Vaissnavi Shukl
Who would you be if your portfolio had titles such as Captain Marvel, Avengers, Infinity War, Thor Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Ant Man and the upcoming Black Panther too? You’d either be an illustrator for Marvel comics or Tim croshaw, who is a guest for today. Tim is a specialist set designer who has worked on some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters, such as Inception Gone Girl and House of Cards. So if you ever watched a Hollywood superhero film and wondered what goes on in the making of it, or thought about who designed the submarines and the palaces and the spacecrafts, or even question what went into designing spaces for a camera. Today is your lucky day. I had reached out to Tim last summer and thoroughly enjoyed speaking to him and learning about the fascinating world of Hollywood and filmmaking, so I invited him to share his world with us today, and I promise it’s a conversation not worth missing.

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off- Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture of Center features conversations with exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of Art, Architecture, Planning, landscape, and urban design.

So we’ll just roll with it, and I’m just so really excited because till now, we’ve had a bunch of episodes and kind of tends to go more on professional practice theoretical aspects. And yours is just going to be pure design, and something that I’m so excited about because, you know Hollywood seems like such a fascinating place especially from outside, and from our previous conversation last summer. It also seems like an industry that is kind of informal, and follows the old school ways of working so jobs aren’t posted on LinkedIn, there are no formal interviews and everything kind of works to the word of mouth recommendation so what was your journey like how did you break in and land your first design job in the art department?

Tim Croshaw
Well first off, thanks for inviting me here to your podcast. My journey began just like everyone else’s. It was a sort of a passion to like actually do something a little adventurous and move out to Los Angeles. I should back up my wife and I. We were boyfriend and girlfriend time back and graduates, we were, we are backgrounds in theatre so BFA in theatre, both of us. She has a BA in mathematics as well. She was gonna jump, she was gonna be an engineer, aerospace engineer, I think, and then fell in love with theatre. So then we continued on into graduate school of MFA from Florida University and then we decided we have three choices we can either move to New York, and try and work on Broadway in Chicago. And again, theatre there as well. Or we can try in LA, where the weather’s nice. The, you know, the climate and then just, just in general, the more liberal environment of Los Angeles. And the movie business, and so we, that’s what we decided on. It was kind of like, let’s just go for it, we’ll move out there and see what happens. But fortunately, my undergraduate actually had a pretty decent film programme and alumni. So when I got out here I knew a few individuals who I could call upon, particularly one woman named John Snyder, who’s an art director. She works over at CBS. And she put me in touch with some contacts that she had, and through that she gave me this book that was called The Art Directors Guild like directory. And this is years ago, like even a decade ago. And it was a book that had every member of the local labour union, that’s the reason why it’s so hard to get in, it’s a Labour Organisation. At that time there were two different labour organisations specifically in our department. But anyways, there was this book with everyone’s email and phone number. So, my wife and I basically sitting in our apartment in Glendale, we had this Bible as book of all these numbers of people that we, you know, sort of, revered, I guess you’d say like your, your favourite movies you look who the designer was you’re like oh gosh I can’t believe that I have to vote for that person. So, just call them, cold call, they made a script, we cold called people, and that led to meeting various individuals. Let’s say we got like a 90% positivity rate like everyone was really enthusiastic. Most of these people love talking and sharing, and I don’t think there’s there’s nothing better than asking someone to talk about themselves. You know, so a lot of people are happy to oblige. So then I ended up taking a few visits to a few art departments, and I went to, there was a movie, I think it’s a Michael Bay movie called The Island. And I met a man named Sean Hayworth, and he was the set designer that show I think he’s kind of instead of saying no to it. And then I met a woman named Andrea Carter, and she was the coordinator art department coordinator, and we can get into talking about some of the roads later. But she said “Hey, if you’re looking for a job. My friend was apparently looking for PA on a TV show named Medium.” I said, sounds great, love the idea, like let me do it you know so. My first job was a PA on medium, making like 600 bucks a week. And if you know what a PA is, it is its production assistant, specifically in the art department so I would basically the prerequisite is basically having a driver’s licence and a working time. So it’s going to get things that go for your running drawings around the studio. You’re driving across town to pick up, like, going on hardware runs which means like picking you know going to the guy who has all the doorknobs and all the window locks and the hinges and then going and getting carpet samples and paint samples so that was my first entry into that. The production designer on Medium was Jessica kendor, and she and I became friends. And she said she was very kind and she said, “If you stick around for a year. I will do..”, she’s recognised that I knew I had a pretty good foundation, a good background with theatre and set design and scene design. She knew that I could handle the job so she said, “Just stick around for a year. And then after I’m gonna try and get you in as a set designer. And then, if I do, it’s a promise to grant another year before you leave.” And so I was like, no problem. I love it. And so yeah I did, like, one year then got in and actually set designer. So we, it’s a, it’s a process. You have to, Like I said it’s a union so there is a membership list, and you have to go through the membership list, and everyone has to turn the job down and have a good reason for it before you can get hired. So either you have a very unique speciality, that gets you in. So that is just that way that’s off roster hires what’s called. And that’s how I got it and I think when I, when they call I think there was 14 people on the list, it was just perfect. It was good timing. And so the other way to get in the union is to be on a project that’s non union, and it will. The show will get flipped, they call it more precisely organised, so all the, all the crafts then become union craft they were non union now become union. That’s the second other common way to get in the union. But yeah, I was I was an offer Australia. It was great.

Vaissnavi Shukl
but no you know I completely I think in the brief period that you know I was reaching out to people and just speaking and you in fact with me Dr Jeske and then had a conversation with her as well. There was this striking, striking kind of difference in attitude that I saw between you guys who work in the movies he and the other more traditional architects who are working in the building industry just in terms of how they would respond to people how they were to having somebody under their umbrella and welcoming them into what they are doing. I thought just speaking to people who work in the art department or you know, a production designers, there were a certain sense of community, wait, wait, oddly, even that extended to its people who were not a part of that community. I don’t know I mean it’s, I don’t know if any other design fields that do that but it just felt kind of very utopian and unrealistic in the sense that every person I’m talking to just so good, just how can everybody person be so warm, how can every person be so helpful, like everybody was pretty good about the union about the roster about just ethics off, you know, working down the list and you know just how hiring works of course it was a really bad time to reach out to people because

Tim Croshaw
everyone was shot shutting down yes. Yeah, unfortunately, I’d say if you were here now, it’s the perfect time because the city’s like on fire. I mean like it’s busy, and that’s not literally on fire because that’s also a possibility. We would have been displaced in the desert but anyways yes, if you were here now, there is unfortunately a lot of work so I want anyone who’s looking come out to loss and try your hand at it, there’s what’s the worst thing can happen right.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I know I know but a huge part of just, you know, talking to people was also understanding what as you explain what a PA is just understanding what those different roles are, because it seems like such a tight knit community where everybody kind of knows what they’re doing and just like happens to work in tandem, so it took me a while and speaking to a bunch of people to understand what those roles are but for everyone who does not know the inner workings of an art department and firms. Sure. Can you walk us through the roles and responsibilities of the art department and how it intersects with the other departments from pen to paper to production, how does it, of course.

Tim Croshaw
Well it’s interesting, I want to touch on one thing you just said is a small community, because when you get down to it, there’s probably 250 300 set designers 1200 Maybe 2000 art directors yeah so you know that’s not a lot of individuals and we all live in relatively the same area. So yeah, there is a benefit, and a negativity to having such a small community because, obviously, you know, everyone knows everybody. What’s good is good. So hierarchy of the art department so we have a head of the department which is called the production designer, and they, that person is the intersect. For the producers and the director. There are department heads, there are direct, you know they direct the visual feeling in the movie, they’re the ones who are making the decisions. They’re the ones, travelling around the world picking locations with the director. A lot of the times, to be fair, they’re also advising the producer on what they can accomplish. And sometimes, when we talk about the script. And nowadays, the script is such an organic thing. It’s always constantly evolving and changing. So, a production designer can have some input on what they feel like is feasible within the script. So I’m not saying they, they are in the writers room in influencing their decisions but I think they’re there, they’re touchdown for the producer to come and say, we have this location on the side of a mountain, you know, where someone’s head dangling from a helicopter and. And there’s, you know, snow and wind How feasible is that is that something we can, you know, what do you think, what’s the budget number, what’s the mandate for something that’s other productions, I will be the person who takes that idea. One of the many of them from the script, take it to the art directors and the illustrators and concept artists and work up a visual like sort of queue for it and then return to the producer and say here, here’s the idea we have, This is what we think is feasible, yada yada. So, yeah, so hopefully that’s, that’s, give people idea with the productions I notice right below or adjacent. It’s hard to say below because it’s such a collaborative process. Yeah, I mean literally everything’s interconnected and everything reinforces the other production there’s only as good as illustrators and as you know, illustrators are reinforced by set designers and art directors. So it’s, we’re all interconnected we all share. And we all hand off design, or it can be like a game of like catch you know like you work on something then you pass it over to this person, they work on it, and then send it back to you. So it’s very interesting so art directors are drinkers are a lot of times, the supervisor and the go between, between a production designer, And sometimes, set designers. So they and their job will evolve and change too because once this production actually starts getting really busy, and the productions actually gets underway construction there’ll be on the floor a lot more interacting with construction, dealing with vendors, dealing with other departments. So unfortunately our directors at a certain point, they get sucked into like meetings after meetings. And so their, their design work has to be all done upfront and then sort of transforms into Scheduling and Management, and also like still like checking in with our study letters and illustrators. So yeah so production centre. Our directors and film Secondly there’s a supervising art director, who will oversee all the art directors because usually there’s probably like five or six art directors, and those are directors can have special, special fields like can be locations art director who just handles all the locations, they might be the person flying to like Fiji to Nepal or something like that to handle like,

Vaissnavi Shukl
I’d love to have that job.

Tim Croshaw
I mean the other side of it can be like they can be the person who has to go to the seedy alley in like downtown Atlanta, You know, there’s, there’s, there’s, it sounds very fun, if you get to go to those really remote places like Icelanders like that, but there’s also the downside of it where it’s like the dirty alley you know in some downtown suburban environment. Besides that there’s touched on earlier the illustrators and concept artist. They’re like, usually hired, early, early on, and depending on their skill set and depending on, usually there’s a balance of 3d artists and designers who will actually be designing in my moto. Nowadays, unreal will be the render engine of choice, to present their ideas, and they’ll be working very quickly to just do iterations of ideas. The painter leads illustrators and concept artist can be easily be working on a lot of keyframes, you know like the very specific moments of the movie. Like, if you just pick one for example obviously like you can imagine there was a really nice keyframe for like the battle during civil war between like the two opposing sides of Avengers right so, like there’s, you can probably go find the book of the consequences by flip to it and find like a nice illustration painting illustration of those keyframes. And so, a lot of times those, again those illustrators are hired early on, to get the get the movie greenlit because the producer in the studio in the planters, want to see what the movie is going to look like. And so that’s, that’s how a lot of times projects get laid. And sometimes, to be honest, the illustrators will get hired for the production designer, and they’ll just work with the director and the writers to, to get the movie on a good foundation. So it’s an interesting dynamic. It doesn’t always happen that way but you know it can. And like I said, the different styles of illustration, like I said there’s panel illustrations. There’s more like 3d illustrators, who actually will be handing off like literal assets of sets, somebody like me, who as a set designer, specifically, I guess, like categories a digital set design. And that just means that I work primarily in 3d CAD. So we’ve talked about production centre art director, Illustrator, and finally set designer myself which I think is the best job centres can fill a lot of different needs for the art department. Primarily what our job is is to take the work that the illustrators, have done with the production or work with the art directors to create a buildable shootable set, because like I said earlier, a lot of times the illustrators, working fast and loose, so there’ll be a lot of scale issues. And that’s not not a criticism but it’s just, it’s just the fact of working quickly and mashing things together. So then we’ll take it and have level one time with it and actually begin to expand and create a volume that’s suitable and reinforces the story. Now, there can be other times where the set designer can just be handed the idea, because there’s no time to have it work through illustration or it’s just a production designers prerogative to rather have the set designer workup, the interior of, you know, the Avenger compound or something. Again just picking sets out on the past. And so then you’ll work it up, and sometimes it’ll be the vice versa you’ll work up a set, and then and you’re set off to an illustrator who will do okay. Yeah, and give it really nice presentation value. So, and then when it comes back to me again, or any other set designer, we’ll actually do the, like the CAD drawings like the physical construction documents will be done by a set designers, laying out on stage doing all the really specific suitable and technical aspects of the set knowing what to do and how to pull which walls, knowing where camera is going to be so, Yeah. And that’ll that conversation will happen between myself and the art director and the art director and other crafts, had to then sort of bring in special effects, visual effects, you know, they’ll have the discussions with those department heads and then come back to me and say, okay, Tim sets gonna cut off at 14 feet. So everything above 14 feet is going to be a digital set extension

Vaissnavi Shukl
and high rise buildings and stuff.

Tim Croshaw
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very, very true. Like, there was a show I can’t say the name of it. Recently it was we were doing a city, more or less, and yes it is, they just pick the point like okay this is the height line we’re going to do. Let’s train a nice cut line at 14 feet. And everything above that is digital. Now we still designed it, you know, up to the 30th floor or whatever, but everything above or below 14 feet. We’ve made constructing documents for the other stuff we then just make sure it’s nice and tidy and we hand it off to visual effects, so they can take that asset, make it suitable for them, which is a whole other process of optimization, and, you know, talking about pixel count, etc, etc.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Oh my,

Tim Croshaw
fun stuff. So it’s interesting because we still prepare like you can say like we do construction work or physical construction but we also do construction work for virtual productions as well. Yeah, and then there’s a few other jobs which I think we should touch on, There’s a very important art department coordinator who will handle a lot of the intercommunication between all those people. They’ll make sure the production designer also usually take care of the production vendors calendar, make sure they’re aware of meetings and changes to schedule etc. It’s a very it’s a very challenging job. That it’s also a great way to make a lot of people become ABCs, and then they’ll actually become art directors later. Again, it’s like, It’s a very schedule oriented management position. I wouldn’t wish on my anyone. Another important one is, and this is not always the case but there’s researchers, which basically were tasked out by the production designer to research specific subjects or locations or environments. And then, never forget that PA. It’s a wonderful position. Again, to get your feet in the door and experience all those different individuals, and see which, which one of those fields, you’re drawn to because you might see what a set designer does and say oh I don’t. I want to get out the office I’m gonna get out on stage more. Or you might see an art director and say I don’t want to sit in meetings all day. Yeah. Not, not saying like, again, that’s one thing you said earlier is that the movie business is kind of has an informal process processes. Yeah, well it kind of it but I would say also what it has it’s very malleable, like it definitely moulds itself to, like, certain situations or problems. Yeah, and that’s kind of like what I try and like pride myself in, is I don’t see myself as, like, just to say like, maybe there used to be like designers who are really good at Western towns and designers that were good at making like ships. Yeah, like I’ve tried to present myself as a person who’s very good at tackling a project and kind of project or a problem, and I fit myself into that role, and do the best I can.

Vaissnavi Shukl
And there’s so many, so many parallels between the way architecture works and the way, production and our department works but so many ways in which they just like don’t come neck to neck at all just in the way it was and responsibilities or even the work for you know, you said sometimes the production designer just works with the illustrator, to get the missions going on, that will probably never happen in architecture where you would do renderings for a project without the architect getting involved, you know, so, so in that endeavour, it’s kind of interesting just how the workflow is structured but also, you know roles like a coordinator or you have a project management consultant in architecture, who would oversee just coordination of different departments so it’s really fascinating how and all like different design industries how these roles are structured and how the gears kind of fit in within the watch I mean everybody works together and eventually the watch works but it’s, it’s that coming together you know fitting between those little hooks and crannies and make sure that it keeps running so in that sense. So this is when I started learning about it and, you know, when I started speaking to people, it was just so fascinating where people started from, you know, somebody was a set decorator and then ended up doing something completely else you know just as you said, Oh, this is definitely not for me like I cannot do this or you’ve got a different role and, You know, went on to be a production designer because they felt that set was more, you know, tailored to what that role called for so they really fascinating. And the fun part is when you see movies on screen. None of this comes across, that’s part of the video. You see, everything just like working so well it’s like this is made to be you know this is just some heavenly body created this and it’s supposed to all work but we barely ever recognise logistics of it. So I want to change gears a little bit and talk about your work now, because it’s so fascinating, and a lot of your projects are situated in the superhero and sci fi universe you’re talking about civil war right now, see if Design Home dos Observatory in Thor Ragnarok, Dr. Scott in refugee Weser in Avengers Infinity War. The submarine and Aquaman, and the Queen stone throne room in the guardians of Galaxy Volume Two, this is just some of like the bay impressive portfolio you have. So can you talk a little bit about your creative process of designing these spaces, which you have absolutely no reference for and that you might not have ever visited a place of comparable nature. I believe that on the one hand, it must be true to kind of go crazy and use it as a canvas to get something out of you. But on the other hand it also seems kind of scary not having any historical references as a starting point do you do a lot of research while designing how does, how does it work, how would you design these pieces.

Tim Croshaw
I think each problem that we start with is tackled differently, but overall, Yeah, it’s all starting with research but even before that, it’s a communication with again the with the production designer expects, like what his vision is for these particular set, and the ones we just said, have very specific, like parameters orders like constraints, which is good. Like for example like him behind bills like we kind of have that in the previous movies, but it got blown up and being rebuilt so that was the whole idea of that particular set, it’s like this was a transition between what it was in the past and what it is now. So, like, and Dan Harmon was Dan Hannon, sorry, was the production designer for that, and he had some specific ideas of like the cosmos and zodiac symbols. So, the interior, it had these big sort of like almost look like they weren’t necessarily cogs, but they were almost like dials that, and different symbols and such on them, so. Yeah, I mean, it kind of can be sometimes that simple production that says, let’s do something that’s feels like it’s Zodiac symbol has a feeling of a clock, and let’s run with it and see what it turns out to be. So, and then you just start working and it just sort of happens and he was a very positive person too so very easy to work with, and the design flowed very quickly. And, like, really was, didn’t have a lot of friction. So pretty easy, the Asgardian refugee vessel, which, if you go back and think about Thor Ragnarok, That’s the ship. Thor and his friends escape on what type of ship came back from the battle planet Vulcan Thor, you know, first meet. So we kind of, like, I worked with an illustrator named Phil Novak. He did the exterior of that in Thor Ragnarok, actually he was sitting I think he was sitting across from me or in the same room. When I was doing the observatory, so he did that, which had this really big weird, like, almost like cannon, slash cockpit and gesturing with my arm, no one’s gonna know what I’m talking about. And so, if you remember Jeff Goldblum his character. Is he was supposed to sit in this main chair and have these big giant cogs on the side of the of the ship, that is, I think it what it was was, it was actually like a giant weapon of some type, that we get loaded up loaded up and down. So you can see it actually in a vendor, so it’s, that’s the crazy thing about Marvel movies is how they’re so interconnected, and such shared universe. While each trying to be their own individual project. And so that you can see how the all those all that influenced the design for that particular piece. And, you know, the interesting thing about that particular set is. It’s actually, that we actually had to make some some adjustments on that because of just budgetary constraints. So we did actually cut like they cut it back and actually it was a redress of another second entirely so we we’d sometimes getting in situations where we’ll design a set, and we will present it, and we’re moving forward with it, but we’ll just run into a physical restraint of like there’s just no money, or there’s no time, or there’s no, no space for this. So, we actually had to scrap a lot, and just sort of change or change the whole sort of expectation of that particular set, do you don’t know though, because, you know, it looks great on the screen, it’s just interesting how risky skins. Excuse me. Constraints can actually be beneficial sometimes give you problems. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So and different things like for example, when you talk about designing something realistic like the submarine, then obviously, fine, like real world sort of examples of how that would look but here’s the thing, you can’t actually shoot in the real world. Right. There’s no way you would fit a camera crew in there and there’ll be no fun to do any action scenes inside of a submarine because you can’t have Aqua Man, like wrestling with a guy in a cramped space we can stand up straight. So that’s when you take sort of liberties and need to have a little bit of conversation with our director and production designer, about what the actual stunt work is going to be and stuff like that. So, as much as there’s always a look that like, Excuse me, emphasis on what the set will look like and how that will reinforce the story, sometimes you also have to think about what how that set is going to be functional. And in, for the camera crew themselves for the stunt workers, and cells. So you don’t want to make something that’s very difficult to be in, because that will impact the performance and possibly negative way, you want to have the set be accessible, and for the camera could it be able to get in there. So, I don’t know if you ever saw this movie, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but there was some of the funniest movie, so I worked on Fast and Furious, Eight. And there’s a prison scene

Vaissnavi Shukl
around. But I agree that once you know, seven was done I think

Tim Croshaw
they’re so popular. Again, I never watched any until I started working on them. So, like I watched, like the one before the one after and the one I worked on. But, like, so there’s a scene where Jason salmon rock like locked up in this silly mega prison, and they get out. And once they get out the entire set is basically a jungle gym for them to fight in. Right. So obviously, like when we were designing that we had. Okay, this has to look severe enough, and menacing enough where you it’s these are the type of places you send like the most dangerous people. This is where you send the rock, you know, and you send the Jason safe and keep them in this danger, you know, these dangerous people walked up. So, then you got to think okay after that once they’re out like basically we want to have a huge fight scene and have a lot of fun, and have people jumping off walls and through actually like levels down into other floors below. So that’s fun. But that takes a lot of dialogue between the art department, and the stunt department site coordinators. I hope like there’s still, I hope you don’t think it’s all primarily like function function, there’s still an element of aesthetic, and, like, what’s pleasing to see, and what shapes are desirable, but again like you can’t get lost in that because you still have to always go back in your head and think what reinforces the story, and that’s what I do. Yeah, when I talked earlier about my friend Don Snyder, who is an art director. She, she actually, back when I used to work as a scenic artist basically painting backdrops and stuff like that. She always told me she said, Hey, make sure you always tell a story with your light, when you’re painting. Give the give a story, where’d that light come from, you know what, what is it, you know, what’s it affecting with the cast from, and make sure like whatever it is, how you’re paying this, it’s, there’s a reason for it. And so, whenever I’m designing and working. I always try and give everything a reason that way, because there are certain directors actually will ask you, like what is that like I was lucky enough to do a bunch of different projects with David Fincher, and he’s a person who actually likes to have those conversations. We did a project that never happened, called 20,000, Leagues Under the Sea. Many people have been attached to this movie it’s just hasn’t hasn’t hit yet. I think it would be, I’m super excited for what it does, because that’s a fun, I think world, the Jules Verne main anyways. David was like let’s do the interior the submarine, or let’s see what the, you know, how are these things powered and he wants to talk about, you know the propulsion systems and he wants to actually have a reason behind the layout of Nemos secret underwater bass, you know, he’s, he likes that. And I think it helps him with his storytelling. You know, it’s not necessary something maybe that the audience will ever know. But like I also like it’s just the fun. It’s fun when the person you’re trying to, you know, help with is actually just as excited as you are to talk about like the silly like details and minutiae, so.

Vaissnavi Shukl
And I think a couple of times, you, you know, with your design process mentioned that the camera crew and that is something that I want to jump on to for the next question because when we’re generally Designing Spaces very broadly spaces as we understand them in real life you design them for human experience but when you are designing them you’re designing it for an instrument or machine, along which is operated by a human. It’s meant to be viewed in different ways. So, in addition to these fictional worlds, you’ve also been a part of projects which are based in the present day world. And if I had not seen your work, I would not know that many of these shooting locations were actually said so, particularly thinking about the stage and the podium, do you design for House of Cards, and the house in Gone Girl, which I think Rosamond by I. I love her and I love that movie and, yeah, it’s incredible the way that movie was made, but I wouldn’t, I would have never guessed that that house wasn’t like a real house, like something that existed and that you would just like, and it would show up in the movie. And both of these look so realistic. And so, permanent like they already exist somewhere and that makes me think about the common thread between architecture with a capital A that I studied in practice and the set design that you studied and practice and both of our fields and training do you with space making very, very broadly.

Vaissnavi Shukl
but you kind of have a one up because you don’t need to worry about the structural part of it as much and kind of jealous of that, but you also decide these spaces, keeping in mind that temporality, knowing that they’re going to be torn down and dismantle after the shooting and, and most importantly you are designing these spaces for the camera. So for a human experience of the space, through the medium of screen, versus in person, and that is definitely not something that we do in our practice as architects, but what do you think about it about the intersection of architecture and set design and your perspective of designing this very architectural places for the camera.

Tim Croshaw
Oh, I think that, obviously, what is the camera right, it’s a surrogate for the human eye. It’s, it’s us. But, like, when you talk about what, at least my experience with architecture, and with arbitration I enjoy it. Obviously I’m viewing it, and I see it in its place, and where someone has planned it, and as executed, you know, it’s like this is interesting. The interesting thing because with goodness all at once I get excuse me, take it that I have a cat as well. We’ll start that part over over.

Vaissnavi Shukl
It’s kind of cool that the cabin co exist, they like live peacefully they like each other.

Tim Croshaw
Yeah but cats here long before the dog. So, then the dog was a puppy, and the cats kind of
scary camping, like nips at the dog and the dog, the dog is very passive, that that works. So let’s try and think of a way we can, like, do we just like, I don’t want you to have to repeat the question again because I think I have it here.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So you were just talking about how the camera is a surrogate for the human eye.

Tim Croshaw
Yes, yeah. So, being the fact that it’s a surrogate for the human eye. When I’m in a real world space, and I’m inside of a piece of architecture, or at least in front of or interacting with these architectures that someone designed, there’s obviously very subtle but tactful experience they’re trying to tell me right that the architect is trying to tell me something, or at least trying to interact with me. You know what I mean. And through their space in this space by. Now of course there’s technical aspects of it, like the amount of sprinkler heads and the amount of access points and things like that. Right. But still, the overall project is supposed to make me feel something as well. And that’s where I think we both, both fields will intersect it’s worth trying to give somebody an experience that they can interpret themselves, you know that, Again, we’re trying to reach all different people and interact with them, especially with the way I think cinema is becoming more and more worldly and diverse, we’re trying to reach out and interact with people. For me, you know, and film is probably I think this sounds strange to say but I think, film, and mass entertainment mass media is one of the great the last great like American exports, if that makes sense. You know, I mean, It’s still something that’s I think uniquely American blockbuster right is like kind of like, yeah, it’s a unique thing still,
like, other countries are are challenging that and changing the way cinema works and that’s great and I love it. But, like, the summer blockbuster is still something that’s, that’s very unique. But I like to talk a little bit about how you, you talked about the, the permanence of it. I mean, in a way, this is maybe this is naive right. But I filmed can be so permanent forever. You know it, it can be imprinting on people. And it’s especially with nowadays with access like we, we can be here looking at, we can be looking at these Marvel movies or completing the David Fincher his work for the next 100 years, you know, versus. Sometimes, the, the changing world, especially in some place like Los Angeles, where buildings are torn down, and new things were erected for that, which is you know, and this, this environment is actually quite common, it’s, it’s interesting when you start thinking about that right like how certain architecture can be less permanent than cinema. Even though. Literally those sets you’re talking about are worked on for a few months, shot in sometimes for three or four days, and then torn down and thrown in a dumpster, which we can talk about the environmental impact of that as well. It’s not the friendliest when it comes to renewables, etc, etc, there’s been. Luckily, a great push to make each studio make itself more and more environmentally friendly, and that’s definitely, even with my in my lifetime I’ve seen that change 100 fold, going from used to, we used to use fibreglass skins okay so let’s, let’s talk about that. We used to make brick walls right they’re not actually brick walls, they’re vacuform fibreglass that looked like brick and they were painted, but as you know fibreglass is a sort of terrible material to make to use, and its permanence is, you know, we’re talking, you know, 1000s of years, if not longer. Nowadays we are more and more using this material that it’s almost like it’s almost like a pulp to cardboard, and it’s the same, get the same effect. But obviously it’s a lot better for the environment because it composts a lot faster. So, and I’m not sure if this is like, leading to the same sort of conversation you’re having, as far as like the sort of

Vaissnavi Shukl
building materials are concerned, yeah,

Tim Croshaw
yeah. But again, how the impact of cinema and how long it lasts and stays in our consciousness. And these are the things I think about this as no one thinks about others, like this set and how long it lasts. Either way, there’s definitely an interesting intersection between those two. But going back to talking about talking about Gone Girl, and, and those particular sets. I mean that that was an interesting movie in particular because the house was so much of a character. Because, I mean it’s, it’s the typical oversized American home.
Yeah, yeah, it has no real. I say it’s a character but that home actually has no character. It’s just a large volume with vaulted ceilings and ridiculous spirals staircase. In the foyer, you know, the, the McMansion of the Midwest, you know, and how empty it is right, and how hollow it is, which was a good foil for, You know and mirror their, their relationship, right. So this is a point where we were talking about earlier how the set. This environment is hopefully reinforcing the story, and I think in that particular show that, I think worked 100% But again, it’s not going it’s of course it’s going to work because that production centre Donald Burt. Oscar winning production designer, work with David Fincher numerous projects. It’s, it’s guaranteed. There’s no failure, especially when David Fincher is involved because the man’s a very high level of execution, which I enjoy.

Vaissnavi Shukl
But, you know, it’s interesting you mentioned that the said so this pieces kind of immortalised themselves on screen through the form of, you know, a TV show or a movie, because I didn’t think about it that way and it makes so much sense when you say that because what you know I was thinking about what we could talk about and instantly I was like, well, you’re basically putting in all this effort for creating temporary spaces I mean how could you not get attached to something your design was just going to be torn down and as you said three or four days, and be that quick to it’s so,

Tim Croshaw
it’s a crazy thing to think about the amount of effort that can go into two lines of states direction, you know,

Vaissnavi Shukl
and and you know you’ve, You’ve been kind enough to put a lot of your drawings and your work on your website and you see the construction drawings and you see the kind of detailing and you could actually take those drawings and build something more permanent I wouldn’t say permanent doesn’t last for eternity. exist for definitely more than three to four days. This is, this is just my own curiosity question Do you ever get attached to your sets, and does it ever like, do you have separation anxiety when you know that it’s done it’s gonna be like torn down or is that some sort of joy in knowing that it’s now here and that it’s going to have a different life on the screen for a longer period of time.

Tim Croshaw
Yeah, we’re

Vaissnavi Shukl
getting emotional about it.

Tim Croshaw
I don’t. That’s an interesting question. I want to I want to let that, like, sit for saying it because I don’t know I think that because I know it’s so temporary, that I don’t get attached to particular locations I have feelings. I’m sorry, and particularly sets I have feelings and echoes of emotions, but they’re more tied to the process. I will always remember the process of making something, and I will look back and say I liked that process, or I would sit back and think about how that a certain process might have been more difficult than others, but I will look more towards that than the actual product. I will look at that result of how it wasn’t screen. And I also like to hear how

Vaissnavi Shukl
positively like the steam received.

Tim Croshaw
Yes, exactly and be the director or the shooting crew or the actors or the stuntman, like if it’s worked well for all those people. I know that it’s going to be good on screen because obviously if there’s no barriers to performance, and the story then. Then, those things are going to come across, and then the set becomes sort of nothing it’s unnoticeable. But, it should just be like an after you know an after taste you know it’s like you’re, you feel it, you recognise that you know where you also, you know, what is happening. And as always, I always love when you can see that that the cinematographer enjoys it because maybe they use it like framing, they might like do some interesting angles where they use the lines are the set to direct the AI that I’m, I always get a kick out of kick out of that and yeah that’s, again, I’d go back to say like, I enjoy the process, or I don’t. I enjoy the process, or I will not enjoy the process but that’s the part I focus on the most on how we got there. Yeah, so, particularly like I say I go back to saying this a lot and all the I love a lot of the designers I’ve worked for I never really, I’ll never say no to working with anyone ever again i You have unique experiences with each one. Like the times I’ve worked for Donald Byrd and David Fincher are probably high up on my list. Excellent moments. And there’s a show that’s coming out. Hopefully next year. It’s so hard to say when things are gonna come out anymore, because of how Coronavirus is just destroying the world. And it’s so silly to even worry about like cinema but these are things that we sort of come to to consider normal like being able to go to the theatre again right and see a movie seems to be a normal thing and that’s what we strive for. But there’s a movie called The tragedy of Macbeth, that I worked on. Yeah, by Ethan Coen, Director, how’s the Coen Brothers. It’s his solo project, starring Denzel Washington Francis McDermott, that even though I just worked on that is also, I haven’t seen the result yet I have no idea what’s gonna look like, but I had such a good time, and enjoyed the process immensely, the interaction with the production designer myself, directors, cinematographer directors, it was one of the best collaborative experiences I’ve had no one time. So that’s what feels mean that’s what gives me a lot of is, those moments like that. And then, I don’t want to say that any of the other projects are a slog or apathy. Sometimes there is a little bit of, you know, I can bear down. Because oftentimes, sometimes we will do many iterations of a single project and I’m not sure if that’s the same for you or not if you ever do multiple multiple versions, 100% of the same thing. It can be a bit of a bore. And that’s just, that’s the part where you have to be professional, you have to, even though you’ve maybe done something 30 times you just want to even the 14th time has to be executed with the same level as the first 100% 100%

Vaissnavi Shukl
But, I think, do things if I were to draw on, I think when you said you know, you try to create the least amount of barriers for performance, it actually shows on screen when the environment is so perfect and so said that you just almost purely focus on the choreography of things and how just acting and costume, and the said everything just seems like it’s imperfect symphony and especially while, while you’d say that you know we shouldn’t be worrying about films during COVID, actually feel differently. I feel like that’s something that’s kept everybody kind of seen and occupied up to some level when, At least the whole thing started was just everybody got a Netflix subscription and everybody was in space through the medium of that black stream, I mean, because you couldn’t step out. Whether you’re watching, you know, conquer one day, or you’re watching Fast and Furious The other day, you’re, you’re basically using that, that camera as a surrogate for the human eye and going through these spaces you know whether you watch reality shows or whatever but yeah, it’s experiencing those spaces through the medium of the screen. So I think at the end, it all makes sense but if I were to just sum it up, and you know I have one last question for you, I would love to know what’s next for you, any exciting upcoming projects talk about the Mac best one, but anything else and any advice for people who want to venture out on the path that you’ve travelled

Tim Croshaw
for sure. So, I did talk about the tragedy of Macbeth and I think that’s going to be very interesting, and shot in black and white, like I said anything going so there’s already a lot of reasons to do that I think that isn’t a 24 film. So, I’m 90% sure that’s going to be in the theatre at some point, which, again, when I say what, and thanks for saying that about what we do, it’s interesting because I think she times when you’re involved in something you don’t see maybe how unique the experiences for other people, too. And then the enjoyment of like mass media, entertainment, film as TV shows. I mean, I love different things as well like but I also will just happily sit down and watch the Great British Bake Off non stop. Lovely, for many different reasons, I’m sure, but I would also like to eat good food, you know, and go out to a restaurant again so maybe that’s a little bit of that. Let’s see what else I have another project I think actually this is the only horror movie I’ve ever done. It’s called malignant. And it’s James one of Fast and Furious, and I believe what his what his early film was The Conjuring, I think there’s a series he did. I’m getting that wrong, Sorry James one. But yeah, it’s an interesting horror movie. I that was a lot of fun to do as well. And, but I think it’s just stuck in the queue. It’s just waiting for things to open up again to Loki TV show, which again, I think, will be the third release after Winter Soldier in the Falcon. I worked on that as well. That should be very interesting. I’m not gonna say anything about that because, you know, Disney will have my head. Yeah, so, so that that was a good. Another good project, one of my very dear friends, Castra was the production intern that show. So, again, he was very delight to work for. And I should mention, Feminine malignant was another again. I worked for my friends. I’m working for my friends on LinkedIn, I was working for Jasmine Murphy, who I had worked with in the past on various projects in different roles, but this was her one of her first production design gigs. So I was very delighted that she invited me to do that with her, and others that were there. Beyond that, I, I, I can’t speak on much but I will say, obviously, black Adam is coming out in a few can’t wait years. Right. Again, it’s so hard to nail down to like the dates. Yeah, yeah, and Black Panther too as well should be coming out in a couple, a year to nose and cooler. Yes, yeah, I’m excited to be involved in those projects, you know, fun

Vaissnavi Shukl
fact, I wrote an entire book on how to resource design process. Alright, yeah, kind of just like, she, she was over at the GSD, one time to just talk about of course from an urban point of view on how she conceptualised the city of Wakanda and how it kind of checks all the boxes of what urban design should look like. So this kind of that from that economic sadboy, which is a cycle of you know she draws a lot from this architect Zaha Hadid ‘s work, Zaha Hadid laws from Russian constructivist work so just sort of the cyclic process of design and where people try to draw inspiration from and I was so fascinated for a very brief period of time I was on Twitter and I tagged her on the river that I was presenting I went to Colombia for that I presented in Bogota and just put it up on Twitter and she retweeted and I lost my head to eat that, but I love the

Tim Croshaw
phrase of good versus, she was a good person, for sure 100% And I don’t think anyone else could have done. Black Panther like she did, you know, it was. I unfortunately didn’t get to work on that, because it was coinciding the same time as the final Avengers movies. It was kind of a hard decision. But yes, she’s wonderful. And I think that she will deliver the same kind of execution that she did for that movie on this one. But yeah, she’s super awesome. Another super friendly person to reach out to. It’s interesting that you brought up the hygiene hygiene, because when I was preparing for this, I wrote down like a list of like okay, because unfortunately I have to like keep changing my, you know like, I refresh my design Rolodex, you know like and things that are going to I’m going to look for For Inspiration and I wrote down a list of things as I can make sure, so I’m not caught flat footed. But rushing structures ism and brutalism in general, is, is something that I, I love and draw upon. There’s a, I was just, I don’t know if I can even say this but there’s a Tumblr site called architecture of doom, which I think is a perfect

Vaissnavi Shukl
because I it sounds like I would love it.

Tim Croshaw
Yeah, it’s basically great architecture stills of Eastern Europe, and South American cities, which I’ve it’s, I try to think about like why are we drawn to these inspirations for otherworldly design, I think it’s because, as a western society, obviously, when we go and see things like, you know platen bows in eastern Berlin or something like that, or just some of the grand like government buildings in South America, Latin America and stuff like that. these big, broad shapes. They’re so foreign to us and so I think that must be why. Like, when we’re designing first science fiction and fantasy that there’s kind of lend themselves to that, yeah, again, that’s from an American perspective, obviously, Because they, in other countries especially would have I think a different and unique experience of viewing it, and seeing maybe shapes and buildings that they might identify with as familiar.
Yeah, but you have a local mill you presented as, you know, an other worldly environments environment so I’ve always been curious about that if anyone ever felt that way but who knows, who knows, maybe also people don’t realise maybe where the inspiration of some of these things are pulled from.

Vaissnavi Shukl
But hey, everything you hear design also becomes something in space, something of an inspiration to somebody else. So I guess the, the cycle goes on right I mean,

Tim Croshaw
I can actually tell you that I was, so I worked on inception, a long time ago, and I worked on a particular one part of it. The hospital complex. There’s a heist there, I think, you know, some, some, I can’t even remember what the, the reason they went there was but anyway so there’s a high for this hospital complex, and it’s based on a very, I think, particular building, and I don’t remember what it is so there’s going to catch me flat footed. But, so, we drew inspiration for that, based off of that particular piece of architecture. Some of my friends were the set designers primarily on that I worked actually technically on the miniature portion of that because that set was. We did it in a miniature form in a parking lot behind this visual effects studio, and then they exploded it, you know, for the practical effect, which is super cool if anyone ever wants to see that, just Google. I think it would be New Deal studios, Inception miniature. And I think those are still up online and you can see them like assemble this this massive miniature and then, you know, blow it up and then tear it all down and build it back up again and blow it up second time. But regardless, long story. I was reading an X Men comic. And it’s the new series. And in the first couple pages, was basically stills more or less of the inception complex, so there was a, we took that inspiration from that particular architect, which came into the movie which then obviously some other artists as powerful gardeners took as inspiration for his, his background for this particular complex evening. So when you say that it’s, that’s funny. I don’t ever think of it but you’re right it is true. Yeah, it’s, I want to get back one more thing, if for advice on people who want to try and be Movie Makers filmmakers whatever you want to call us, in general, is that to obviously move to a area which there is filmmaking. Yeah like wherever that is. Toronto Atlanta. Los Angeles obviously but you know you can still, there’s still movies being made in New York and Chicago and other places like that. And that, I’m sure, internationally, there are other cities as well, but my experience is here so that’s basically the best I can speak on is that you can move to LA, try and find the cheapest apartment you can, which is difficult, which means you’re going to maybe live with five other people, and become a PA and an art department, and it might be a little. It might feel like a lateral move or a step down at first but it’s going to be great, you’re going to get a lot of experiences you’re going to see how the process works. You’re going to meet people, you’re going to impress people. And that’s going to be the basis of, you know, your sort of social network, it’s going to help you in your career. It’s not. It’s not easy for everybody because the time period can just sort of, you know, be challenging, you might see your years might get an opportunity before you do. But, perseverance, if you can, is, is key. Key, just hold out and reach out to us. People, Google email them. I bet you, most of them are going to return your phone call probably within, within a couple of days.

Vaissnavi Shukl
That’s a wonderful note to end this on I think perseverance is always the key but I want to sign to so much for being here today. This has been an incredible conversation and one that I wanted to send so long so thank you so much for taking the time to really long conversation, most of the episodes are pretty short but not a minute has been one where my jaw hasn’t been like dropped and I was like, oh my God say, I hope you whatever you want and not caring, you know, but I’m, you know, as you said barriers to performance so we’ve minimised those and now I’m sure this will also reflect in the way somebody will experience our conversation so thank you so much for being so honest and so candid and having a good read to your fears and your community for again being so humble and open. Thank you so much.

Tim Croshaw
My pleasure, thank you.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Thank you so much.

Tim Croshaw
No problem. I am sorry if I got to.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.