<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Oscars Preview: The Year's Best Sets\nAD spotlights the 2012 nominees for Best Art Direction and talks to the designers behind the five visually stunning films\nThe Artist (Weinstein Company)\n\n Production Design: Laurence Bennett\n\n Set Decoration: Robert Gould\n\n Oscar-nominated director Michel Hazanavicius's charming black-and-white and (mostly) silent homage to old Hollywood is set in the late 1920s, during the twilight of silent films and the advent of talkies. It tells the story of George Valentin, a declining matinee idol, and Peppy Miller, a fast-rising ing\u00E9nue. Production designer Laurence Bennett created period-perfect interiors on location in Los Angeles in just 35 days with a budget typical of independent film. Shown here are Oscar nominees Jean Dujardin and B\u00E9r\u00E9nice Bejo as George and Peppy in the film's final dance number.\nBennett researched the films of King Vidor, Chaplin, and the M\u00E9li\u00E8s Brothers and was drawn to the simple elegance of many 1920s films. Influenced by the Art Deco classics Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Modern Maidens (1929), Bennett no doubt channeled MGM's legendary supervising art director Cedric Gibbons, who helped introduce streamlined modern interiors to American audiences. The striking Deco living room above, with a reproduction of a Tamara de Lempicka painting over the fireplace, is from the set of one of Peppy's films, shot at the fictitious Kinograph Studios. \"It was liberating working in black and white,\" Bennett says. \"Taking away the color tools, we had to pay attention to lighting and shadows, contrasts, pattern, textures, and luster.\"\nThe exterior of the fictional La Reina Theatre, where George's film A Russian Affair debuts, was created on the Warner Brothers back lot. In total, 40 Los Angeles locations were used in filming The Artist, from historic movie palaces like the Orpheum and the Los Angeles Theater to old mansions on Fremont Place in Hancock Park. Ironically, silent-film star Mary Pickford once resided in the house used for Peppy. The landmark Bradbury Building's magnificent staircase (made famous in the cult film Blade Runner) provided a setting for one of the most memorable encounters between George and Peppy.\nSet decorator Robert Gould, whose father, Charles S. Gould, was an assistant director on a number of silent films, assembled the period furnishings and accessories used in The Artist. \"Bob reveled in the chance to find unusual things,\" notes Bennett, particularly the statues of three monkeys that decorate the home George shares with his estranged wife\u2014played by Penelope Ann Miller, left\u2014and that later turn up in Peppy's house. Gould had the satin shirred headboard shown in Peppy's glam guest bedroom (right) custom made.\nHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Warner Bros. Pictures)\n\n Production Design: Stuart Craig\n\n Set Decoration: Stephenie McMillan\n\n The eighth and final chapter in the wildly popular film series, adapted from the beloved books by J. K. Rowling, pits Harry and his Hogwarts classmates in a decisive battle against Voldemort and his legions of evil. One of the showdowns between Harry and the Dark Lord takes place on the catwalk pictured here inside Hogwarts, a mash-up of Gothic interiors. \"The fact that Hogwarts was partly destroyed in this huge monumental battle was a big challenge,\" says Stuart Craig, the film's production designer. \"The scenery is plywood, so if you try to destroy a section\u2014the roof and part of the walls of the Great Hall, for example\u2014you've just got the raw edges of plywood. So the ruins of Hogwarts had to be considered as a new build.\"\nThe previous movie, Deathly Hallows Part 1, ended on the beach near Bill and Fleur Weasley's Shell Cottage, and the final film gives a look at the house itself. \"I try to find a logic for whatever the set is,\" says Craig. \"If you really wanted to build a house on the beach, what would you do? Well, you would use local materials. And the local materials would be either rocks or seashells. The walls are huge oyster shells and the roof is made of big scallop shells. You can see how scallop shells can lend themselves to overlapping and shedding water. I was kind of pleased with the logic underlying the structure that we had found there.\"\nIn search of one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, Harry, Ron, and Hermione sneak into the vaults at Gringotts Wizarding Bank, which Craig and his team designed with soaring columns and lots of marble to create a sense of grandeur. When the three characters are discovered, they escape on the back of a dragon, crashing through the levels of the bank, as shown in this concept drawing. Craig notes that, over the course of the series, the creatures evolved along with the sets. \"Harry Potter, in its ten-year period, spanned quite a bound in technology. At the beginning, we would have done most things physically\u2014even some of the creatures were sculpted full size and operated as animatronic creatures. Toward the end of the process, they became digital constructions and brilliantly real.\"\nHugo (Paramount Pictures)\n\n Production Designer: Dante Ferretti\n\n Set Decorator: Francesca Lo Schiavo\n\n The 3D adventure Hugo, based on the beloved children's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, tells the story of a boy who lives alone in a Paris train station and his search to unlock a secret left by his late father. It's the seventh collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti (Aviator and Sweeney Todd). The film's centerpiece is the enormous, full-scale replica of a train station, reminiscent of the 1930s Gare Montparnasse, built on soundstages at Shepperton Studios outside London. Ferretti and his wife, set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo, filled out the station with meticulously designed shops, flower carts, and a caf\u00E9.\nFor the station's toy shop, Scorsese (nominated for Best Director) wanted an enchanting quality. \"He told me the toys had to have a magic vision about them, so I could not use any of the real antique toys I had found,\" Lo Schiavo says. \"Instead, they were built from scratch, inspired by originals but recreated with new colors and proportions.\" More than a hundred toys were fabricated, with heightened details and coloring for the 3-D effect. Oscar winner Ben Kingsley plays toy-store owner George M\u00E9li\u00E8s, shown above with Asa Butterfield in the role of Hugo.\nSets for the two-story bookstore required an astonishing 40,000 books. Word spread quickly throughout Britain's antiquarian books world, and Lo Schiavo dealt with numerous collectors. \"We also had some books made in plaster, and I put a lot of marble busts and sculptures and framed prints in the shop, as it was meant to have a library feeling,\" she says. Shown above is the shop's proprietor, Monsieur Labisse, played by actor Christopher Lee, with Isabelle, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, and Hugo.\nIn designing the film's wondrous, all-important clocks, Ferretti drew on his youth\u2014the father of his childhood best friend worked with clocks. To illuminate the ones they created for the set, he and Lo Schiavo chose large teardrop-shaped light bulbs, which they felt added an element of fantasy.\nMidnight in Paris (Sony Classics)\n\n Production Designer: Anne Seibel\n\n Set Decorator: H\u00E9l\u00E8ne Dubreuil\n\n Woody Allen's ode to the City of Lights tells the story of a Los Angeles screenwriter named Gil, whose evening sojourns in Paris turn into magical meetings with 1920s literary figures. Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director, the film features both contemporary and period settings created by production designer Anne Seibel and set decorator H\u00E9l\u00E8ne Dubreuil, who worked entirely on location. With a limited budget, they produced a variety of interiors that included the apartment of Jean Cocteau, a recreation of the Moulin Rouge at La Cigale, a surrealistic wedding party with taxidermy, and a whimsical bash thrown by Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, complete with a carousel. Owen Wilson plays Gil and Marion Cotillard is Adriana, a muse to Hemingway and Picasso who pines for the bygone glamour of the Belle \u00C9poque. The two are pictured here in a scene at Gertrude Stein's apartment.\nSeibel re-created Gertrude Stein's apartment by studying old photos and reading descriptions of the famous salons of artists and writers held there. Eventually, she and location manager Antonin Depardieu found a similar-looking flat in the 11th arrondissement with the required fireplace and look of an artist's studio. Seibel, who worked as an art director on The Devil Wears Prada and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, decorated the space using an early-20th-century palette of orange, gold, and light green, and inserted a copy of Picasso's famous portrait of Stein along with some of his drawings. In the film, Stein is played by Oscar-winner Kathy Bates.\nDuring one of his trips back in time, Gil goes with Adriana to the legendary restaurant Maxim's, which dates to the 1890s. For the scene, the design team changed a few items in the current space to make it appropriate to the period. \"It was an easy place to re-create with props as there is a museum upstairs but the challenge was lighting,\" Seibel says. Working closely with cinematographer Darius Kondji, they used special light bulbs from Germany and added dimmers to create soft gold- and rose-colored tones, enhancing the romance of the Art Nouveau interiors.\nWar Horse (DreamWorks)\n\n Production Designer: Rick Carter\n\n Set Decorator: Lee Sandales\n\n Director Steven Spielberg's epic tale of the bond between Joey, a half-Thoroughbred, and his young English owner, Albert Narracott, follows the horse and boy on their respective adventures from the pastoral moors of Devon to the World War I battle trenches in France. Collaborating with Spielberg for the seventh time, Academy Award\u2013winning production designer Rick Carter (Avatar) used the epic films of David Lean and John Ford, along with the classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), as reference points in creating the powerful landscapes. \"Devon is harsh and rocky but also idyllic,\" says Carter. \"The color palette for the Narracott family farm came straight from the moors. We found a derelict building in the middle of nowhere that we brought back to life. It had 360-degree views which give it a sense of being part of something huge and imposing\u2014the expanse of skies, the force of elements that created the beauty we had hoped for.\"\nThe production team located picturesque old villages, including Castle Combe in Wiltshire, which served as the setting for the scenes where Joey is sold to the army and the village men head off to war. An abandoned airfield in Surrey was used for the brutal battle scenes. Carter had the exhausting task of building hundreds of feet of muddy trenches with an underlying infrastructure for both horses and cameras.\nOne of Carter's favorite sets was the French farmhouse where Joey forms a bond with young Emilie, pictured here, played by Celine Buckens. Carter's inspirations for the design included the children's story Heidi as well as artworks by Vincent van Gogh and Pre-Raphaelite painters. \"We tried to make sure the farmhouse interiors would bring a sense of early-20th-century peasant life in France,\" Carter says. \"The farmhouse was an idyllic respite from the carnage of the war scenes. It was important that the setting give the characters and audience a moment to catch their breath, to restore their sense of hope.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/oscar-nominees-best-art-direction-slideshow>