Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow was released in early March, but has kept people buzzing during this time at home for many reasons. One of them being Haley Bennett’s incredible performance as a person suffering with pica, another being the design of the film. One of the creatives responsible for the highly artistic look of Swallow, production designer Erin Magill. Magill, whose career started in the art department at Pixar, has lent her talents to other titles such as Brittany Runs A Marathon, Love After Love and more recently, The Quarry. We conducted a written interview with her discussing these recent films and much more. Read here:
I read that you started your career in the art department at Pixar. What at that position made you want to transition to a production designer?
I had also always shown promise in art classes growing up, but looking back, what excited me most was the cross discipline projects where you had to creatively reinterpret what you were learning like building a diorama for a history class. Then during my undergrad at UC Davis where I majored in design and minored in film theory, I took a theater design course. The theater was less enticing to me, but our teacher, John Iocovelli, was also a production designer and he shared his behind the scenes/process photos for a film he had designed, Honey I Shrunk the Kids. I remembered fondly the giant world he had created and that was a definite “Aha” moment for me in terms of “wait, that’s a job, why didn’t I know this, and how do I get that job?” While still at UC Davis, I was lucky enough to begin my career in the art department of Ratatouille at Pixar Animation Studios.
It was an immensely creative environment, full of talented artists all working incredibly hard to create films rooted at the core with the importance of quality storytelling. I’m forever grateful for the lessons I learned while working on Toy Story 3, but along the way I knew my heart was not devoted to the world of animation, so I left for Los Angeles to get my MFA in production design at the American Film Institute. My experience at AFI continued to confirm my passion and talent for visual storytelling in the live action space. A teacher from AFI recommended me to Dan Bishop, the production designer of Mad Men, when he was looking for an art dept. assistant for season 6. While their mediums and content’s tone were vastly different, there was a similar palpable energy in the halls of Mad Men to what I had experienced at Pixar, a commitment to excellence and constant raising of the bar. I knew then I had made the right decision and I’ve been pursuing this career path ever since.
You have had two films released during this time of quarantine, Swallow and The Quarry. Has there been any feedback from viewers about these projects that has surprised you? Or feedback that you have particularly been pleased with?
Swallow was a very small film in terms of budget, crew, prep and shooting days, and because of this it was a true labor of love for all involved. With Haley Bennett not only attached as the lead, but as an executive producer, there was a special fluidity between the “behind the camera” and “on camera” that I think was quite evident with the end result. Her performance is brilliant, but I always knew the content might be polarizing and with some viewers fainting at Tribeca, I was worried it would be a short-lived run in the indie art house scene. But I think a silver lining of everyone staying home and consuming more content than normal was that a much larger audience was able to find Swallow through the video on demand experience. Especially in light of the buzz and well-deserved reviews for Haley’s performance. It also doesn’t hurt that audiences and critics seemed to relate thematically to the experience of Hunter’s character feeling isolated and trapped.
In The Quarry you constructed the inside of the police station in an abandoned Winn-Dixie corporate headquarters. What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome with this transformation?
There were a lot of intense and emotional scenes in the jail cell, so after not finding an existing standing set in town that would work for the shots and lighting our director and DP had planned out, we scouted the abandoned Winn-Dixie building. There was a back-entrance storage room type space that was about 25’ x 40’ with an exterior door to a parking lot. There was one existing concrete wall that had some beautiful water damage and aging texture to it, so I drew out a rough plan of us using that wall to build our cell off of and the door as a connection to the exterior scene where we saw Michael Shannon cleaning up his motorcycle and pitched it to director and DP. Cutting the room in half with a new plaster as concrete wall to match was a lot of work for a film with a very limited budget and prep time. Thankfully I had an amazing construction and scenic crew in New Orleans full of talented veterans of the business, who managed to not only match that one wall beautifully, but they also built it on a hinge, so the DP and his crew could easily move in and out of the set and space with their lights and camera to get the shots they wanted.
When doing research about what the vibe of West Texas is, what stuck out to you most?
Unsurprisingly, a lot of God, Football and Texas pride. Our film was obviously heavily centered around the church and religion, and while on occasion with background dressing, we were specific with a nod football and/or Texas itself with flags and maps, Scott really didn’t want us to go overboard. Scott was most interested in the story as an allegory for good, evil, the purpose of God and religion. The idea that this small-town wrestling with economic hardship and immigration issues could be found anywhere in America and possibly at any time in the past thirty years. This idea was the foundational basis for all of my design choices. So even though I showed him a lot of reference for police stations in Texas covered in taxidermy and long horns, he really wanted us to tone that down, which I understood.
The Quarry is set in the late 80s. What do you think are the most important aspects when designing this decade?
Throughout my discussions with Scott about who he thought the characters were and who they could be representing, it again became apparent he really wanted a timeless feel to the world, the store was an allegory for him. Therefore, we landed on a pre-internet/smart phone time period for a few practical story point reasons. This primarily mattered for me and my crew in terms of phones, cars, TVs etc. Otherwise, when you are dealing with the idea of a small town, middle of nowhere, that has seen far better days economically if ever, it’s less about the specificity of the 80s or a day itself. No one in this town is buying anything brand new. The church clearly hasn’t had any money for decades so it becomes a combination of dressing from the 20s to the 80s and selecting pieces that feel timeless, lived-in, and appropriate on the socio- economical and cultural level as well.
What are some of the first questions you ask the director when you begin working on a film?
It depends if they also wrote the script and I have often worked with directors who have, but even if they haven’t it’s likely something about their motivations for why they want to tell this story and/or make this specific film. More broadly, tone and mood are critical for me to get an idea of what their vision is, whether they have other films they are thinking of reference wise. But really then it gets into the story itself, obviously it depends on the content of the narrative, but usually there’s a fair amount of character background and personal history I’m curious about, how they got to where they are now in the script etc.
Out of all the films you have done so far, which is most like your own style in your personal life?
Hmm. That’s tough, I guess I would say there are aspects to Andie MacDowell and Chris O’Dowd’s family’ s house in LOVE AFTER LOVE, that are the closest to my taste. There are definitely more antiques or traditional American silhouette pieces than I would use personally, but I think in the eclectic, layered, sentimental style of their family home, I relate to that. The parents are also both artists and a bit bohemian, so there’s a comfort with mixing color, patterns etc. and that style is similar to my own.
You were the production designer of Amazon’s Brittany Runs A Marathon. That was such an amazing movie. Do you have a favorite memory from that set?
Definitely Brittany’s apartment. That was the most fun to discuss with Paul (Director: Paul Downs Colaizzo) about what the real Brittany had done – like the half-painted wall in her bedroom, or ideas I brought to the table such as the drawing of a fire on the fireplace that Paul agreed felt “very Brittany.” The location we used was actually home to a lovely family with two young children and there was a typical NY closet sized kitchen off of a side door in the living room, so initially the producers thought the space would never work. But Paul and I both loved the depth of the space, and how it felt small enough to realistically be the space these two girls could afford, but also large enough for us to be able to shoot in. So I pitched them on turning what was the family’s dining room into a kitchen space. We brought in the counter, cabinetry and appliances and painted throughout the apartment. I also loved this idea that poor Brittany would have this tenement window wall in her bedroom where she would have to stare at the fridge from her bed.
What are you doing creatively during this time of quarantine?
It’s been tough for sure. I take a lot of photos in general and I love to travel for inspiration so I’ve really been missing those opportunities. I’m based in Brooklyn at the moment, so when I’m out walking my dog or volunteering with a few local food banks, I try to soak in as much as I can, observing, taking pictures, hearing the stories of those I’m working with or delivering food to etc. At home, I’ve dabbled in treating my house like a prop shop and setting up small scale still lifes which have been an interesting exercise and I’ve always enjoyed collage making from old magazines. I’m painter as well, but have found it difficult to get started these past few weeks. This obviously isn’t a normal between jobs/down time and I have found it hard to compartmentalize what’s going on in the world, so I’m trying to be patient with myself in terms of creative output.