#production-design

#production-design

We hate to break it to you, but Stars Hollow, Connecticut, is not a real place. Yet the endearing small town depicted in Gilmore Girls was so flush with quaint details-falling leaves, quirky gatherings, and sweet little nooks such as Taylor's Olde Fashioned Soda Shoppe, Stars Hollow Books, and Weston's Bakery -that it's easy to imagine Lorelai and Rory Gilmore gabbing over coffee at the retro-style Luke's Diner at this very moment.

There's a ubiquitous prop in just about every police procedural and conspiracy thriller: a cork board pinned with documents, newspaper clippings, and Polaroid photos, all connected by a web of red string. They go by many names, including pin boards, string boards, evidence boards, investigation walls, conspiracy walls, and walls of crazy. These boards can be vehicles of insight or manifestations of madness-and in many cases, both. But where did they come from? And can they really solve a crime?

In a movie you have a couple hours to spend with the characters, in these spots you only have a few seconds to get invested and start rooting for them. So each one needed a perfect micro performance, timed flawlessly with the camera movement, and music doing the right thing at the right moment for it all to work.

Stuart Craig was a softly spoken, gentle soul full of grace, tall, slender, willowy, polite and kind but despite appearances he masterfully stewarded a gigantic industrial creative machine. The art department for Harry Potter was huge, and Stuart guided teams across multiple skill sets concept artists, prop makers, construction workers, painters and decorators, plasterers and model makers to realise the fabric and architecture of JK Rowling's world.

Chaos erupts after the USCSS Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani research ship, crash-lands in Prodigy City on Neverland, leading to a clash over its terrifying cargo.

The production design categories are no longer just token nods to the craft departments; they're becoming predictors of overall success.