Designer speaks outside the frame

Dante Ferretti kept apologizing for his poor English to the eclectic audience made up of students and thirty-to-sixtysomethings, including Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and “Lemony Snicket” director Brad Silberling, gathered at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse on an unseasonably warm afternoon.

But the crowd of about 100 found the 61-year-old Italian production designer’s less-than-perfect grasp of the language as endearing as the seven-time Oscar nominee himself. Ferretti is considered one of the most visually audacious and expressionistic production designers, and has worked with some of cinema’s visionary directors, such as Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini (“Medea”), Terry Gilliam (“The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”), and Neil Jordan (“Interview With the Vampire”). Most recently, he worked with Martin Scorsese on “The Aviator,” a film that many believe could earn Ferretti his eighth Oscar nomination.

Ferretti really turned on the charm at UCLA when he began reminiscing about director Fellini, with whom he worked on “City of Women,” “And the Ship Sails On” and “Ginger and Fred.”

“He was a master,” said Ferretti, looking out at the crowd. “He was a dreamer, a liar. I worked 15 years with him and he would say, ‘I dreamed this, I dreamed that [last night].’ Then I discovered he had insomnia. I said, this is really strange. So then I started to learn to ‘dream.’ For me, Fellini only did one movie about himself, many times. But he did it in so many different ways. To work with him, I learned to be a little bit like him, to go inside [myself].”

Ferretti is just the latest participant in the Professional Master Classes, Workshops, Transition Lectures offered by the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Over the past five years, directors such as Woody Allen, Patrice Leconte and Baz Luhrmann, playwright Edward Albee, editor Pietro Scalia, cinematographer Conrad Hall and actors Anthony Hopkins and Annette Bening have led “master” classes. The classes are also open to the public, and moderated by the school’s Dean, Robert Rosen.A few minutes before class began on a recent Friday, Ferretti said he didn’t have a clue what he’d talk about. “Maybe I won’t say anything,” he said, laughing. “It will be a surprise.”

Ferretti was in town -- he lives most of the year in Miami with his wife, Francesca LoSchiavo, who also is his set decorator on most of the films -- to pick up the award for best production design from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. for “The Aviator” and also promote his new book, “Ferretti: the Art of Production Design.”

“There are pictures and drawings from when I started to be a production designer, which means from ‘Medea’ to ‘The Aviator.’ If you look at the book you can see that all of it is my life inside,” he said. Ferretti has collaborated with Scorsese for the past 12 years on “The Age of Innocence,” “Casino,” “Kundun,” “Bringing Out the Dead,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator.” He constructed the city of New York, circa 1860s, from scratch for “Gangs of New York” at Rome’s Cinecitta studios and now has vibrantly and opulently re-created Hollywood’s heyday in Scorsese’s Golden Globe-winning biopic on Howard Hughes.

It was actually Fellini who brought Scorsese and Ferretti together.

“I met Martin with Fellini a long time ago,” he told the audience. “We were doing ‘City of Women’ and [Scorsese] came to see Fellini. I remember him coming with his father and mother. One year later he called me for ‘Last Temptation of Christ’ but I was busy on ‘Baron Munchausen.’ And then he called me for another movie and then the third time for ‘Age of Innocence.’ He said, ‘This is the last time [I am asking you].’ I said, ‘I will come now.’ This was the beginning of my relationship with him.

“He knows from the beginning exactly what he wants. And then after that he gives me all the freedom.”

Between questions, Rosen screened clips from “The Aviator” that spotlighted Ferretti’s fanciful renditions of the legendary Hollywood night club the Cocoanut Grove and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Though the Chinese still exists, Ferretti built the Chinese and surrounding block on a studio back lot.

“We were supposed to be shooting on location but it was very expensive to go over there for six days and six nights. It was expensive to rent the place, to stop all the traffic. And everything has changed -- there is a big glass building next to the Chinese. We decided it was better to redo everything.”

That allowed him to design a Chinese Theatre with a bit of whimsy. In the theater’s legendary courtyard, filled with the footprints and autographs of Hollywood royalty, Ferretti signed his name in the cement. “Then I put over the red carpet,” he said.