Wednesday Round-Up

Wes Anderson is shooting his new movie in Spain, with production set to begin in September.

In a recent interview with VarietyTilda Swinton revealed that she will star in the project, specific details of which are being kept closely under wraps…

The project is believed to have originally planned to shoot in Rome, but moved to Spain earlier this year. Sets resembling a desert landscape have been going up in Chinchón, a small town located southeast of Madrid, over the last two months, as reported by Spanish outlet El Pais. However, the film isn’t believed to necessarily be a western.”

IBC: “Behind the Scenes: The French Dispatch”

Some highlights (spoilers ahead for design nerds):

  • “[Production designer Adam] Stockhausen explains that all Anderson projects begin with an animatic. “The animatic is really a way of thinking through the entire movie from an animation point of view and building the entire film shot by shot in a way that defines the scope of what you see… In The French Dispatch, some of the live action is in miniature context, some is in context of the location and some are full-scale set builds.”
  • “’The film is broken up into different stories each of which has its own visual story, so the task of design is multiplied,’ Stockhausen says. There is even a pure animated sequence. ‘Conventionally you introduce a set and keep going back to it over and over again. Here, we introduce places and 20 minutes later we’re done with that story, never to return.'”
  • “Tonal references included The Red Balloon, a 1956 French fantasy short filmed in the Ménilmontant neighbourhood of Paris, and photos of Paris before its reconstruction in the mid-19th century. ‘The idea was to find a town which felt like Paris but not as it is today – more a sort of memory of Paris, the Paris of Jacques Tati,’ explains Stockhausen.”
  • The French Dispatch is shot on 35mm with Yeoman finding the texture of negative film more in keeping with the story’s artisanal aesthetic. Several sequences are shot in black and white with colour used for emphasis, for instance when actress Saoirse Ronan leans forward to reveal her blue eyes.”
  • “Anderson also uses different aspect ratios to tell parts of this story. It’s a technique he has used before, notably on ‘Budapest’ when Yeoman shot 1:37 for the scenes that take place with concierge Gustave to signify the time period of the 1930s and 1940s.”

Variety: Cynthia Hargrave, Producer of ‘Bottle Rocket,’ Dies at 64

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