During the production of Back to the Future Part II nearly 30 years ago, Rick Carter passed his Art Department what he today calls a “Pavlovian joint”—he asked them to imagine 2015; to enter the state of mind that allows for the suspension of disbelief. In a conversation last night at the Art Directors Guild (ADG) in Los Angeles, Carter asked his audience to do the same, except this time, it really is 2015.
The Oscar-winning production designer behind Back to the Future Part II and III, Forrest Gump, Avatar, Jurassic Park, and so many more, recently finished work on the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. As last year’s recipient of the ADG’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Carter invited ADG members and press to “turn on, tune in, and trip out” in his conversation, which touched on topics including patterns, symbols, and dreams in cinema. From his subconscious mind to galaxies far, far away, Carter weaved a web of conversation between the art directors and production designers present. He did not stay on any one topic for long, but a few recurring themes emerged throughout the evening. These, he attributed to “The Force.”
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In a 15-minute video edited by Allan Holzman, we gained a glimpse into Carter’s process for creating cinematic worlds. Spielberg’s Jurrasic Park storyboards were mirrored by clips from the final film; Carter narrated by depicting the production design that went in to each scene. For Forrest Gump, Carter himself found a piece of land in the South that personified Forrest Gump’s true character. On the same plot of land, he and his team created Jenny’s farm, the tree where Jenny and Forrest grew up, and even Vietnam across the street. A multitude aesthetics ultimately motivated the final cinematic experience, as Rick later probed: “In your minds’ eye you can go to Munchkin Land without Dorothy. Why can you access that?”
Carter’s openness allows him to embrace production design on films that are made both on real sets and on virtual CG ones, created by virtual art departments. A film like Avatar explodes this perceived duality: “The form and the content were so close from the very beginning because if you think about it, it’s a hybrid movie between live action and CG. But the very content of the movie is the avatar state, and that is a hybrid state.”
Patterns in the conversation emerged: they began with the “digital Pandora’s box” that was Jurassic Park and reached fluidity in his descriptions of the world of Avatar’s Pandora. It’s no different for Episode VII, according to Carter. Just as Marty McFly had to go back to move forward, he explained that for Star Wars, they were able to return to telling stories with physical sets, but extended them to recreate its particular time and place. “For me that’s going a little bit back to where started with moviemaking to go forward. But it’s still a long time ago. And it’s far, far away. I’m not making this stuff up.”
The Creators Project pulled together a few pearls of wisdom about storytelling, Star Wars, and symbolism from Carter’s conversation:
On production design:
“There’s something to find in the cinematic experience that’s beyond all the details of what you actually do, and I’m going to go so far as to say that, philosophically, I think production design is a collaborative, collective state of mind that gets realized.”
“As an architect, or production designer, or visualist of where we go. I’m looking to create something with this group collaborative effort that actually inspires people to feel like they are somewhere, then they can create. It’s like a circle coming back around again.”
On storytelling’s big questions:
“I think what’s unique and special about Avatar is that it’s an experience. The part of the job that matters to me is, what it’s about? The big questions of why, not just how are you going to do it, which of course you have to do. But you have to come up with the whys because those are what motivate you to actually inspire this army of people.”
On seeing:
“It’s having an open mind and a 360-degree mind. Ask, can you see it any other way? And I think that’s what production designers are asked to do.”
On symbols:
“The symbol is something like the feather in Forrest Gump. There’s a little thing, a ticket to ride, a little something that you invest in. Hitchcock might have called it a MacGuffin. Everybody in the movie cares a lot about it. You might not even know what it is.”
On Star Wars:
“There’s something that’s going on with the computer and with hybrid moviemaking. It’s very fluid and I’ve noticed this now in the next generation. JJ’s a perfect example of that: he’s so fluid in both dimensions. There’s no real line. He’s just inventing nine stages that we doubled over. Just a lot that’s physical and a lot that’s digital, and it’s all part of the new vernacular. I know that movies are going into a new zone and that’s what’s exciting about it: we don’t know, but can we carry this aspect of who we are into it. Of course we can—cinema requires it.”
On turning on, tuning in, and tripping out:
“When asked what my special talents are: to turn on tune in and trip out. Turning on is the idea that in a collaborative setting, it’s so important that it’s collaborative. In the filmmaking part of it, turning on is to discover the inspiration that which you really feel you know there it is its sparking right in front of you. Now you’ve turned on. Tune in is: can you even see it as a wavelength that you can now share with other people? As a collective bubble that starts to form, everybody starts to feel that there’s an access to a wavelength. The trip-out is: now, together you go.”
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