- The world was so complete that you knew what you had to do
and you knew what you had to be.
The level of detail was just incredible.
- [Kristy] What was the brief you got from Yorgos
and how did you tackle that collaboratively together?
- He was keen to make a sort of a studio-based film
so we could build all the worlds,
and in sort of using up from 1930s sort of techniques
right through to high-tech LED screens and anything we can,
but sort of leaving out the CGI and green screen
as much as we possibly could,
and that we would make everything from miniatures to worlds,
to streets, to houses, to everything.
- Basically his theory was he didn't want it to be
a pastiche of the 1930s movie as if it was made then,
and he didn't want it to be stylized
for the sake of stylization.
He just knew that Bella was a made-up character,
so we could create our own world.
And he believed that if you merged
the principles of all of those techniques
from the beginning of filmmaking up to modern,
right up to the LED modern-day stuff,
you would create something that was new
and unique in its flavor.
And that was as about as much of a brief we were given
in terms of what it physically looked like.
That was up to us to figure out along the way.
And we did that with the help of six,
or was it three images, Shona, that he gave us?
- There was six, I mean, I can't remember
what the photographer was on one of them.
But we had a Francis Bacon painting,
an Egon Schiele painting, Hieronymus Bosch painting,
and that was it.
And a picture of a sculpture,
a sort of slightly medical sculpture, and that was it.
But actually we sort of, we held onto those for dear life,
didn't we, James, when we sort of didn't know what,
you know, what are we doing, where are we going?
We would look for something in those paintings.
And actually I think paintings helped us
all the way through with our referencing.
'Cause you can read different things into paintings,
which means you are not copying something
or referencing really strong, like you say, pastiche,
you're doing something different.
You're interpreting something already.
- Well, at the New York Film Festival Q and A for press,
someone referred to this aesthetic, which is futuristic,
but with throwback elements as steam punk,
and you guys didn't really love that description.
Yeah, agreed, got it. (Shona laughing)
I'm curious what description you think
better suits the aesthetic you created?
- I think it's actually Bella's aesthetic.
It's a Victorian world seen through
the eyes of a child growing up,
but also with the lens of Baxter, who is this,
you know, kind of maverick surgeon.
So he sort of was a designer in his own right.
So it's really the world through Bella's eyes.
I don't think it has a genre or a,
you know, it's Victorian, I suppose,
in its sort of grounding,
but I hope it doesn't have a genre.
That's why I think we were sort of, so, you know,
we kept on really saying, "This is not steampunk."
We kept on saying it's throughout what we are doing.
It's like, this is not steampunk.
This is not where we are going, you know?
- Yeah, we tried to veer away from that
in the traditional sense.
I suppose it's kind of a magpie genre.
The world we live in is made up
by so many different designers, architects, nature,
everything has evolved, and there's,
and even in one period of, you know,
everything that's being built now
or for the last 30 years
is borrowed from something else and seen.
So it's kind of, I'd say a magpie thing,
with a touch of surrealism, maybe, a little bit,
but not, you know. - Yeah.
Realism, psychedelia.
- Well, speaking to that, watching the film,
I've seen it twice now, and the second time
I picked up some details that I had missed the first time.
Like, one of them, when you go inside the brothel,
from the outside, the windows don't look like this,
but from the inside, they look like penises.
(James chuckling)
So- - They do, they are.
- Right, thank you for confirming.
But I was curious about kind of
coming up with these kind of details,
and there are other details in the film
that you're particularly proud of kind of working in there.
- I think the penis windows were sort of for,
but they were there because of the blatant fact
that everybody would know that was the brothel,
everybody watching the film,
but Bella wouldn't see that,
and she wouldn't even see the giant penises.
And even if she did, it wouldn't mean anything
bad or good to her, it just was.
- And the reason you see them more inside
is because they're silhouetted,
'cause they're letting all the light in,
whereas on the street, they're there,
but you don't notice them
'cause of the texture of the relief of the building.
And also they're not emitting the light as well.
So they're not so much in silhouette.
In terms of like Baxter's living room
with the memory foam carpet
and the ginormous interlocking ears on the ceiling
and kind of, I mean, they're pretty surreal, actually.
Everywhere, we had so many details
that were just absolutely,
that, yeah, the sets were layered deeply.
And because there was two of us, we were able to,
and of course a bigger, bigger team,
but we were able to kind of work in such a way
that we were from conception,
where Shona sort of worked a lot in detail,
we were able to create the worlds
and the detail all in unison.
So it was very useful having two brains on it.
- A good example that, I think of,
is the room where she plays the piano, for example,
was tufted, like upholstery.
It was soft as you walked on- - The floor.
- The floor, so that's not normal.
You walk differently.
I mean, literally there were many things
that made you, told you what you had to do.
It was a very specific world
that called for a very specific, you know,
approach physically, and very specific manner.
Fair enough, Mark?
- Totally fair. (phone ringing)
- Oh man, I did it. (laughs)
- There's Yorgos.
- He didn't like that.
- "Don't give away.
I saw what you were saying, stop."
(Willem laughing)