The Government Inspector

"Designer Amy Cartwright had created a multi-faceted set of exposed slatted walls with portraits of the Tsar, odd furniture and a general feeling of disarray." (NWN)

 

 

I have just finished designing The Government Inspector at The Watermill Theatre. It is such a unique venue and I always love working there. It's a tiny theatre, placed in the middle of nowhere, but they always create such fantastic productions. Previous shows have transferred to the West End, Broadway and have toured around the world!

 

I met with the director Seamus Allen for an interview in July and was obviously over the moon when he asked me to design it. I originally trained as a Theatre Designer, but have found myself mostly designing film in recent times. It's such a joy to get stuck into a play design again. The production was for the Theatre's Young Company, which meant that we didn't have the biggest budget in the world to play with, but I am amazed that with hardwork from everyone we managed to get everything exactly how I had envisaged it.

 

The design premise was that this play is set within a poor town in the middle of a great depression. The authorities were corrupt and the poor were really poor. We decided that the town had once probably been quite rich, then lost it's wealth, then gained a bit of money again, so they started to rennovate the town, then lost the money again. That's a long backstory, but I acheived this by having dusty paint pots lying around as if they had just been left there during the work. Here is the picture that served as my main inspiration fot the set and which triggered my design. I found it here.

 

I was so happy when I found this picture as it showed just what Seamus and I had been talking about. We were really keen for this show to be really colourful, but quite faded. Although the concept might seem quite serious, it is a comedy afterall!

 

Here are some of the production stills taken by Philip Tull of the final set.

 

The costumes were an absolute joy to put together. The wardrobe team at the Watermill were fantastic. After spending about 4 hours trawling through their costume store we amazingly managed to find most of what we needed. The idea behind the costume was that the characters wanted to make themselves look as rich and important as possible, but without the funds to buy any fancy clothes. They have pieced together their outfits the best they could manage, even though a lot of it doesn't quite match. The Governor particular fancies himself as a bit of a military general and has created himself (what he thinks is) a military looking jacket with a plain blazer with lots of medals and badges stuck over it.

All in all the play was a great success. It had a short run of 4 nights, but completely sold out! The audience seemed to love it and laughed the whole way through. I am so pleased to have been involved with this and now I can't wait to design another play again.

Little Reminders

I recently Art Directed this commercial 'Little Reminders' for Danone. I am thrilled to announce that it has just been awarded 3rd place and 2000 euro prize in Eyeka's Bonafont competition.

I am really pleased with how this turned out. Despite our very limited budget I think we've managed to make this commercial look really flashy and expensive. I ended up only spending a £50 Art Department budget and managed to beg borrow and steal nearly everything. I was thrilled that designer Emma-Kate Wood let us borrow the gorgeous blue dress which was one of her beautiful creations. It was also great to reunite with director Alex Sufit of Lexitricity productions again.

Now I am just looking forward to our pizza party to celebrate our victory. Woo!

Across the Universe

It's been a while since I have loved a film so much, that i can't stop watching it. I absolutely adored this film directed by Julie Taymor. Across the Universe isn't just a film; it is a work of art. I sometimes wish that i could get inside Taymor's head for just a minute to see all the creativity and ideas she has brewing in there.

This is a musical centred around songs of The Beatles starring Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood and Joe Anderson, who were all unknowns at the time. I think one of the reasons it works so well is that it doesn't try to compete with the music of the Fantastic Four, but turns them in to something completely different. Sometimes the singing does sound a bit auto-tuned, but everything else is so well done i can forget about it.

This film really does have it all. Some scenes are elaborate like old Hollywood musical numbers, some are gritty and real, some are romantic and others are just plain crazy. As ever, Taymor is engagingly experimental using puppets, illustration and SFX to dramatise the story. My favourite scene (maybe of all time?) is Strawberry Fields Forever.
I love how they have projected different scenes over the action to blend the whole story together. The Strawberry symbol is amazing. I am so close to pinning a load of bleeding strawberrys to my kitchen wall. I think i'll just have to settle for recreating the strawberry painting though.

Across the Universe was nominated for the Best Costume Design Oscar in 2007 and I for one think it thoroughly deserved it.

Behind all the colours and craziness lies a beautiful love story and a deep and meaningful message. War really is such a waste of life.

I was particularly drawn in by Joe Anderson's stirling performance as Max. I really felt his journey- staring out as an enigmatic Princeton dropout, to having all of his charisma sucked out of him by the war.

There is so much in this film that i can see why you would either love it or hate it. The plot sometimes goes off on crazy tandems and not all of it makes sense. There are a few scenes that don't work quite as well and seem a bit cheesey (e.g. Dear Prudence) but all in all this film has firmly established itself in my top 10 movies of all time.  It is a designers absolute dream to watch. I implore all of you to buy it!

I are some stills of the film. There are so many amazing images i have just decided to include all of them I hope you enjoy looking at them.