Not just a case of get sets and go

The sci-fi thriller “The Island,” which opens today, is sort of a stepchild of “THX 1138” and “Logan’s Run” with even a bit of “Coma” thrown in for good measure.

But what isn’t derivative are the impressive sets -- think on the scale of those in Fritz Lang’s silent classic “Metropolis” -- which draw viewers into this thriller set in the not so distant future.

Director Michael Bay wanted a set that could house an underground community made up of thousands of “agnates,” as the clones at the center of the film are called. What’s more, he wanted a crisp, clean linear look that was both “sterile and comforting.”

“We wanted to make this facility like Boeing or the Pentagon,” says Bay. “We are taking the theory that the government had these bunkers underground and this is an old military bunker in Arizona.”

But creating this underground universe was no easy task, and time was particularly short: Bay, who received the script in February 2004, was on a timetable to deliver a summer 2005 release. He started by calling upon two experts he’d worked with previously, production designer Nigel Phelps (“Pearl Harbor”) and set decorator Rosemary Brandenburg (“The Rock”).

Originally, “The Island” was to be set in the distant future, but then Bay decided to keep it “within 20 years of now -- to make it scarier we wanted to make it right around the corner.”

Some of the initial designs were excised with the era change, but others made the cut. To keep within budget, sets were reused and the scale of others was cut back. In fact, deadlines were so tight that three sets still needed to be constructed with just three weeks left in filming.

“There was a lot of revamping of sets,” said Phelps. Though “The Island” was filmed at various locations from downtown Detroit to the Caltrans building in downtown Los Angeles, most of the film was shot at the Downey Studios, an 80-acre former NASA/Boeing aerospace facility -- the largest filming space in the L.A. area -- that also boasts a 65,000-square-foot tank.

For “The Island” the tank was drained to construct the Central Atrium, which is the hub of the underground facility that the cast and crew nicknamed Centerville.

Sleek, concrete and starkly white -- the Central Atrium features elevators that take the agnates from their sleeping quarters, which ring the area, to the various levels of the facility. Decorating the walls of the Central Atrium are large video screens, some giving the agnates information, news and announcements, and others showing idyllic nature series.

The water tank area also became the Nutrition Plaza, a cafeteria where the agnates stand in long lines to get their carefully prescribed meals. On yet another level is a pastel-neon juice bar where the agnates hang out and party after work. And in keeping with the look of the Central Atrium, Brandenburg decorated the sets with white, silver and aluminum furniture -- most of which came from a local designer -- modernistic lamps and flower vases. Brandenburg said she found it “breathtaking” to get “into this very clean world. It is very fun to think through the visuals. On all of the sets, we have done a lot of building and designing. We built a lot of interesting machines and high-tech gizmos.”

Among the most interesting “gizmos” are the elaborate pod-like beds with hanging umbilical chords where the agnates are incubated. Brandenburg had to make 80 of them.

“These were pretty well drawn by one of the illustrators,” she says. “Then the real issue was executing the design and doing it within budget.”