A cluster of period pieces this season highlights the key yet often overlooked role of production designers. Here (and on Page 32) is their chance to describe . . . : How They Got the Look

Richard Hoover, production designer for the Depression-era drama “Cradle Will Rock” about the staging of an ill-fated musical, began his career in theater. In fact, he met “Cradle” director Tim Robbins in a 1989 L.A. theater production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Setzuan” and has worked with him on several projects since, including “Bob Roberts” and “Dead Man Walking.” But “Cradle’s” visual style is perhaps the most dramatic of Hoover’s films. Though Hoover and his team attempted to remain historically accurate, some liberties were taken. The production team had to find creative ways of making 1990s Manhattan look 60 years younger, especially working around the fact that Manhattan’s 110 theaters of the era had been razed. Still, the swank fashion of the Art Deco era and the colorful artists, performers and circumstances in the years before World War II gave Hoover an extraordinary palette from which to paint. The film focuses mainly on the Federal Theater Project, part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, where figures like Orson Welles and Marc Blitzstein clashed with conservative elements trying to destroy the program. Hoover and his team undertook a massive re-creation of Diego Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural, which was destroyed by his patron Nelson Rockefeller because of its pro-Leninist and anti-capitalist sentiments.

Describe what you do.

I am part of a triumvirate of people which is led by the director and includes the cinematographer in putting together the film visually.

How did you become a production designer?

I just kind of discovered it through designing in theater. I discovered film as opposed to growing up in movie theaters. Production design allowed me to crack open the doors into the business.

How does working on stage differ from working in a film?

Stage is definitely an abstract space--in other words, you have multiple eyes looking at it as opposed to doing a cut. The assumptions are different too. In theater it’s called the willing suspension of disbelief. And you are playing with that territory or exploring space in a pure sense. They are different types of experiences in terms of the audiences because it’s the cameras that visit the spaces. Film spaces are usually very environmental in that there tends to be more money put into them, which makes them complete the reality. The camera is interpreting that space for the audience.

How did you prepare for this film?

We studied the painting of that period in Russia and the U.S. and social realist films that captured the events of the day with the Depression and the black-and-white photos. We tried to inundate ourselves with the period. . . . We gathered an approach to [the look of the movie] from the script. We felt it was important to understand and arrive at a style that would be as if we were making a film in that period. Those real events are researched and researched and replicated. The [Diego Rivera] mural was a replication of the [original] mural but smaller. We did it in a bank, but it was originally done in the Rockefeller building. [The 1930s] was a brilliant period. You had design innocence and exuberance mixed together.

What was the biggest challenge you had during during this project?

The biggest challenge was balancing how to shoot all of the scenes of the ‘30s in the modern urban environment. We tried a back-lot approach, but that didn’t work very well. We had to explore New York City as if it were the 1930s, so we used limited camera angles. We didn’t do any digital work at all. None of the old theaters are there, so we had to find alternatives for that. We looked at a lot of theaters.

Aside from this current project, what was your favorite movie to work on and why?

“Dead Man Walking.” It was about a discovery of political ideas and also a discovery of environments. We had notions of what a prison looked like, and we discovered Angola prison was very different. We thought it would be this big stone thing, but it’s like a big farm prison with like 11 prisons. It was all about adhering to reality and detail . . . and it was very expensive.

What is your favorite part of your job?

Transitioning from idea to reality and seeing it come alive. It’s using history and tweaking it a bit and making it fit our story. I’m a little more flexible with [history], and I guess maybe that’s bad. But when the historical accuracy fits the story, it’s better to adhere to historical fact, and we took that very seriously, especially with the Federal Theater Project; we were not loose with that. But our decisions about color and all that [were all flexible]. It’s a colorful film with a muted palette.