Honoring movies’ masters of milieu

“PULLING Back the Drapes,” a new exhibition at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Fourth Floor Gallery, looks to shed some light on an individual who is instrumental in breathing three-dimensional life into the two-dimensional realm of the movies: the set decorator.

“The production designers create the world and the architecture in collaboration with the directors and their vision,” explains academy programmer Ellen Harrington.

“The set decorator is the person who comes in and gives layer and depth and personality, so that actors in that set will be sitting in the right type of furniture and interact with objects that connect to their characters and help them build their characters.”

The exhibition features a cornucopia of sets from current and upcoming films, including the “Iron Man” cave, from Lauri Gaffin; Tina Fey’s bedroom in “Baby Mama,” from Susan Bode-Tyson; the home library and desk from “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” created by Larry Dias; and K.C. Fox’s Hawaiian hotel lobby featured in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

Because set decoration is a very immediate craft, Harrington says, it’s difficult to assemble shows like “Pulling Back the Drapes.”

“Set decoration is the kind of material that’s assembled for the shoot and then it quickly disperses again,” she explains. “We couldn’t do a show of movies that were made two years ago. What we have to do is schedule a show and say, ‘Who is working on films that we could have things put aside that the studios would be willing to lend to us, that they are OK with keeping it in storage for a fixed number of months?’ ”

Set decorators Leslie Rollins, who has re-created the Chief’s office from the upcoming comedy “Get Smart,” and Jan Pascale, who is restaging Arthur Spiderwick’s mysterious attic from the family film “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” are also participating.

“The general public doesn’t really realize where all of these things come from,” Rollins says. “These things are painstakingly designed and well thought out.”

In the case of “Get Smart,” Rollins says the Chief’s office is one of the few character-driven sets in the spy farce.

“I went back and looked at some of the original episodes” of the TV series “Get Smart,” he says. “Though we weren’t reproducing those sets, I wanted to make some visual references. The famous gadgets all make an appearance, generally in an updated way.”

Except for Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone.

“It is the original shoe phone,” Rollins says. “The idea is that Max ends up having to rely on it when all else fails.”

Because little is known about the Chief (Alan Arkin), head of the spy agency CONTROL, Rollins gave him some dimension by putting the actor’s face in a number of photographs of presidents and dignitaries “as though he was part of the inner circle.” And to bring in a bit of a past for the Chief, “I gave him autographed photos on the wall of several first ladies,” Rollins says. “We did that as a little joke.”

Though “Spiderwick” was released earlier this year, Pascale was able to re-create most of Arthur Spiderwick’s secret attic office filled with stuffed birds, insect specimens, his special diary and tons of books.

“The movie was filmed in Montreal, and there were some reshoots done here in Los Angeles,” Pascale says. “They shipped down as much [of the set] as they could. So I was pretty fortunate to get most of it from Paramount.”

Pascale says set decorators are often archaeologists. She lucked out in Montreal when the assistant assigned to the attic room was able get to a local museum to lend the production a naturalist’s collection from the turn of the 20th century.

“He found another naturalist who had bird collections,” Pascale explains. “So here were all of these preserved birds. And he found a bug man who had butterflies and insects.”

For the exhibition, the attic office will feature some birds the production ended up purchasing “because they were so key,” according to Pascale.

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-- Susan.King@latimes.com

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‘PULLING BACK THE DRAPES’

WHERE: Fourth Floor Gallery, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

WHEN: Opens Fri.; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., noon-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun.; ends Aug. 24.

PRICE: Free

INFO: (310) 247-3600, www.oscars.org