Even in Hollywood, It’s Location, Location, Location
When is a house not a home? When it’s a film set.
Offering the public a behind-the-scenes view of how some movie magic is made, the Art Directors Guild, in partnership with House Beautiful magazine, has constructed a 2,500-square-foot, fully furnished set in the style of a 1920s- to ‘30s-era Hollywood bungalow, on display at the Pacific Design Center through the end of this month. The $160,000 set was created and designed by guild production designers and art directors and overseen by William Creber, Michael Baugh, William Durrell and Cynthia Charette.
A specially built miniature of the bungalow stands just inside the exhibit entrance, positioned in front of a camera to create a special-effects shot that juxtaposes the miniature onto the front of the set, so that actors (or exhibit visitors) can seem to be standing in front of a full-size two-story house. The eight-room set is broken into two floor plans; the downstairs consisting of a living room, den, dining room, kitchen and patio, and the upstairs of two bedrooms and a master bath. Here, however, the two floors are built adjacent to each another on one level.
Guild docents are on hand to guide guests through the bungalow. “We’re here not only to answer questions but also to point out things people might miss as they’re just walking through,” says Dahl Delu, a docent. “We explain the camera setup and why it’s there and how it works and talk a little bit about the whole concept of the house.”
The furniture in the bungalow is a thematic blend of period reproductions and contemporary pieces, with a number of design elements “cheated” as they would be in a film. Stained-glass windows, for example, were created using raised-lead tape and transparent lacquer dyes. “We saw a piece of research that had a stained-glass window from that era with a chevron in it, and I liked that because the front of the house really echoes that,” explains William Creber, who did the original sketches of the bungalow.
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Creber, a veteran production designer who has worked on such films as “Planet of the Apes,” “The Towering Inferno” and “The Poseidon Adventure,” enlisted the assistance of his wife, writer Susan Torri, to create a two-page scenario to establish the bungalow setting and its absent inhabitants: an upscale married couple and their young daughter. Furnishing a home for film characters presents a unique, start-from-scratch interior design challenge.
“When you’re working with a person on their home, you get a sense of who they are by what they already have,” says Cynthia Charette, who created the interior design for the bungalow. “But in a film, where characters don’t fully come to life until the cameras start to roll, you have to come up with who the person is.”
Personal touches in the bungalow include the little girl’s unmade bed and an opened crayon box in her bedroom, notes and recipes scrawled on and around a kitchen telephone table, and clothes hanging in the master bedroom closet.
When movie characters live their celluloid lives, their physical surroundings often go unnoticed by the audience. Is that frustrating to the designers? “You have to be a professional enthusiast,” notes Creber. “The doing it is the exciting part. And you understand that it’s going to be temporary. But part of it lives on in film.”
Oh, and if you’re in the market for a Hollywood bungalow movie set, the Art Director’s Guild will be happy to sell it to you--furnishings and accessories included.
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“A Classic Hollywood Bungalow Film Set” at the Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave, Green Building, second floor. Through Aug. 31, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is free Monday-Friday.
