Or Mortar of Belief – Mix Thoroughly Before Use
Building fantasy film architecture requires no diploma, no engineering skills, no degree.
The construction is not done with quarried stone or adzed timbers, but with the materials of illusion : the 3 P’s – plywood, polystyrene and paint.
The result is of course not intended to house or protect generations of familes, but to provide convincing, if temporary, lodgings for the imagination.
While free of the mechanical and structural contingencies of real architecture, it must nevertheless overcome a nearly insurmountable obstacle – that of believability. (Naturally, REAL architecture does not have this problem – because it is real, whether ancient or contemporary, exotic or vernacular, we can admire or disapprove – it is indisputably THERE.)
Fantasy architecture must gain implicit approval without this facility. In essence, it does not « exist » outside the film it inhabits.
All other representations are what one might term « making-of » vignettes, where the illusion is presented step-by-step as a craftsman’s artefact, complete with the inherent disproportion if a miniature, and with sets the wings – cameras, missing walls and positioning tapes. What is spotlighted is the skills involved in creating the illusion, not the illusion itself.
(The best compliment I can imagine, by the way, for a piece of film architecture, is that it not be noticed. That it be a presence governed by sublimation rather than proclamation, that it participate so fully in the storytelling that it draw no more attention to itself than an ubiquitous street corner framing a roving microphone.)
Curiously, fantasy, although by definition a certain negation of reality, must nonetheless obey an inflexible set of rules.
A leap of faith is required to a fantasy worlds to be real on the screen and any element that hinders this transition is regrettable and unwelcome.
The « homeliness and sense of familiarity » of Bag End play crucial roles in the « selling » of the The Fellowship of the Rings (and by extension, the remainder of the trilogy) to the audience.
The spectator MUST feel at home, invited as he or she is, on Gandalf’s heels, through the round green door of Bilbo’s home.
« In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit . » Tolkien goes on to describe Bilbo’s home primarily through senses other than sight, appealing to our notions of cosiness and comfort. He does not tell us how many rooms there are (there are many, it is a grand hobbit-hole, but we have no precise idea). In fact, he does not tell us a great deal, but nevertheless we feel immediately at home.
Tolkien’s own rendering of the hall of Bag End is fascinating. The hall has the proportions of a freeway tunnel. It is huge, with a minuscule Bilbo in the middle, smoking a pipe. The furniture is a little lost, the atmosphere lacks the cosiness of the story’s description. The paintings adorning the walls have different solutions fro their hanging – one leans far out from the wall on a string or wire from a nail, the second is actually convex, hugging the wall itself, all ample proof that Tolkien had perhaps not quite yet comes to terms with his own creation.. (Like the rest of us, he was likely making it up as he went along.)
Fantasy worlds are usually, with a few notable exceptions, based at least loosely on past civilizations familiar to use through myth and history. (The fantasy element in historical research is often very prominent, despite draping itself in the stern robes of educated speculation. Our notion of dinosaurs has evolved more in the last 20 years than the dinosaurs themselves over aeons. Science fiction, by the way, relies on a different logic and is largely freed from history, though subject to other handicaps – nothing goes out of style as fast as the future.)
To organize any excursion into the last of make believe, we must provide not so much a palette of recognizable objects as an accumulation of recognizable technology applied to a fictional or alternate reality. It is not simply a question of lifting morsels of masonry from existing sources and adding a little mortar (Tinseltown Ready-Mix) to bind them together. Such a process results in theme and amusement parks, not in a convincing movie environment. The collective cultural conscience has a surprisingly tenacious visual memory, and a patchwork of clip-art elements from a variety of sources satisfies n aspirations of verisimilitude.
On the other hand, a considerable portion of our real world is actually a fantasy world. The world we see first-hand is distorted and re-arranged by the passage through a camera lens. I’m sure most people have had the disconcerting experience of seeing a familiar town or region for the first time on television or in film. Familiar streets suddenly acquire new perspectives and novel proportions. Gradually, one integrates this unfamiliar vision with our familiar experience and both versions are accepted, but what about the REST of the world we know ONLY through the camera lens ?
Even environments so foreign to our experience as to be practically fantastical are accepted at face value because of the context in which they reach us. Within the reassuring framework of a documentary, we are willing to accept many things. Even if it is totally foreign to us, we accept it at face value. If it is a historical reconstruction, we accept it in good faith because of the credit accorded to such a scholarly occupation as archaeology. (Actually, much « historical reconstruction « is just fantasy by another name.) The context is almost more essential to belief than the subject. If we are told something is « real », and the context is convincing, then real it is.
Extravagance and exoticism are always accepted with eagerness, but they must be perceived as « real ».
« Fantasy » film environments however, have none of these advantages. By definition, we must believe without belief. They have no reality beyond the internal logic of the film, but must nevertheless force acceptance at face value. They MUST work, they have no choice.
Our experience of the film industry prior to computer technology told us landscapes had to be real, since physically constructing a wide landscape was near impossible. Now, as he sky (and beyond) is the limit, the threshold of credibility is not so lightly passed without stumbling.
Most of the time, fantasy elements are superimposed upon or nestled in real environments, or a real environment is pieces together around them. The harmony and symbiotic nature of this relationship is crucial. Interpenetration and interaction must be carefully managed, and this far in advance of post-production compositing.
The « real » may be present in interior environments through the materials used in their construction, and through the views glimpsed beyond windows or ramparts., but this integration is incidental.
The bona fide arrival of the real world into the world of fantasy concept art happens when actual locations are chosen, long after pre-production has conceived and created the architectural elements as ideal realizations in a landscape that has until then remained largely in the wings. (The landscape may actually even be in the realm of second thought, having likely played a minimal role in the actual design process.)
Naturally, the actual location is chosen based on the « feel » or the atmosphere created by the concept art, but it is rare that the two match topographically with any exactitude.
Other factors – accessibility, right-of-way. Negotiated use of public or private land, the allotted budget . generally carry far more weight in these choices than the details of concept art, appealing as they may be abstractly.
More often than not, the original concepts must be adapted to fit the lay of the land. Rather than a necessary inconvenience, this mandatory reshuffling of concepts is actually the best and final exchange between fiction and reality.
The concept work can become, rather than a pure flight of design fancy, the equivalent of an apprenticeship of a foreign (in this case fantasy) culture. The acquired intimacy and knowledge (albeit totally fictitious, but hopefully nonetheless coherent) serves to undertake the engineering required to adapt the idealized structure to the contingencies of he terrain.
This is the best way to avoid the « designer’s dream » look, deadliest trap into which one can fall. The whole idea is to briefly believe in what you are dreaming up, within the context imposed by the architecture itself.
It’s a process not so far removed from medieval architects – all these men possessed ideal castles in their minds, but of course these could only rarely be built, but every version is clearly the expression of a given culture.
To achieve this in fantasy film architecture is of course the grail never really reached, to « learn » a fictitious culture and techniques in order to generate an environment that feels instinctively « real », accepting every intrusion of reality into the design process. The abrupt slope, the inconvenient incline, the sudden bend in the river, all these things are the jumping off point from concept artist to real architect in a non-existent world. If you are going to make make-believe, then believing yourself, even briefly and even as a sort of game, has no serious side effects, just special ones…
(Now this may seem a bit of a lightweight conclusion to a marathon premise, but there are no low-cost companies on the flight-of-fancy market. The in-flight service is everything. Fasten your seat belts, please, we are preparing for takeoff… )
MY GOOD DEED FOR THE YEAR
Years’ ends are always opportunities for summings up and other exercises designed to allow us to keep a grasp on things. I usually try to help out four or five charities a year, which generally involves signing something and posting it off for an auction. Not an awful lot, I suppose, so I am VERY happy to say that the Tolkien exhibition in Carouge raised just over 69,000 Swiss francs for Krousar Thmey and the Maison des Enfants de Carouge. Leading up to, and throughout the exhibition, a huge number of dedicated individuals worked very hard ; it could not have happened without them, and without the Museum of Carouge. Above all, it would not have happened without all of those who came to see the show. Thank you straight from my heart.
NEXT YEAR
Well, who knows… I’ve resolved to pledge no New Year’s resolutions. Dom and I do have more plans to change things on the site, to continually update and revise, and especially continue cramming pictures into the portfolios, as well as maintaining a rather less irregular newletter. There are several book projects under way, several movie projects on the back burners, several gallery shows planned, several events which I’ve promised to attend, several sketchbooks to fill…
As the saying goes, even in this virtual world : « Thanks everyone, it’s been real. » See you next year (we’ll be there before you know it).
