanted these places to look before we started shooting. I could plan my lighting ahead of time, including the VFX pieces.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: The show spends a lot of time at the apartment with Bix. How big was it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: The nice thing about that set is that everything you see is captured in camera, including the view outside which was an LED wall. That wall allowed us to be more creative and find some extra shots. You have shots from the outside where you see the city below in reflection with raindrops on the window. You see cars passing and light coming in.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still07.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1608" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Did you want to use different colors for different planets or different sets?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: We wanted every arc of three episodes to feel like its own movie. Our first block was episodes 4 through 6, and we wanted that block to feel cold. Our visual reference for it was the city of Turin in Italy, which is a mountain city. We wanted the feeling of that winter light when the Sun is already behind the mountains, but there’s still light, and it’s all blue. And if the Sun is out, it should be low, with a warm magenta feel to it. We have a lot of rain in these three episodes as well. And then when we shot the next block of the first three episodes, we wanted it to be sunny. It all has a summer feel, with lots of sunlight, including Dedra’s apartment.</p>
<p>Then, within each block you have different planets. Some places are more cold with not a lot of colors. The wedding had a more classical look, and I used tungsten lights there to create that look. Yavin feels like an old Star Wars movie. It was such a nice exercise to play with different looks and moods. It’s a gift to be able to do that.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Was there any color you wanted to stay away from?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christope</span>: Yes for certain sets, but not for the whole show. We used a mix of cold moonlight and warm sources on Yavin for consistency, for example.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still10.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1608" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What was your most memorable moment, and what was your most challenging moment on this show?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: The most challenging was Mina-Rau and its grain fields. They planted the grain fields, and we had a window of 3-4 weeks to shoot it. And then, just before we started shooting, we had a set strike and we lost half of our actors. We decided to keep on shooting with non-SAG actors, but pretty much every scene was a mix of SAG and non-SAG. So we started shooting bits and pieces of the scenes, also fighting with the elements [laughs], and then we completed the reverse shots six months later, on a stage during winter time.</p>
<p>Our greens department was cutting all those grain stalks to put on stage, but my main challenge was to keep the lighting consistent and natural. Back when we were shooting in the field, I was already thinking about what would happen later on. I was really meticulous, measuring the light of the field, the light of the Sun, the light of the clouds, and noting all the color temperatures. Then when we came to that stage, we had lots of LED fixtures on the ceiling, and we were able to match those color temperatures everywhere. Another interesting challenge was to recreate the feeling of the air with all of the field particles.</p>
<p>It’s easy when you have one scene outside and then another on the stage, but here we were matching shots within the same scenes. I like those kinds of challenges.</p>
<p>As for the most memorable scene, I loved shooting Yavin. I like being outside, and it also reminded me of the old Star Wars movies. Another one was the heist on the streets of Ghorman. We spent about four weeks, mostly during the night, in the UK winter. It was freezing. We had rain machines. It was hard, but it paid off in the end. It was also my first big set to light. It was a big challenge, and I was so happy with the end result.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still11.jpg" alt="" width="3779" height="1606" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How does it feel to see these weeks and months of work compressed into a few hours on the screen?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: Before the episode is shown to the public, I see multiple cuts of it. That’s when I see all the faults. That’s when I think of all the things that I could have done better. And then some months later it hits the streaming network, and now I can see it from a distance – and it’s really nice to see it in its final form.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How was Covid for you and how is it today?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: I’m so happy that it’s all behind me. We still had Covid restrictions when we started working on this season. It was a lot of testing, and it was cumbersome for the entire production. Also, when you work in a mask, it takes away a big part of the human interaction on set. I want to see people that I work with. When you talk with someone and you have a mask on, you lose half of the conversation. From the moment we could work without a mask, it really opened up. Everything became more relaxed. Communication became easier and warmer. It was hard for me to not have the same human interaction with the restrictions in place.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What are your top three favorite movies of all time?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: One of my favorites is “Apocalypse Now”. It’s incredible, and it’s also maybe another reason why I loved shooting Yavin – it’s the same atmosphere. I love “No Country for Old Men” and “Children of Men” with its incredible camera work.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-still13.jpg" alt="" width="3840" height="1594" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: If you had a time machine, and you could go back in time to give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: Be patient. I was really impatient with everything, as it was so difficult to get into doing fiction. Everything else comes along. I don’t regret any twists and turns of the path that I took.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What keeps you going? You get to travel the world and work on these great productions, but it also involves long hours and sleepless nights, and being away from your family and friends for long periods of time.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Christophe</span>: It’s really hard for the family, and it’s a demanding job. As long as I feel that I keep on learning, that I keep on evolving, that I keep on meeting really nice people I work with, I’m happy. When it starts to feel that it’s becoming a routine and that I’m doing the same things all over again, then I’ll stop and see what’s next. There are several other things I would love to do in my life outside of movies, but for now I still love it.</p>
<p>I’m getting to know new people. I’m learning a lot, be it on a bigger project like “Andor” or on smaller ones. When you travel, you get exposed to other cultures. I was on a production that took us to Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and the locals have a different way of working. I worked a lot in the UK, and their way is different from how they do it in France. I’m about to do two French movies, and I’m looking forward to that. The French way is the artists’ way. They spend the whole day talking about it. In the UK it’s a bit more efficient, maybe [laughs].</p>
<p>As long as I have this feeling, it’s good for me. But if I feel that I’m doing the same thing over and over again, I’d want to stop.</p>
<p><em>Kirill: From all the places you’ve traveled to so far, what’s your favorite cuisine?</em></p>
<p>Christophe: French. When I work in France, I gain 5 kilos every time. The food is so good, and they take a full hour to eat. If you don’t take an hour to eat and production decides to do continuous days, they will strike. It’s too much [laughs]. The UK crews don’t like to stop. They keep on going so they can go home on time to spend at least a bit of time with the family. As far as the food goes, I prefer to work in France.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/andor-sets04.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2133" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the set of “Andor”. Courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney+.</span></p>
<p>And here I’d like to thank <a href="https://www.christophenuyens.com"><strong>Christophe Nuyens </strong></a>for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of cinematography. I also want to thank Nathalie Retana and Jamie Miller for making this interview happen. “Andor” is <a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-faba988a-a9f5-45f2-a074-0775a7d6f67a">streaming on Disney+</a>. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/inmotion/">click here</a> for additional in-depth interviews in this series.</p>
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<title>Production design of “September 5” – interview with Julian R. Wagner</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2024/12/16/production-design-of-september-5-interview-with-julian-r-wagner.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2024 14:26:22 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[inmotion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19591</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Julian R. Wagner. In this interview, he talks about what is art, how this creative field adapts to technological changes – transition to digital, visual effects and generative AI, how he […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome <a href="https://julianwagner.com/"><strong>Julian R. Wagner</strong></a>. In this interview, he talks about what is art, how this creative field adapts to technological changes – transition to digital, visual effects and generative AI, how he approaches designing his movies, and what keeps him going. Between all these and more, Adam dives deep into what went into making “September 5”.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19608" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/julianrwagner1.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/julianrwagner1@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="720" height="480" /></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: My name is Julian Wagner, born in Germany but would describe myself rather European than German. I am a Berlin based Production Designer, working mainly for film and television.</p>
<p>I was interested in art and architecture very early on. My father has been an architect and that certainly had a strong influence on me. When I was 13, I started acting on 2 Series and some years later as well for the Theater. Those years had a strong influence on my path, because my passion for narration and film in particular was born. During my short time at the theatre, I then realised that I would rather step behind the stage and camera to be able to create more myself. I was so fascinated by telling stories in a visual way and combining my interest in visual art and narratives. I was trying to bring both together, but it took quite a long time to find the right path.</p>
<p>I left movies for a while, and I became a photographer, mostly for fashion and beauty. Then I decided to study design and art in Italy, and I shifted the focus back to the creation of spaces and other forms. During these studies, I focused on Graphics and Media, and directed my first Music Videos. After completing my degree, I worked mostly on music videos and commercials for smaller companies. And at some point, a cinematographer I was working with on a music video asked me if I could do production design on his first short film. It was an appealing prospect, as I realized that I could take all the skills I had – designing, art, photography – and combine them with the way I told stories through music videos. From that moment on, I knew that I wanted to do production design on movies. I went back to the film academy in Ludwigsburg and studied production design.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/conceptart_vtr2.jpg" alt="" width="3969" height="2185" /><br />
<span class="caption">Concept art for the Vault-Type Room for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What is art? Is there such a thing as objectively good and bad art, or is it all subjective?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: It’s an interesting question because everyone would answer this a bit differently. It also feels like the most fundamental question of all time if you’re studying art. You could also ask whether something in art is right or wrong.</p>
<p>Some argue that there are objective standards for evaluating art. Like for example technical skills – the artist’s mastery of technique and materials. From this perspective, we could also talk about composition or the use of visual elements such as balance, contrast and harmony. We could say this works and that doesn’t work. But isn’t that also a subjective view? We could talk about innovation. Is it something original? Or just an interpretation or a new edition of an existing work of art? We could talk about the emotional impact – the ability to evoke strong feelings or thoughts.</p>
<p>Taking these viewpoints, good art adheres to all those criteria, while bad art falls a bit short. But this is just one perspective.</p>
<p>The other perspective, and I find myself much more strongly in this one, sees art as something entirely subjective. I base the judgment of good and bad art on individual taste, cultural background, and the experiences you have had. In this view, the value of art lies in its ability to resonate with its audience, making the distinction between good and bad relative.</p>
<p>I see art not only as subjective but even more as a reflection of life itself. For me, it’s all about life, and this is what I bring as my contribution. I contribute my experiences in my life and how I see things, with all the struggles and joys. For me, art is deeply personal. The so-called objective criteria do not work for me and my understanding of art.</p>
<p>Ultimately, whether art is good or bad may also come down to the relationship between the work of an artist and the audience or the viewers. It is all about the relationship that we are building, especially in this art form of filmmaking.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/conceptart_parkinglot.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1980" /><br />
<span class="caption">Concept art for the parking lot for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><span id="more-19591"></span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What do you see as the big changes in this field in the last 10-15 years?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: There have been many changes in the field of art, particularly in film, over the last 20 years. To return to the evaluation of art, let’s consider cultural criteria. Art can be assessed based on different standards and within various contexts, and its value can change over time as cultural attitudes shift. Today, we are trained differently in addressing issues like racism, discrimination, and cultural responsibility – such as cultural appropriation. I still believe that art can and must provoke, but we must be cautious when it perpetuates harmful stereotypes or overlooks its impact on marginalized groups.</p>
<p>When I was working as a photographer, the industry was starting to move from analog techniques to the digital world. I learned to use large format cameras, and all my jobs were analog. Digital has changed the whole field of photography, and by extension, the field of filmmaking.</p>
<p>It’s only human to have anxiety about big changes, and the transition to digital brought a lot of anxiety about losing control. I remember that in the beginning everyone was overwhelmed with the possibilities of not being restricted by physical materials. A huge amount of material was shot. We were not thinking about the post production process – in photography and filmmaking. It took some time to realize how much more expensive the post production was getting because there was so much more material to go through and edit.</p>
<p>The digital possibilities were also significantly changing the way VFX was and is handled. In the beginning, we mainly worked with green screens. We were changing matte paintings from analog techniques to computer-generated imagery. When I was studying production design at the university, there was already a fair bit of VFX involved. I was already used to seeing VFX as a tool that provided me with a lot of options instead of limitations. I could generate sets that I could never afford, so I was quite open to this process. But I remember talking with designers who were rooted in the analog world, and they were a bit afraid of losing control or being replaced by VFX. They thought that it would be taking something from their art work.</p>
<p>This is still something we have to negotiate today. We must find a better balance around where things are created. We need to go back a bit and do the creation entirely in the preparation time. Same applies to the use of volumes.</p>
<p>And today we are discussing AI, and again, for a very good reason, we are afraid of losing control and of losing jobs. The technology is so appealing, and I see many producers, trying to find shortcuts and explore the possibilities of generative AI tools. I want to see the positive side of it. I think we will go through a similar process to what we experienced during the transition to digital and the transition to CGI. It’s a wave that is coming. And we’d better try riding the wave than swimming behind it. I think that in a few years we will have found a balance of how to use it to our advantage and where we have to stop and admit that it doesn’t work. And I believe that the Production Designer will become more and more a curator for AI generated art.</p>
<p>I use AI a lot to find inspiration and to strike a mood. I play with it when I approach a topic or think about a script. But it’s also limited, at least today. I can type in a prompt to get concept art in the style of XYZ and I can try dozens and hundreds of prompts, but I would always get a final image. I don’t see the process, and for me, the process is the most valuable thing. If I want to use a piece of concept art as a blueprint for the filmmaking process, I would always go to a human concept artist. I want to have a back-and-forth conversation, to go into more detail, to change things. With AI, it’s a black-and-white process. You type in a prompt, and you get an image back.</p>
<p>I need this process to be much more fluid. When I work with concept artists, I am inspired by their work and their thought process. A piece of software is just copying things, at least at the moment. It is not able to really create something. You feed that machine, and it gives you back a combination of some pieces that were fed into it. It might be a technically new image, but it’s not creatively inventive. But this is what I am looking for.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/conceptart_controlroom.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1980" /><br />
<span class="caption">Concept art for the Control Room for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Getting closer to “September 5”, what brought you to it?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: I’ve worked with the director Tim Fehlbaum and also the producers on his previous movie “The Colony”. We had a great collaboration, and we all felt that we wanted to continue working together. So we were all very excited to get going together again.</p>
<p>This time, Tim collaborated with the writer Moritz Binder. Their first version of the script had a slightly different approach, as the story was told from multiple perspectives. The perspective of the media and the journalistic work has always been a strong part of the story, and at some point, they have decided to focus exclusively on this. We all immediately thought that this was an enormously strong approach. It did not take much time for Tim and Moritz to come up with a new script, and that was so exciting because it was a unique perspective. Focusing on the media and their responsibility gave the story an explosive quality that transcends the act of terrorism itself. I was hooked from the first line. I was excited to be part of it and to start the journey into this world.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19594" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/build-controlroom.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/build-controlroom@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="720" height="457" /><br />
<span class="caption">Set build for the Control Room for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: I didn’t get it from the beginning, but the more I was watching it, the more I saw the approach of telling the story from inside the studio, and everything else is shown on screens through cameras. How did this affect your focus when there’s so much time being spent in one place?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: The decision to focus exclusively on the media and to experience the story through the eyes of the journalists naturally also had a huge impact on the genre. We were suddenly dealing with a chamber drama. A one-room thriller. So my perspective on this story changed in many ways. The Olympic Village becomes a gigantic stage where this tragic event takes place, while the entire story unfolds within a single, self-contained, and claustrophobic studio set. I found it particularly appealing to design this small world to convey a big story and to make it tangible. And I never felt such a huge responsibility as a filmmaker – and I think we all did.</p>
<p>I remember our first creative discussion with Tim, and he told me that he knew I tend to extend my creative freedom and love creating fictional worlds, but he asked me to create something completely authentic this time. I had to think about it because, in all the work I’d done up until that point, I had a lot of creative freedom. I try to do world-building that only supports the narrative, but this story was different. The main goal for us was authenticity. We were to create a world that felt real and tangible, a world that perfectly matched all the archive footage. We had to create a world that takes our responsibility towards the tragic event into account.</p>
<p>I love movies that take place in a contained space. When you can feel the clock ticking. You focus on one room and the actors in it, and you don’t have any time to take a break. It was all about authenticity, and yet there was a certain creative license that we needed to visually support the drama and the emotional world of our characters. This is how I view my role as a designer. I have to find this balance between reality and fiction, and especially on a story like this, the balance is a very thin line. If you go one step too far, you forget about the responsibility. But you can’t just recreate history. It never works.</p>
<p>This goes back to your question about art. It’s subjective. It’s a relationship between what we do and the audience. A lot of things have changed since the ’70s. Our perspectives have shifted. If you want to support these emotions and this narrative, you need to take a certain creative license.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/airport-model.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1620" /><br />
<span class="caption">Airport model build for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How much time did you have to research?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: I started about a year prior to shooting. I didn’t work on it full time; it was more of a soft and fluid prep. I love this moment of filmmaking. There’s still no pressure. You can find your own vision. You have time to go to art exhibitions or to study art books. You go to the original Olympic Village compound to have a look at it. You digest all of it and your imagination takes over.</p>
<p>I spent 1 or 2 months coming up with the first visual lookbook about the style and the atmosphere. And about eight months prior to shooting, we started the research for all the technical devices. The set decorator Melanie Raab and our Prop Master Marco Böhm started to read the script, and we knew that it would take a long time to find all the technical equipment. We had the production buyer Johannes Pfaller on board early on to do this research with us. And he was in charge of the entire search and collected the devices.</p>
<p>Our first task was to find out what technical machines and devices were used and how the studios looked. We had a great exchange with the “real” Geoffrey Mason, who was there in Munich in 1972. He gave us details on the workflows, on the pace of the journalistic work, and the emotions around it. He also provided us with personal images from the crew, and from these images, we started our research. We didn’t have any photos that showed the studio itself, so we would look at the shots of some crew members, and check what was in the background behind them. We were talking with technical advisors to find out what machines and cables were hanging on the wall.</p>
<p>The research of the journalistic work became like investigative journalism itself. It was like a gigantic puzzle. We had images showing a control room, and it looked like these other images that we had, but as we did more research on technical devices, we started seeing the difference between images taken in 1972 and images taken later, in 1976 and into the early ’80s. Where we had blind spots we used our creativity to fill in the gaps. After that, we created a mood board for all the technical aspects, and we started chasing the cables, the phones, and the video machines.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/conceptart_vtr.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1980" /><br />
<span class="caption">Concept art for the Vault-Type Room for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p>We were going around talking to people. We went to the basements of all the TV broadcast studios. We went to museums and private collectors. We checked the Internet. We went from Germany to the Netherlands and to Italy and then to the Czech Republic. We started to collect everything we could find and store it in a studio in Munich. This was happening around December and January, 6-8 weeks before shooting. We had this significant moment when we stood there in the studio, and we realized that we were looking at the biggest collection of the technical gear from that era. Then we had only a few weeks left to reassemble, refurbish, and make it work again.</p>
<p>We wanted everything to work as it used to in 1972. The studio set had to work like a real studio set, and not just as a set build. We took our creative license where we needed to support the narrative and the emotions, and we recreated a real set. Everything worked from the screens down to buttons and even the glued-on memos were correct and ready for a close-up shot.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19592" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/equipment-collection2.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/equipment-collection2@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="720" height="500" /><br />
<span class="caption">Original broadcast equipment collection for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: I liked the part in the beginning that felt like a tribute to the era of film as a medium when the camera lingers on a film reel being threaded through the equipment. Was it a bit of nostalgia around film?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: I think we all have a soft spot for nostalgia. I would maybe call it a passion for the analog technique. This is something that binds the core team around Tim together. Whatever we do, we always try to do in-camera. We don’t want to shift it to post. The first movie I did with Tim was a sci-fi production, and you would think there were a lot of VFX involved, but we reduced that to only a few designated shots. I like using the old analog tricks because you have total control and you know what you get already on set.</p>
<p>It also means a lot for the actors. You are putting them back in that time. In a way, it is not a fake set. It is a real analog TV studio that we built.</p>
<p>Our first intention was to have a continuous set so that Markus and Tim could follow their vision to work as a journalistic documentary team. They were following the characters and the narrative as the story unfolds. From the beginning to the end. This mirrors exactly what the journalists from ABC did. They were following the story, and we were following the actors. We created a continuous set instead of several mini sets, so cast and crew could maneuver freely from one room to another. All the lights were integrated in the set to make these long shots possible.</p>
<p>And our second intention was to create a set that worked like a time machine for the actors. We wanted the actors to forget about the real world outside. This means we needed to create a set inside the studio where you would never look behind a wall or a curtain, where you would never see scaffolding or any technical film equipment. Normally you go into a studio and you see all the lights and gear – but not in this case. You entered the studio and you stood directly inside the set. You could walk through every room, and every exit was linked to the set.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/promo2-fullbleed.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1575" /><br />
<span class="caption">Production design of “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Does it hurt a little bit to walk away from so much work after you are done on a production like this?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: When the film is done, the artwork is completed. I never feel that I want to go back into the process and keep it. My father was an architect, and we had this discussion very often. His goal was to create things that last forever. He kept telling me that he understood my art form and my creativity, but that he couldn’t understand why I put so much effort into something that would be wrapped after a couple of weeks.</p>
<p>It’s a different approach. My work is a contribution to a film, and the film lasts forever – longer than any building could. This is the legacy of filmmakers. The set is merely the world where the film takes place. I’m glad that all these machines are now back in museums and with private collectors. Wherever they are, they can be seen. If we had kept them, they would have just been stored away.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What was the most challenging or rewarding sequence or set for you on this production?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: There is one particular sequence captures the essence of the movie for me. We have the voice of Jennings talking about the masked man on the balcony, and then he sends the 16mm material back to the editing room. Today we are used to getting an image immediately. Every image is just a mouse click away. It’s rare that someone tells you about an event, and you have to use your own imagination to picture it. In this film, it is as well about what we don’t see and this scene beautifully demonstrates the tension that arises when an image is withheld from us for an extended period.</p>
<p>This sequence shows all the processes that went into developing the film material and sending it to the editing table and sitting in front of the little screen, and then we see the masked man for the first time. Even though we all know this iconic image, it is still such a powerful moment in the movie. Then we go into the control room, and we see all the technical processes behind going live-checking their devices and sources, counting three-two-one, and then they go live! There’s so much tension in the room. And in the middle of this fascinating workflow there comes this moment when they realize that someone can get shot, and they don’t know if they can show it on live television. They go into the hallway, and the camera is following them. We move from a stunning technical world into an emotional discussion about the moral dilemma of journalistic ethics.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/promo4-fullbleed.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1167" /><br />
<span class="caption">Production design of “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p>They only have a few seconds to solve this problem, and it tells us so much about the journalistic work. Back then they had no chance to really discuss the ethics and the moral compass. They had to follow the story and to do their work, and we can show it because we have designed the set and the structure in a way that we can move into the hallway and go back to the control room. It’s a 6-minute scene and we see everything we wanted to show. We feel that moral dilemma. We see the journalistic work.</p>
<p>I also love this scene because it was only possible through the close collaboration of all departments, guided by Tim’s strong vision. In this moment, everything comes together. And I am happy to have played my part in it.</p>
<p>The studio set and the control room particularly are the heart of the story. But I’m also proud of the smaller sets, that nobody would recognize as sets, because they are hidden between the archival footage. I’ve had some discussions with people who watched it, and most of the viewers take these little scenes as archival footage. We did have access to a lot of material, but a lot of it had to be re-created in a way that they blend seamlessly into the old footage. The masked man on the balcony was such a scene. Or the swim race with Mark Spitz in the beginning. Most of the Olympic Village footage was re-shot. It’s great to see how well it works when the audience can’t differentiate between the archival footage and the scenes we created. When nobody realizes that this has been designed, it probably means, that you have done a good job as a designer.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/equipment-collection.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="2100" /><br />
<span class="caption">Original broadcast equipment collection for “September 5”. Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Stepping away from this production for the last few questions, the industry has been hit hard in the last few years with the global Covid pandemic, and then with the two big Hollywood strikes. How do you see the industry faring these days?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: We have witnessed some very tough changes and cuts. And the way life goes, we won’t be able to pick up where we left off. It’s like a hermeneutic circle – when we go into a crisis, we always interpret and evaluate it in terms of the big picture. In this case, the film industry. But our understanding of this industry already changes when we evaluate the crisis.</p>
<p>What does it mean for the industry at this moment? Covid changed a lot around politics and how we collaborate with other countries. It’s a sad evolution at the moment to see all these countries that are trying to protect themselves and make themselves more independent and less open. This is something that will be affecting our industry over the next years.</p>
<p>During Covid I was preparing the TV show called “The Swarm”, and I was lucky that I was able to go to Italy and stay there to work during the pandemic. There were no tourists, and I was lucky to see Rome and Venice without fighting through the crowds. The pandemic was tragic, but it was also a moment of being able to calm down a bit. At least for me.</p>
<p>The industry was melting at that point because most of the projects were shut down. Then we had the big strikes, and that hit me a lot as my focus was on international productions. Nothing was happening, and nobody knows how it’s going to look like over the next few months. I’m always hoping for the best, but we all see that it takes a lot of time to pick up again. The whole industry is afraid at the moment to spend money, not only because of Covid and the strikes, but also because of the shifts in the streaming industry. This is how I see it, at least. Everyone is very careful when and how to green light a project.</p>
<p>I hope this is going to change very soon, because we all want to work. So many creative colleagues are ready to go. There’s still money to do these projects, and sometimes I don’t really understand what we are waiting for. It feels like years ago we have been more brave to just start a project, and nowadays I feel like every single piece of the puzzle has to be in its place before we take off. As if every risk must be eliminated and every question answered. But this is not how filmmaking works. At least I have always experienced it as a process in which we solve problems while we are already moving ahead.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What piece of advice would you give to your younger self when you were starting out?</em></p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-left: 18px; float: right;" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/julianrwagner2.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/julianrwagner2@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="360" height="408" /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: I have two main rules when designing a movie. It is like a design mantra.</p>
<p>The first is to always think outside the box. This was something that I did quite early on, but I had to become a bit more brave to do so. This is an advice that I could give to every young designer. Understand the story and the idea behind the script, but don’t chase the words. Just because the set is described as an office building, it doesn’t mean it has to be an office building. What emotions are in the scene and the location? How can these emotions be visualized better and more impressively? Coming back to the art question – don’t lose the inner artist. Try to find your own vision in the script that is given to you.</p>
<p>And for the second advice I needed to get more experience. I always say: “those who are searching, cannot truly find”. Searching means that you already have an idea of what you’re looking for. But to truly find, you need to let go. Finding also means being open to something new, something unexpected.</p>
<p>For so many years I’ve shaped my vision, and then I went looking for that clear image. I would scout for a very specific image, and it worked quite well. I might have found the right location, and it had everything that I imagined, but there was no process. What about the unimaginable? I mostly found what I was looking for, but I missed so many, maybe more interesting things along the way. Today I still have a vision for something, and an idea about the style of the movie or maybe the locations. But then, when I’m on the road scouting, or just walking to my office, I try to let go. Instead of searching, I start finding inspirations.</p>
<p>This is even more important when it comes to collaboration. If your vision or your idea is already unchangeable, you’re not open enough to collaborate with others. You would just defend your own idea. This is something I would love to tell the younger me. And I still need to tell my “present self” from time to time.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What keeps you going and staying in the industry?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Julian</span>: It’s an engine inside myself that I have always felt since the very beginning. I feel the need to tell a story and to create a world, and this is what a film project is providing me. It can take me away from home for a long period of time, and sometimes it’s a burden, but I see it as a big opportunity. Sometimes I feel like a child in a sandbox. I’m getting all the tools and possibilities to play around. What can I wish more in a job? And I also get paid for it [laughs]. It’s a perfect match. I can’t imagine doing any other work. It’s what I love to do.</p>
<p>I think that applies to all filmmakers out there. We are driven by the need to tell stories.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/promo3-fullbleed.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1181" /><br />
<span class="caption">Production design of “September 5”, Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner / Paramount Pictures.</span></p>
<p>And here I’d like to thank <a href="https://julianwagner.com/"><strong>Julian R. Wagner</strong></a> for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of production design, and for sharing the supporting materials. I also want to thank Nathalie Retana and Jamie Miller for making this interview happen. “September 5” is out in theaters. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/inmotion/">click here</a> for additional in-depth interviews in this series.</p>
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<title>Cinematography of “X”, “Pearl” and “Maxxxine” – interview with Eliot Rockett</title>
<link>https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2024/11/18/cinematography-of-x-pearl-and-maxxxine-interview-with-eliot-rockett.html</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kirill Grouchnikov]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Nov 2024 23:55:51 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[inmotion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.pushing-pixels.org/?p=19553</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my honor to welcome Eliot Rockett. In this interview, he talks about the transition of the industry from film to digital, advances in lighting technology, potential impact of generative AI, and working through the Covid […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my honor to welcome <a href="https://www.eliotrockett.com/"><strong>Eliot Rockett</strong></a>. In this interview, he talks about the transition of the industry from film to digital, advances in lighting technology, potential impact of generative AI, and working through the Covid times. Between all these and more, Eliot dives deep into what went into making the breakaway horror trilogy of “X”, “Pearl” and “Maxxxine”, its message of self-destructive pursuit of celebrity and fame, the cathartic experience of the horror genre, placing each movie in its own time but connecting them all, and how “Pearl” might have been a ’40s film noir instead of a full blown Technicolor extravaganza.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19561" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/eliotrockett.jpg" srcset="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/eliotrockett@2x.jpg 2x" alt="" width="720" height="413" /></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: When I was an undergraduate at the University of Oregon, I was working at a little movie theater called The Bijou in Eugene. I ended up taking a class in the film studies department, almost randomly, and our professor Carl Bybee started showing us all these movies from the French New Wave and the New German cinema. His approach was that film is art and social criticism, and not entertainment. That struck me at the time, with the combination of working at the theater, seeing the movies that we were showing at the theater at the time, which were in the similar vein.</p>
<p>This class that I took started the wheels turning, and after I finished my undergraduate degree in philosophy, I went to graduate school at NYU for film. At that point, I was thinking I would probably try to be a director. But what happened was that everybody in the program needed to use people in the program to shoot their student films. Generally what would happen every year was two or three people would end up shooting everybody’s movies, because they were the people that had a propensity for it, and that was the one crew position that could screw up the entire movie.</p>
<p>I had done tons of still photography prior to that while I was in undergraduate. I would have probably gotten a minor in still photography, but they didn’t offer it where I was. So I was this person who ended up shooting. I made a couple of my own films, and then I ended up shooting mountains of short films. And it all went from there.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-window-blinds.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Looking back at when you started and now, did you go through all five stages of grief around the transition from film to digital?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I was in graduate school at NYU and I finished in 1991, so it’s been a while. I started doing a lot of music videos in the ’90s. I moved to San Francisco, I kept doing music videos and also a bunch of computer company corporate work, and shooting one or two small independent features each year. And I resisted shooting anything on tape. I told myself that I was going to shoot stuff on film, and if the job wanted to shoot something on video, I was not going to do it and somebody else can do it.</p>
<p>Eventually at some point, the first Sony HD camera came out, and it was the time for me try it out and see what the deal is. So I started shooting a little bit of stuff in HD here and there, but I was very much not a big fan of it. As the years went by, I would keep doing a little bit of HD stuff and predominantly shooting a film. Much later when I moved to Portland, Oregon, I got hired on the NBC show “Grimm”, and they were shooting it on the original first Alexa. That was it, here we go. That’s what they’re doing. This is what we’re going to do. That show ended up going for six years, so for six years, I shot digitally.</p>
<p>By the time I was done with that show, digital had just eclipsed film. That was a six year transition where I was doing this one show, and everything else started moving very quickly. Alexa and Red were taking over everything. So by the time I got done with “Grimm”, everybody was shooting digitally. I didn’t go kicking and screaming into it. It was a segway into it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/x-sleeping.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1012" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “X” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><span id="more-19553"></span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: So basically you’re well beyond acceptance.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: For a while, I felt that the digital product was at a point where the technical side of it was different, but not worse in every way. There was film and there was digital, and digital had some better aspects compared to film, and some worse aspects. It’s not about being equivalent. One might have an advantage here and the other has an advantage over here. It became two different things that were both viable.</p>
<p>Where we are now, the digital world keeps moving forward, and film, at least on the acquisition side, is still where it was 30 years ago. There used to be this constant progression with Kodak and Fuji in film stocks and grain size. Nobody’s paying any attention to that anymore. It’s just not happening in the same way.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/x-gasmart.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1012" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “X” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you see any other big technological changes, maybe in lenses, maybe in lighting?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: In the digital acquisition world, you have the choice of whatever camera you’re going to use. What tended to happen over the years is that they have converged in terms of their look, for lack of a better word. They’re all different, but it’s an engineering process that’s driving them all towards the same direction, the same point.</p>
<p>What people have done in response to that is they’ve become very interested in lenses. The vintage lens thing and the character you can get out of a lens has suddenly become much more important, because it’s not a different film stock you’re putting in the camera. This lens can do this thing very differently for me. The science of optics and lenses is what it has always been. Coating or not coating has always been out there. I don’t know that there’s any remarkable change, other than people’s interest, in particularly vintage lenses, or detuning modern lenses.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-onthesets.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="2089" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p>On the lighting side, we have seen gigantic changes with LEDs. It also goes hand in hand with higher light sensitivity ASA ratings of the cameras. I’ve been using Sony Venice 2 pretty much for everything for the last few years, and now I can shoot everything at 3200 ASA. You approach the project of lighting things differently. If it’s day interiors, you still need a big light, because the world’s still as bright as it was outside. But when you’re on a set, or on a stage, or when you’re in a contained interior or a nighttime exterior, I see the whole world of what is available to me and what I can use.</p>
<p>What used to be a worry about things being way too dark and inky black, now becomes a worry of seeing all these strange shadows being cast, and it’s because of a work light on a cart 20 feet behind me doing something strange. You have so much control over LED light. Their color rendition has gotten better. You have wireless DMX and a dimmer board operator on location, and the whole thing transitioned a lot.</p>
<p>It’s a technologically-heavy craft or art form, and the digital thing has altered it greatly. And it keeps changing. It keeps moving forward. You have to keep up with it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/location-maps.jpg" alt="" width="2400" height="1799" /><br />
<span class="caption">Mapping out “Maxxxine” sequences, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How do you feel about the explosion of digital screens in our lives? We used to watch movies in the ’90s either in a theater, or on a VHS tape on those old school TVs. And now we have so many screens and so many streaming networks with who knows what kinds of compression artifacts that they bring in.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: On some level with all of that, I had to let go of it. Every screen you’re going to see this on is going to look a little bit different. Hopefully it’s not going to be a catastrophe, and some engineer in the broadcast booth in some town might decide that this show needs to be a lot brighter and just crank it up. And there’s nothing you can do about it [laughs].</p>
<p>When you’re making something, in my mind at least, you think that this is probably the best anybody’s ever going to see it, and hopefully people will get a chance to see it looking like this. But there’s no control over it when it goes to streaming platforms, when somebody is watching it on their phone or a 72 inch flat screen at home. It’s all going to be different, and there’s nothing you can do about that. I try to make it look like I wanted to look when I’m looking at it, and hope that that translates through the process for as many people as possible.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-bates-motel.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Getting into the closer to the X trilogy, how do you explain the enduring appeal of the horror genre across so many generations of American moviegoers?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: This is a hard one for me to answer, because as I’m not a huge horror fan, which is somewhat ironic. I took a good friend of mine (who is working as a producer in the industry) to the premiere of “X”. I told her that it’s an horror movies, and she said she loves horror. It was a great experience because she was caught up in it. There was a lot of difficult things going on with a show that we’ve been working together on, and then we go to this premiere, and I’m sitting there next to her, and I realized she’s totally enmeshed in what’s going on.</p>
<p>It was a totally cathartic experience for her. She’s completely left all the problems of the show that we were working on, and she was right there in the moment. It was visceral, and there’s not a lot of thought that has to go into it. It’s this shocking moment, and then you come out of it, and you have this full body release. And at that moment I got it. It wasn’t even that long ago, but it was an eye opener for the why of horror.</p>
<p>I think certain horror movies are really good cinema. I have a vivid memory of thinking that the first “Silence of the Lambs” was a great movie, just on a movie level. I wouldn’t say I dislike horror. I just like what I consider to be good movies, but I didn’t think of horror as a genre, as something that I was particularly drawn to. But now after seeing “X” with with her, I have this understanding. It now makes sense to me why a lot of people are drawn to it as a genre, and not necessarily as I want to go see that good movie.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/x-conversation.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1012" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “X” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What was the story behind doing “X” and “Pearl” back to back?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: Ti West [director] wanted to make “Pearl”, and he had an idea for what the movie would be before we ever left for New Zealand. But A24 and other folks weren’t necessarily on board with that. They were saying “You can go to New Zealand and make X. And we’ll talk about whatever else happens”.</p>
<p>It was at the height of pre-vaccine Covid. It was unpleasant to be shooting movies back then. I was in Los Angeles when productions started back up, and it was under the full Covid protocols with face masks and air filtration. It was stressful and difficult.</p>
<p>When we got to New Zealand and we were working on “X”, Ti already had written “Pearl” while he was in managed isolation for two weeks. It was this ongoing thing of “Are we going to get to make this other movie or not”. It always looked pretty good, but it wasn’t a for-sure thing until pretty far into the production of “X”, before it was a full green light on doing it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/x-car.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1012" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Which one do you find more visceral or more impactful, violence on screen or violence off screen?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I don’t know that you could say that as a blanket rule. When you see violence on screen, you can’t deny it. But then you watch “The Zone of Interest”, and there’s a lot of off screen violence in the concentration camp. I found that movie to be devastating, the whole idea of what was going on and seeing people’s lives next door to it. That was intense.</p>
<p>It depends. You watch a superhero movie, and violence on screen is cartoonish. There is no sense of it being visceral. It depends on how it happens. Look at “Irreversible” with Monica Belucci. The on screen violence was horrifying. It depends on how it’s portrayed, and what the intention behind it is.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/connections-x.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1687" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “X” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Talking about common motives between the three movies, each one opens with sliding or swinging doors. Was the intent to tie all of them together?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I don’t know everything that goes on in Ti’s mind, but I remember when we were doing “X”, he wanted to start the movie in the barn. It looks 4:3, and then the doors open, and we push through it, and you see that it’s not. Then we started Pearl the same way, and at that point it became clear that we should start the third movie this way too. I don’t know if in his mind there was some reference that he had originally with “X” that let him down that road. He didn’t mention it if there was.</p>
<p>I remember clearly that we talked a lot about the opening shot of “X”, and we discussed having a drone or a wire cam over all the road to get up to the house. Then he came up with the doors, and that’s what we ended up doing.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/connections-pearl.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1340" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Pearl” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: If you look at the three movies, how much did you want to tie them together visually versus how much you wanted to place them firmly in their time era?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: Very much the intention was for each one to stand alone visually as its own thing. “X” is an emulation of that genre film of that era. “Pearl” is in 1919, and you can’t emulate movies from that time because it’s too early, and we landed on the Technicolor, “Wizard of Oz” heavy thing and went with that. On “Maxxxine” initially I was worried that it would end up feeling like “X”, but as it went on, it also very much landed in its own place with the ’80s film look mixed in with that giallo Italian horror thing. Each one of them definitely was trying to be its own visual language, and not have anything really to do on that level with the others.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/connections-maxxxine.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1333" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is there such a thing in your mind as the look of the ’80s and the look of the ’70s for “X” and “Maxxxine”?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: On a broad level, yes. There’s certain technological considerations of how films were made then that put them in certain places. And even more so, it’s an era thing, but it’s also a genre thing. You have late ’70s slasher movies all sharing these qualities, and then ’80s thrillers all share these other qualities. And those thrillers look different from ’80s rom-coms. It’s not necessarily the fact of it being in that decade, as much as it is that decade and that particular style of movie. That is what I think we were trying to emulate.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Did you do something radically different between the three of them on the motion of the camera, the framing, how long the camera lingered, and how it moved?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: There probably is a distinct camera movement framing thing in each movie, but I can’t say that it was deliberately defined beforehand. I’m not much a fan of setting up rules beforehand, and never breaking them. That’s not the way I think about it.</p>
<p>This is how I do think about it. Let’s sit down with Ti, look at a bunch of reference material, talk about a bunch of things, grab a bunch of stills, pass them back and forth, talk about what the movie should look like, and then go do it. Then when we’re out there, somehow it’s seeped into the subconscious enough. I’m looking at the way this is getting set up, and I’m looking at the shot, and I’m looking at how the lighting is getting put together, and what the shot is going to be – and I’m starting to feel that it’s just not right for this movie.</p>
<p>It’s not that I have a set of rules and I see that we’ve just broken this rule and we can’t do that. It’s more that, hopefully, I’ve steeped myself enough in what it is that we’re trying to do, that it becomes obvious when we’re not doing it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/pearl-cornfield.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="804" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Pearl” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How did you end up with that Technicolor look for “Pearl”?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: We initially were talking about doing “Pearl” in black and white, sort of a German expressionistic thing like “Nosferatu” or “Metropolis”, or maybe “The Night of the Hunter” film noir’y expressionism world. Basically, A24 was not interested in letting us do that. So Ti pivoted 180 degrees into hardcore Technicolor.</p>
<p>When I tell this, people say that it would never have been a good movie if we had done that. Well, it would have been a very different movie, but I think it would have been really interesting. These things are not set in stone. Once you do it, that’s what it is, and it worked or didn’t work. But it’s not like you had to do it that way.</p>
<p>“X” is a better example of that. If you want to make a movie like “X”, you shouldn’t probably try to make it feel like it was done with a more modern aesthetic. It’s meant to be playing in that era, so you would end up with a very different movie. “Pearl” is a little bit more arbitrary in some ways.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/pearl-projection-booth.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="804" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Pearl” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: I would love to watch a film noir ’40s version of “Pearl”.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: It probably would have been crazy. I remember a lot of the reference material we were pulling up, and thinking how crazy it could go. In some ways with “Pearl”, if you start analyzing things like window shadows and things at night, some of them are goofy. That might have been those lingering thoughts about that expressionistic thing, but you also see it in productions like “Gone With the Wind”. You see shadows of window mullions on the walls at night, and it’s so arbitrary and crazy. But they look great. So we went down that road.</p>
<p>When we were working on “Pearl”, we were just going for it. This is a fantastic thing about Ti. He’ll make a decision, he’ll say that we should go for it, and he won’t look back. There’s no doubting it, there’s no second guessing it. I remember when we were doing “Pearl”, I was thinking that it was crazy. It was so not the aesthetic that you would typically associate with this story and with all this stuff that’s going on. But I was also thinking that it was great and hoping that it would work.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/pearl-house-looking.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="804" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Pearl” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you find it’s almost arbitrary what gets the viewers attention?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I can watch a movie and I will, from my own point of view, think that this is a good movie. This is cinema. This is well done. This is what I’m interested in. And it doesn’t matter what genre it is, or whatever era it is. I like to think that movies that end up in that category, regardless of what they are, because it could be wildly different, are ones that people notice. That’s not always the case, obviously. Most certainly, a lot of movies that I think are great, 99% of the people out there probably have never seen or couldn’t care less about.</p>
<p>It’s hard. That’s the whole thing about making movies. Nobody really knows what’s going to work. There’s so many variables. It’s such a complicated process. There’s so many things that can go wrong, and so many decisions that have to be made constantly every day by so many people. You’re lucky if you get something that’s coherent in the end. Hopefully, the creative group that’s making any of these things have the wherewithal to be able to shepherd it along to a successful product or a successful movie. But it’s a mystery, on some level, why some of them work and some of the other ones don’t.</p>
<p>It’s also a thing about taste. There’s that phrase – there’s no accounting for taste. Some things that I think are horrible are extremely popular, and some things that I think are great are not so popular.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/car-pancake1.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1465" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How was it during Covid? Do you feel that it’s all back to how it used to be?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: When the shutdown happened, I was halfway through season 4 of an FX show called “Snowfall”, and then we came back and finished it six months later. It was brutal, the whole working environment of getting tested every day, the face masks, and isolating from people. It worked on our show. There was no internal transmission of Covid, and they caught a bunch of people who got it outside of the perimeter before they got to work. It was a really not fun way to work.</p>
<p>Nowadays, pretty much all of those things in terms of the physical reality of it are no longer an issue. People are not getting tested all the time. There are no masking requirements.</p>
<p>But there is another thing that started happening in conjunction with that. We are in an economic period where we’re seeing the fallout of the giant expansion of streaming, and what is happening in the broader world with money supply, the cost of borrowing and other financial things that are changing everything. We had strikes that went for 6-7 months last year. It’s been a weird 4-5 years with all of that.</p>
<p>We’re entering another phase where people are pulling back on how much they’re making and how much product is in development. There’s a lot of people that aren’t working and haven’t worked since the strikes. Right at the moment, things don’t look super rosy business-wise. It’s depressing. But then again, making movies and TV shows is a business. It’s a lot of money, and you should expect ebbs and flows.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/carpancake2.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1962" /><br />
<span class="caption">On the sets of “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Does it feel like a small miracle any time a production is made?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I think so, especially independent movies. When I started doing this back in the ’90s or whatever, indies were on the rise. Sundance was gaining momentum, there were a lot of small theaters across the country, DVD was just coming out, and there were a lot of indies getting made. Things have changed dramatically since then.</p>
<p>I have a good friend of who’s a producer in New York. He’s done various types of art movies for the last 30 years, and he’s at the end of his rope. It’s not the same thing as it used to be. It’s a struggle for anything to get made. It’s a struggle on the independent side to get the traction, and it’s a struggle on the studio side because of the way that system works too. It’s all a struggle and it’s all a miracle [laughs]. And it’s a super miracle that it ends up being really good.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-car-squish.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How many takes was it for the sequence in “Pearl” where Mia Goth delivers the confession for Howard in front of his sister?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: We had two cameras rolling. Each take was a two camera setup. We did it a fair number of times, and we had a couple of camera position and lens changes within that too. Off the top of my head, I would guess that she probably did that monologue maybe 8-10 times. That was the only thing we shot that day, if I remember right. It was epic every time going through it, and her working herself through the whole thing, starting in one place and ending up in another. And then doing it over and over and over again. It went on for quite a while.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is it sometimes hard to keep your focus on the technical stuff when there’s this amazing performance right in front of you?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I don’t listen. I don’t put on headphones, because it distracts me for that exact reason. This is what I’ve been doing for years now. I’m more often sitting back at a monitor and I have camera operators working, so I’m usually not even within earshot of what the performance is. I’m just looking at the picture.</p>
<p>The interesting thing about that is that 90% of the time I can tell you if the acting is working and if it’s solid, just by watching it. I know what the words are because I know the script. But unless there’s a particular reason that I need to listen to the dialogue or whatever’s going on on screen, I don’t listen, because it does distract me from keeping an eye on and making sure everything is looking the way it should.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-hollywood-sign.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1333" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Was the Hollywood sign real? Every time I see it in the movies, it feels like anybody can get up there and do whatever they want. Is it fenced? Guarded? Restricted access?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: It’s really difficult to get to, and in “Maxxxine” it’s not the real Hollywood sign. Initially, there was talk about us going to try to shoot this at the real Hollywood sign. They went through the whole machinations of getting permissions, and then we went up there to scout it. There are all these limitations to what you can actually do there, and we knew what the limitations were. Very few people could be there. It’s on the side of this hill that’s almost a cliff. There’s just a little dirt pathway that’s underneath it, and you have to access it from this road that’s from up above that is all fenced off.</p>
<p>We got up there and went down to the base of the sign, and it was amazing. Not a lot of people get to do that. And even before we got to the sign, we knew that this is never going to work. We’re never going to be able to shoot this stuff at the real Hollywood sign.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hollywoodsign-shotlist1.jpg" alt="" width="2280" height="1482" /><br />
<span class="caption">Shot list for the Hollywood sign sequence on “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p>So it went on for a long time trying to figure out where we could build it, and how much of it we needed to build for it to work, and how close to the actual scale it needed to be. What ended up happening was we shot it at a movie ranch up north of LA. It had a remarkably similar hillside, and a dirt road that we had access to that ran along the hillside that we could build our sections of the sign. Our art department built about a half or three quarters of the H and the O, and there maybe was a part of the L. And then there was a lot of empty spaces that were shown to the VFX people for extensions. Down at the other end where the detective dies, there was a substantial build of the D. Probably around 60% of the sign is VFX.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hollywoodsign-shotlist2.jpg" alt="" width="2380" height="1055" /><br />
<span class="caption">Shot list for the Hollywood sign sequence on “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is there such a thing as your favorite scene or sequence in these three movies?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: “X” had a lot of memorable things. There are certain great things that stick in my mind, like when Martin Henderson is walking through the barn in his underwear, and they’re trying to find where RJ’s girlfriend has gone off to, and he’s talking to the cows, and he steps on the nail. I’ve always thought that was pretty great.</p>
<p>There are some really wonderful sequences throughout all of the movies, but they might not stand out with everybody else. I really like the shot in “Maxxxine” where the camera is moving down through the lightning and the trees, and it ends up on the apple. Then she bites it, and the lights come on, and it’s “Cut”, and you see that it’s part of the movie they’re making. This is what I like about working with Ti. It’s about making shots that make it into cinema. It’s all sequences that are built around the camera.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-apple.jpg" alt="" width="3200" height="1333" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Would you say that one of the main messages of this trilogy is that Hollywood is the real villain?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I would think that it would be something more along the lines of the pursuit of celebrity and fame is self-destructive. And the corollary to that being that Hollywood being the machine that encourages people to do that is also very guilty in that self-destruction world. All three movies are one thing. As much as they’re different on their own, they are all exploring the same themes and the same ideas. That’s one of the things that is very good about them, although not in a way that it’s hitting you in the back of the head with a baseball bat.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Is “Maxxxine” a happy ending, a realistic ending, an open ending?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I think it’s almost an ironic ending. You get to the point where she’s achieved all of this, and if you look at it from “X” to her at the end of “Maxxxine”, it’s been this crazy journey of obsessive desire for this kind of fame and celebrity. And when she gets to the end, she says “I just never want it to stop”. That’s a bit much [laughs]. She’s the big star and she’s won, but at what cost?</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/maxxxine-closeup-lights.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="800" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “Maxxxine” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: She doesn’t seem to mind the cost.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: That’s the thing, not at all. She’s super psyched to have gotten where she’s gotten. Maybe it’s something mixed when you’re looking at it from her perspective, or from other people’s perspective of what theoretically would be healthy.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Did you miss the big screens? I didn’t get to see “X” and “Pearl” back in 2022, and I was happy to get a chance to watch “X” when it screened for one day right before “Maxxxine” came out earlier this year.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: They both played on about 2,900 screens in the US, but it was at the time where people weren’t going a lot. I was just happy that they were out, and that they got the attention that they did – all three of them. I would never say that I was disappointed in anything about any of that.</p>
<p>Personally I like to go to the movies. I’ll go and see a movie in the theater, even if I’m not that terribly interested in the movie, whereas I find it almost impossible to sit down and watch something on my laptop and stay engaged the whole way through, even if it is good. I’m a fan of the movie theaters, even if I don’t know that I have a lot of optimism for them. While it lasts, we’ll just keep going [laughs].</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hollywoodsign-shotlist3.jpg" alt="" width="2269" height="1448" /><br />
<span class="caption">Shot list for the Hollywood sign sequence on “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: How do you see generative AI today? Is it a distraction, a potentially useful tool, a threat that is going to end all human creativity?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: It’s probably all three of those [laughs]. I’ve been keeping a relatively close eye on it. From the perspective of myself in the business that I’m in, it is almost inevitable that over some period of time it will become the dominant way of creating what we would think of now as film entertainment. I don’t know if this will be in two years, in five years, in ten years, but unless there is some major glitch that stops it, the trajectory and the amount of resources and focus that is being put in to try to do that right now is off the charts.</p>
<p>And I get it. If a producer could take a script, and feed it into a computer, and have a movie pop out on the other side that people saw as viable to go watch, why would he pay to go shoot it? That makes sense. On some level, you cannot argue the business aspect and the money making desire of all of this.</p>
<p>That being said, I also think that even if that is the trajectory, that it might do the same thing as how people have become fascinated with analog things in our world today. There’s this niche love from a certain group of people that have this passion for doing things the old way. I can see that as AI generated material becomes more and more convincing, people would still maybe more and more want to see something that was very obviously flesh and blood. It might lead to people going to watch live theater a lot more.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="halfbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hollywood-sign-constructed.jpg" alt="" width="2800" height="1726" /><br />
<span class="caption">The final constructed Hollywood sign on “Maxxxine”, courtesy of Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: If or when we get the point where generated content becomes indistinguishable from what is done by hand, I wonder if it will make any difference to the consumer. If I see two movies done in the some style, and I enjoy them both, and I can’t say which one was made by humans and which one was made by machine, the uncomfortable question is – does it matter to me as the viewer?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: My wife does custom, finely crafted, one of a kind porcelain dinnerware, and a lot of her clientele are fancy Michelin starred restaurants? Nothing is cast, nothing is done with a machine process, every single piece is made completely uniquely by hand, even if they’re all very similar. And there is a certain group of people who want her stuff very badly, as opposed to something that’s mass produced.</p>
<p>There is something about that handmade quality, even if it’s very nearly almost perfect and looks like it was machine made, that a certain, for lack of a better word, connoisseur of that thing responds to very strongly. This is my analogy to what could happen down the road.</p>
<p>But ultimately what that means is that it will become a rarefied niche, and obviously it won’t be as big money. Maybe the filmed entertainment that we see that is not AI generated are small intimate stories that involve two or three actors and one location. Maybe that is viable in the sense that there will be a small but devoted audience that will want to see that. But you’re not going to have a $100M movie made if you can make that same kind of content with generative AI.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/x-lorraine-night.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1012" /><br />
<span class="caption">Cinematography of “X” by Eliot Rockett</span></p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Imagine you have an opportunity to transport yourself back into the early ’90s, when you were starting out. Knowing what you know now, what would you say to young Eliot as he’s about to start his professional journey in this field?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I would tell myself to worry less, and to have faith in yourself and the process. And in conjunction with that, to not worry so much about what other people seem to think they want from you, but rather pay attention to what you think is good.</p>
<p>Ultimately what I’ve learned is that people want me to do something for them, because they want what I can bring to it. They don’t want me to do something that they already know that they want exactly? That’s the thing you got to cultivate. You got to know what you think is good for your reasons, and not worry about what the fashion of the moment is, or what somebody else thinks, or what you think would be cool if you did it because other people would like it.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: Do you think your younger self would care to listen to your older self?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: My younger self listened to nobody, so no [laughs]. Occasionally you can get through here and there to some people, but everybody will figure it out on their own, in their own time.</p>
<p><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kirill</span>: What keeps you going in this industry?</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eliot</span>: I love doing it. I’m very engaged whenever I’m working. I love the creative process and I love the challenge of it, even if it’s painful sometimes. I don’t know what else I would do at this point, although in my free time when I’m not working, I tend to work on our house and take pictures with my medium format film camera.</p>
<p>It’s engaging, it’s fun, it’s interesting. There’s a lot of really interesting people. It’s challenging because it’s freelance. You never know what’s going to happen next. There’s always something new. I’m never in the same place twice.</p>
<p>And these days too, the projects I’m getting offered and the things I’m being involved with seem to always be getting better and more interesting and more engaging. It’s just getting more interesting as it goes.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="fullbleed" src="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/eliot-titles.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="800" /></p>
<p>And here I’d like to thank <strong><a href="https://www.eliotrockett.com/">Eliot Rockett</a></strong> for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of cinematography, and for sharing the supporting materials. You can also find Eliot on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ELROCKETT">Instagram</a>. The full trilogy is available for streaming on a variety of digital platforms:</p>
<ul>
<li>“X” is streaming on <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/x/umc.cmc.374atzbqxnf247n8m1r3pvkio">Apple</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPGkXSsz3-w">YouTube</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/X-Ti-West/dp/B0D468B78B">Amazon</a></li>
<li>“Pearl” is streaming on <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/pearl/umc.cmc.75j73kjmgv3th4uw9nrotobyq">Apple</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXqgN-a1N7g">YouTube</a>, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pearl-X-traordinary-Origin-Ti-West/dp/B0DJ7RWZTQ">Amazon</a></li>
<li>“Maxxxine” is streaming on <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/maxxxine/umc.cmc.7hh7hdix4whegydkptauouew6">Apple</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8XU-r2wCz8">YouTube</a>, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/MaXXXine-Ti-West/dp/B0D6S2GGGJ">Amazon</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, <a href="https://www.pushing-pixels.org/inmotion/">click here</a> for additional in-depth interviews in this series.</p>
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