Tag: set decoration

Set decoration takes enormous talent to achieve with panache. I enjoy writing about the most renowned professionals in this field here on my blog.

An example of excellence in set decoration is Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was nominated for quite a few Oscars. One of the most surprising facts about this film is that it’s a fabulous piece of architectural storytelling because the façade of the hotel and other exterior scenic elements, like the snowbound forest and the tram (called the Funicular), are architectural models created in a studio in Berlin!

I went in search of the place Anderson shot the movie because I’m a junky for identifying filming locations and what I learned is that they had to create a hotel because they didn’t find one they could use for the project. What they did find was an abandoned shopping mall, which they transformed into the hotel’s interiors during two different eras—the 1930s and 1960s. I envy the set designers who traveled Eastern Europe in search of design elements to go into the interiors! It’s as Owen Wilson says, the hotel becomes a character in the movie, and I love to write about projects like this.