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SETTING,
PRODUCTION DESIGN & ART DIRECTION
SETTING
(page 2 of 4)
”Although
To Kill A Mockingbird
is literally a story that presents a new South evolving out
of the old, this metaphoric transformation in terms of
race relations was something the entire mass audience understood
in 1962. Despite Universal’s initial hesitations about the
movie, the picture proved to be a major critical and
commercial success, and Horton’s Foote’s reputation as a
screenwriter was
established in Hollywood for the remainder of the
decade."
2
(Additional
note: according to the text Box Office Champs, TKAM
was #8 of the top grossing films of 1963, earning $7.5
million.)
ART DIRECTION/PRODUCTION DESIGN
"the art director must convince viewers that the
world of the film is
undeniably real ..." 3
" ...it is the art
director who stands between the screenplay and the director
of the film, turning the printed page into a place real or
fanciful, constructed or found, and who does so for a price
the producer can live with."
"....if an art director is going his or her job well,
we as spectators are not consciously admiring the 'look' as
separate from the story unfolding and the characters
involved." 4
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Henry Bumstead
Co-Art Director
To Kill A Mockingbird
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Alexander
Golitzen
Co-Art Director
To Kill A Mockingbird
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Storyboards-
a major tool of the art director
See original storyboards
from the film and compare them to actual frames
taken from the motion picture |
Setting involves time and location. The challenge for
the Art Directors of
To Kill A Mockingbird (Alexander
Golitzen and Henry Bumstead, who won
the Academy Award that year) was to create a setting that
was not only
authentic and believable but also realistic. The
setting for the film is the
Depression era South in the state of Alabama. The
producers of the film
traveled there but decided the cost of taking the
production "on location"
was too high. So, the question became, how to create
the fictional Macomb,
Alabama on a studio back lot in California?
A sketch (above) made by an assistant to Henry Bumstead.
(Source:
Production Design and Art
Direction: Screencraft Publisher: Rotovision)
(see more of this sketch)
”Art
directors I think are one of the first people to get
scripts, many times even before the director for
Mockingbird. I went to Monroeville Alabama and I
guess we rode for 3 or 4 hours and we took pictures. And I
came home and designed the set all on the
lot. We finished the film and I began getting
calls from many different top art directors of MGM..and
'where did we shoot that picture', 'where abouts in
Alabama'? And I said 'we did it on the back lot', and they
said come on Bobby you’re kidding' and said 'no, it's all
on the backlot'…and they said 'God that’s a helluva
job'...And
so I guess I began to realize then maybe it was a very good
job, so I guess it was because I won the Oscar that year for
it…”5
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