The Magazine Antiques

Discovery | By Darrell Hartman

Behind the Screen: Amelia with Paul Austerberry

November 4, 2009  |  Hilary Swank's portrayal of pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart in the new film Amelia has been turning heads—but the real star of Mira Nair's biopic might just be the gorgeous vintage planes. As the film's visual consultant, Toronto-based Paul Austerberry spent months researching classic aircraft.  He talked to The Magazine ANTIQUES about that process, and explained why flying a late-1930s eight-seater to South Africa (where a good deal of the film was shot) is as dangerous now as it ever was.

DARRELL HARTMAN: Could you give us a rundown of the three main aircraft in the movie?

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PAUL AUSTERBERRY: The 1928 Fokker, which we built from scratch; the red Lockheed Vega, which we also built; and the one she perished in, the 1937 Electra, for which we used several different, real planes—two here in Toronto, and a flying one in South Africa.

DH: Of those three, the Electra is really the star. Tell me about getting it on screen.

PA: It was a little difficult. There are not a lot of those planes out there. The real plane was a Lockheed L-10 Electra, but we ended up using an L-12 Electra Junior.  It's a very similar plane—I actually think the proportions are slightly more elegant.

DH: Where did you find the three Electras you used in the film?

PA: We were able to get one from a fellow in Lafayette, Georgia. He flew it up here and we painted it and used it in the hangar and on the runway.  Then there was another, non-flying one in Florida—we had to get a police escort through every state from Florida to Toronto. That was outrageously expensive, but we got it here.

DH: And then you also had one at the South Africa location?

PA: We had to convince someone to fly it all the way from France to South Africa. It was a bit of a dangerous journey, actually. I think the owner's son, who flies for Air France, flew it down. They were surrounded by an army on an island off West Africa and basically had to pay their way out of there.
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Discovery | By Darrell Hartman

Behind the Screen: Bright Star with Charlotte Watts

October 15, 2009  |  As meditation on the doomed love affair between the poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), Jane Campion's Bright Star is not a typical period film.  Critics have praised this intimate, unadorned romance since it premiered at Cannes this spring, as set decorator Charlotte Watts tells us, recreating its sets—all the way down to the upholstery nails—was no easy task.

DARRELL HARTMAN: You were working closely with production and costume designer Janet Patterson, who collaborated with Jane Campion on The Piano.

CHARLOTTE WATTS: Yes, and Portrait of a Lady. She wanted pared-down Regency interiors—very monochromatic. I know the mise en scène comes across as stark, but it's also true to the class of the characters. These people were not affluent.

DH: I think period films often want to wow us with opulent sets.

CW: Yes, and that can be quite repetitive. I had three months to do research before we started prepping, and the things I was finding—perspectival wallpaper, farmhouses where they had painted the walls in pink and green stripes—is far from lush. Actually, these interiors were much more exciting to create.

DH: Tell me about the furniture. There's not a lot of it, but it makes an impact.

CW: Janet wanted to see silhouettes—for the furniture to be spidery and very linear, so we went with darker woods. We stripped down all the sofas and had them re-stuffed with horsehair just to get that lumpy look. And we didn't use the plump cushions you see in period films.  We made all the cushions ourselves, to make them feel lived in.
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Current & Coming | By Darrell Hartman

Behind the Screen: A look at Julie & Julia with Mark Ricker

August 5, 2009  |  Julie & Julia serves up two stories: that of Julia Child (Meryl Streep), who introduced America to French cuisine a half-century ago, and that of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), the modern-day amateur cook (and memoirist) who went through every recipe in Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  We spoke with the film's production designer, Mark Ricker, about automobiles and kitchenware in postwar France and the importance of wainscoting.

DARRELL HARTMAN: How did you try to establish a kinship between Julia Child and her modern-day acolyte, Julie, through set design?

MARK RICKER: There's a fluidity to the palette of the film. They were having the same experience, separated by time and distance, so we literally used the same can of paint for Julie's kitchen in Queens and Julia's Paris kitchen.

DH: Julia and her husband (Stanley Tucci) aren't exactly loaded, but she's got pretty grand digs in Paris.

MR: She does. Paul was a diplomat working at the American embassy. They rented two floors at the top of an old house right near the Seine, on rue de l'Université, from this old woman. It was chock full of stuff that Julia and Paul shoved away in a closet—essentially, a very grand small apartment.

DH: Very different from Julie's pad, no?

MR: Except for the fact that they were both old environments that these people moved into. We wanted to show that neither was perfect. And we had similar texture for both. We took a mold from Julie Powell's apartment—a stamped-tin, fleur-de-lys wainscot that was literally in her real apartment in Queens—and incorporated that into the set.

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DH: What were some key details of Julia's Paris apartment?

MR: I had to incorporate that atrium window that connects the two wings. And the kitchen—it was well documented, and we used it as a blueprint for creating the set.
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Current & Coming | By Darrell Hartman

Behind the Screen: A look at Chéri with Véronique Melery

June 29, 2009  |  Directed by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Queen) and based on the novels of Colette, Chéri tells the story of an aging courtesan (Michelle Pfeiffer) who falls for the playboy son (Rupert Friend) of a rival courtesan (Kathy Bates). It's a boudoir dramedy set mainly in Paris, and it goes without saying that the Belle Epoque interiors speak volumes. I talked to the film's set decorator, Véronique Melery, for a translation.

Tell us a little about the period Chéri is set in.
It is set between 1906 and the months just before the First World War in France. Stylistically there were two main streams of influence: Napoleon III, which was the fashion just before this period, and art nouveau.

Quite a sharp contrast in styles, no?
They are radically different. Art nouveau design has a purity of line that was inspired by Japan and Orientalism that was a break from the historicism prevalent in the 19th century. Previously in France, interiors were furnished in a way that copied Louis XV and Louis XVI styles, and transforming them into something much heavier.

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