Art Direction Gives a Film Its Overall Look : Film: Color, light, line, locations and props reinforce the script and help achieve authenticity.

It’s all in the details, they say. Particularly in film, an arena in which the viewer is asked to momentarily suspend disbelief and buy into another reality. The sets, locations and props selected are crucial to a film’s authenticity--sending out subliminal messages as important as those on the printed page.

The overall look of the film is the responsibility of an “art director”--or “production designer,” as they have preferred to be called ever since producer David O. Selznick invented the term to reflect the broad-based contribution of the great William Cameron Menzies to the shoot of “Gone With the Wind.”

The task of the production designer is both conceptual and practical. After interpreting the script, he must devise a way in which color, light, line, locations and props can be used to reinforce it. Then, after conferring with the director, he must coordinate the work of the art director (primarily draftsmen these days), the set designer and the set decorator to ensure that the vision is implemented.

Though heavyweight production designers command between $3,500 and $5,000 a week, theirs is one of the lowest-profile, most misunderstood jobs in the industry.

“No one has any trouble understanding what a costume designer does,” says Richard Sylbert, whose production design credits include “Shampoo” and “Chinatown.” “But ‘production design’ is a title without any definition. I tell people that, just as a painter organizes pigment and a musician organizes noise, a production designer organizes visual material.”

Albert Brenner (“The Turning Point”) has another perspective: “A wiser man than I has said that we’re responsible for everything that you see on the screen that’s out of focus . . . and doesn’t move. In other words, everything but the actors.”

Still, it’s the characters who provide 90% of the inspiration. “Being ‘appropriate’ is the key,” says 55-year veteran Bob Boyle (“Shadow of a Doubt”). “The physical environment has to fit. I ask myself: ‘Is the guy rich? Is he a rock star or an old English squire? How does he respond to money?’ If he has no ethnic background, I make one up.”

For a single shot of a home library in “Without a Trace,” Richard Sylbert had the set decorator buy 300 books (including the Harvard classics, Hemingway and feminist Georgian poets) to persuade the audience that the bookshelves belonged to an English teacher. In the interest of authenticity, Paul Sylbert--Richard’s twin brother and fellow production designer (“Heaven Can Wait”)--ordered up a batch of furniture covered with cigarette burns for the apartment of the chain-smoking Moscow police inspector in “Gorky Park.”

Color, too, figures into the equation. Brenner eschewed the use of red on the set of “Bullitt” to maximize the impact when the blood finally flowed. Other production designers routinely avoid the use of blue since they feel it calls too much attention to itself.

“Putting a film together is like composing music or painting on a white canvas,” says Paul Sylbert. “Every addition affects the whole.”

Production design was in its heyday in the ‘30s and ‘40s when stylish black-and-white comedies were often set against elegant Art Deco backdrops and films noir settled into the shadows. The ‘50s and ‘60s offered massive canvases for the art directors of such biblical and historical wide-screen epics as “Then Ten Commandments,” “Cleopatra” and “Dr. Zhivago,” but some professionals found themselves frustrated by the proliferation of location shooting and a lack of ingenuity in Hollywood.

“In Italy, you had the rise of neo-realism, in France cinema verite and in Hollywood, production of studio films like the Doris Day comedies which were notoriously unattractive,” says Richard Sylbert.

“Hollywood fell asleep, the vessel was empty,” says Paul Sylbert. “They were doing things by rote.”

Things improved for designers in the late ‘70s with the popularity of “Star Wars”-type sci-fi fantasies and Steven Spielberg’s nostalgic remakes of the Saturday-morning serials of his youth. “There’s more emphasis on style now,” says Brenner. “Not only because of the need to create non-existent parallel worlds . . . but also because of the introduction of MTV.”

As in most other areas, Oscar nominees for art direction are chosen by fellow production designers, the winners by the entire academy. Since people are more likely to remember the “fantastic” than the “ordinary,” the period piece over the contemporary, those films have an automatic edge.

“There are the films we laughingly refer to as ‘rent-a-palace’ movies--’Dangerous Liaisons,’ ‘Amadeus,’ ‘Barry Lyndon.’ You just shoot the movie and win an Academy Award,” says Brenner. “It doesn’t require much ingenuity. But people are taken by lush, enormously-scaled sets.”

Adds Richard Sylbert: “And of course there are the ‘rent-a-country films’ such as ‘Gandhi.’ It drove me nuts, but people were impressed.”

Ferdinando Scarfiotti won an Oscar for art direction on “The Last Emperor”--a massively-scaled film that benefited from the bias they describe. Still, he, too, has his frustrations. “I object to the fact that the academy often overlooks contemporary films because they can frequently be more difficult,” Scarfiotti says. “The past is there to be studied and seen, but the present is a changing reality. The challenge is to make a statement and look at it with a fresh eye.”

Of this year’s nominees, “Batman,” “The Abyss” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” provided the most dramatic visual platforms. In each, the production designer was faced with the challenge of creating a world from scratch--whether futuristic, underwater or otherworldly.

“ ‘Batman’ was a very well-designed movie, clever and visually stylish,” says Scarfiotti, an Oscar winner for the 1987 “The Last Emperor.” “It was a great opportunity to make a statement. You knew you’d have the attention of the academy members the moment you read the script.”

Paul Sylbert was one of a number who believed the art direction was the best thing about the film. “I found the design a little heavy and overpowering,” he says. “But (production designer) Anton Furst was the triumph of the movie . . . . In fact, he triumphed over the movie. The picture was so bad that all you looked at was the design . . . and Jack Nicholson laughing.”

Another top designer was less impressed: “ ‘Batman’ had no sense of unity. It was a bunch of boutique ideas . . . like the Beverly Center,” he says. “It only came together because it was so dark you couldn’t see anything. Still, it’s big enough that I think it will win.”

Though everyone agreed that the effort involved in “The Abyss” was extraordinary, there was a difference of opinion as to whether it paid off.

“It was effective stuff,” says Paul Sylbert, “not surprising since the director Jim Cameron is an ex-sketch artist--essentially a designer. He’s got a good eye, this guy. So good it didn’t matter who designed it.”

Mel Bourne (“The Natural”) disagrees: “This was a tremendous mechanical job, building that tank underwater. The feat is the thing. But what does it have to do with aesthetics? Nothing.”

There was more unanimity on “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.”

“The art direction was very imaginative,” says Bob Boyle. “So outlandish, it was as big a liar as Baron Munchausen. It was the farthest out of the films, so unbelievable you believed every minute of it.”

“Director Terry Gilliam is extremely visual and the art direction was, without a doubt, part of the fun of the film,” says Bourne. “It was showy, provocative, but so magnificently done.”

“Just the right spirit,” says Paul Sylbert. “Otherworldly and lovely to look at.”

Box office is another factor in the Oscar race. “A beautiful movie such as ‘Brazil’ that doesn’t take off with a mass audience has a much diminished chance of winning,” notes Bourne. “It’s human nature: the voters appreciate what they have seen.”

Though “Glory” and “Driving Miss Daisy” have their admirers among production designers, some feel their art direction nominations came in on the coattails of the movies’ commercial success.

“The battle scenes in ‘Glory’ were wonderfully stupid--marching abreast, everyone getting mowed down,” says Bob Boyle. “And the parade ground scenes in Boston were excellent. The locations were well-chosen and everything was so authentic.”

Richard Sylbert disagrees, referring to “Glory’s” art direction as “rent-a-forest.” “A period movie, big in scope . . . it falls automatically into the category that gets nominated,” says Scarfiotti.

And “Driving Miss Daisy?”

“Well done visually, but there are 1,000 movies just as well done that were overlooked,” says Richard Sylbert. “There are always a couple of pictures carried by the success of the movie. There’s nothing wrong with ‘Glory’ or ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ . . . but ‘Camille Claudel’ and ‘Cinema Paradiso’ were a lot better to look at than those two.”