[MUSIC PLAYING]
TIMOTHY JORDAN: This is I/O Live, and I'm Timothy Jordan.
And I'm standing here with Hannah Beachler
who is a production designer.
You may know her from "Black Panther".
HANNAH BEACHLER: Hello.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: How are you today?
HANNAH BEACHLER: I've got to give it one of these.
Great.
I'm doing great.
I'm so happy to be here.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Me too.
We're really glad that you came here to talk about your work
and to talk about diversity and inclusion
and how that's affected by representation in media.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Absolutely.
I mean, I think a big important part
of that is if you don't see it, you can't be it.
And so putting those things into our narrative work in films,
which everybody finds the time to go see a good movie,
as noted by "Infinity War", and to represent a huge portion
of the population in that way.
I think when people see it, they realize, I can do that.
I can have those same goals in life
because it's not going to be impossible.
And I think that that's such a huge important part
of my work, in my body of work, over the last three years.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah, one of the things I think about a lot
is that I was really lucky growing up
wanting to be an engineer and seeing lots of engineers
that looked like me.
And that was inspiring, and I really want that for everyone.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Absolutely.
I mean, I think inspiring the next generation
of young scientists who are female,
young kids of color who see a world where they have
a sense of pride, where they have a sense of reaching
back and seeing their tradition, and their culture,
and their ancestors, and all those things even
being a part of their future.
And I think walking away with a huge sense of themselves
that they otherwise may not know or have had privy to.
So it's lifting spirits that's so important when
it comes to representation.
It's not only about getting into certain fields.
It's about who we're raising in the world for the future.
Because I know I'm going to be relying on my young child
to take care of me, and I want him to know some things.
So it's always on my mind, and it's something
that I think I'm now more than ever driven to do and include
as part of my design aesthetic.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah, it's almost like if you can see it,
you can be it.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Absolutely.
And I've been watching.
You know, I watch all the videos on Twitter.
People will send me stuff of teachers
teaching about the sort of things that we did--
I did a deep dive, but it was sort of a lighter dive
into the technology in "Black Panther"
and the science in "Black Panther".
And teachers are coming up with a way
to teach the class using "Black Panther"
as an example of our vibranium and our sound science
that we used in the movie.
And to see that become a part of a curriculum and kids
getting excited about it because they see themselves
and yeah, I can do this, is--
I mean, you can't ask for anything more.
I've always thought, what can I do to better the world as one
individual?
And I didn't really know ever what that was until, I think,
after "Black Panther" and I saw the response of young kids.
And it was all about the representation.
And so that does become a design choice.
And it's something that I think that I'm just
going to do now forever.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Let's talk about that a little bit more
because you're on record as saying
that, when you were working on "Black Panther",
you were just focusing on it being good.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Yeah.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Right?
But then afterwards, looking back
on how big a deal this is for how many people,
how has your perspective changed?
HANNAH BEACHLER: I mean, hugely.
Because it was just you're kind of in it
and you can't, like you were saying,
see the forest or the trees.
So you're just wanting to make sure it's good and it's right
and that people are going to be happy and proud
and that you did the right thing,
you made the right choices.
Because at the end of the day, it
was a lot of responsibility in some aspects.
And then after, when I saw it, I was like--
I mean, my eyes were-- because I did a little bit of the VFX.
I was there for a little bit, but I
didn't see the final edit.
I saw one of the cuts.
So when I was there in the theater with everybody else,
I was blown away.
I was like, this is insane.
I can't believe I did this.
And seeing the responses, it's just on another level.
It's just-- you know, it's really hard to put into words
or articulate in a way that others can understand
because it really is--
it made me speechless, in a sense.
There hasn't been the words made yet
to describe what that's like.
But it was certainly always about making a good movie
with a great story.
And hopefully, everything else sort of fell in line.
And then we had other great filmmakers, Ruth Carter,
who is a Oscar-nominated costume designer, who
I worked with really intensively to make sure that what
we did matched up, you know?
Because a lot of what she did in the foreground
on the characters defined who they were on screen,
so that also gave back to the representation
of powerful women who had their own agency about them
and could make their own decisions
and stand up for themselves and could think quick
on their feet.
That's a whole other sense of representation
in a social aspect for young kids,
young girls, and the men who treated them
on this equal playing field.
There was no, like oh, we need to make it easy for the girls.
You saw the door fight.
You saw the king treat them as if they were--
when they were the most powerful guards in Wakanda.
So it's all of those things mixed together.
Then, you talk about the technology on top of that.
You're giving a new generation, old generation, my generation,
a whole other narrative than the one that we've
sort of heard for the last how many ever decades.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Let's talk a little bit more
about the technology, but not go away from the human aspects
that you're talking about.
I think one of things that has always really interested me
in technology is not how to make tech just better on its own
and then teach people how to use it,
but rather, teach technology how to be better for people.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Absolutely.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And I think that you've really
captured in this film an intersection with culture,
and people, and technology.
How did you approach that?
HANNAH BEACHLER: That's heavy, man.
[LAUGHTER]
You know, very carefully.
Because it's really trying to understand community, what
the needs of community are, and then how do
we envelope the technology, just what you said.
And I know, for Ryan, community was really important.
And I talked to a lot of experts.
It wasn't just me sort of coming up with things.
I talked to a lot of people who really knew, nanotechnologists,
neuroscientists, archaeologists, geologists, geographers,
on a daily basis to understand how to fold that in.
And I think that one of the biggest things that I did was I
tried to find--
a lot of the tech was based on biomimetics--
so I tried to find in nature and in different cultures what
the use of something was and then the evolution of it.
Because at the end of the day, it
is all about the evolution of it, how we are in society
and how we are advancing technologically.
So it was me relating these things back
in a way that represented what they are really used for
and how they would have evolved over time.
And I think technologically, often times, it
is the thing for the thing's sake
and not, here is something that has
been such a big part of a tradition
of any nationality, any ethnicity, any culture
or religion.
And this is how it becomes useful in a futuristic
and an advanced way.
If that means technology, then that's
the way that it would be.
So that's sort of how I strung those together.
And then pulling from nature, that was a huge one.
And thereby, keeping everything organic, in a sense.
So it becomes not such a scary thing,
but a very organic thing.
Because we're so used to seeing certain things in nature--
patterns, shapes, geometry.
All of these things-- math, science-- it's
all around us constantly.
So it was really easy, at some point,
to start just looking just into nature.
Because it is science.
It is technology.
You know what I mean?
The way everything works.
So looking beyond the hardware and the finish
of the hardware of it and into the organic nature of it all.
That's a little dive into how it went.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: It must have been a very full 14 months
working on this film.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Beyond.
We were on three continents.
We were in two states.
And I had a team, at any given moment,
that were 500 strong, just in my department.
So we went 14 months, and we went hard
as we could go for 14 months to get this done.
My whole team put every last inch of themselves.
So it was a beautiful thing because we represented
the diaspora, just our crew.
So it was a micro version of the macro
that we were building in Wakanda.
I lived that every single day for a little over a year.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: All right.
I want to ask you about what's next,
but it doesn't have to be specific projects.
But it's like, where do you go from here with everything
that you've talked about, like the production design itself,
but the bigger themes and ideas that you're working on?
HANNAH BEACHLER: You know, challenging myself,
I think, to try to continue to do things that
are out of my comfort zone.
Something I learned from Ryan Coogler,
who has taken me from "Fruitvale Station"
to a boxing movie, "Creed", to a comic book
movie, "Black Panther".
I want to continue the trend on my own
and not just be in a place that I feel comfortable.
My next project with Melina Matsoukas, who
was a director for "Insecure"--
I'm just working on the pilot for "Why the Last Man",
which is a graphic novel.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yes.
I've read the entire series.
HANNAH BEACHLER: OK.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So good.
[LAUGHTER]
HANNAH BEACHLER: So I'm going to be designing the pilot.
We're working on that, currently.
I can't really say much more than that,
but it's super exciting.
The script is phenomenal.
And our approach to it is going to be,
I think, something really cool.
So I'm really super excited about that.
Worked with Beyonce again.
That's all I can say about that.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Woo!
[LAUGHTER]
HANNAH BEACHLER: And the future is wide open.
And if the Denis Villeneuve is listening,
I'd love to do "Doom".
[LAUGHTER]
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yes.
HANNAH BEACHLER: I throw that out every opportunity
I can get.
Denis?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
Hannah, thank you so much for joining me and sharing
your story and all the work that you do.
HANNAH BEACHLER: Thank you so much.
It's super exciting.
I'm so happy to be here, and I think
I'm going to learn something today too.
So it's all about soaking in all this greatness.
So fabulous.
Thank you.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Thank you.
I'm Timothy Jordan, and this is I/O Live.
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