Curate Yourself - Adam Stockhausen

      As an aspiring production designer, I look at a lot of different work by production designers to learn and be inspired by. Production design is something that heavily influences a film and easily creates the mood of the scene or the entire production. For this reason, I chose to curate work by Adam Stockhausen, a production designer who has worked for Wes Anderson, among others. Anderson's film are known for their storybook style and beautiful simple designs, something I hope to be able to achieve later on. To me, Stockhausen beautifully brings Anderson's vision for the film to life. So for this curation I want to focus on Stockhausen's work for Wes Anderson. As for most other topics, I think looking at photos of work and watching interviews with the designer is the best way to learn about them and how they design these sets, so I have chosen different photos of scenes and an interview to be able to learn more about Adam Stockhausen.



                                                                Grand Budapest Hotel











On this film, a lot of pastel and monochromatic colors were used. The exterior of the hotel, a constructed model, is different shades of light, pastel pink, and a little bit of blue. As seen in the photo above, the surrounding landscape also incorporates shades of pink, while also bringing in orange in the skyline. This is repeated in the cupcake store. The interior of the hotel has different colors like red, yellow and orange, but it still continues that warm and monochromatic color scheme seen in the beginning of the film. From a production design standpoint, I think this was difficult to achieve a storybook look while also incorporating real aspects from that time period. To convert an abandoned shopping mall into a hotel just adds to that task, but I think Stockhausen and his team did a great job with it and this is seen by the audience reaction to the design as well.

                                                                Moonrise Kingdom








In Moonrise Kingdom, the color palette is once again kept to toned down bright colors like pink, yellow, orange, red and green. In the photo above, the way these colors come together is really well seen, along with the accented colors like the bright blue back she's holding. However, these colors are complimented by neutral colors and plaid patterns, different from GBH. When I saw this movie I noticed how much I felt like I was actually watching a story that I might have read when I was little. A lot of films today are very realistic and have locations that feels common and well known. In this film, Stockhausen created environments that feel like they came out of a storybook and are very nostalgic. This is important because it distinguishes the style not only of the director, but also of the designer. And I personally think more films should be made this way. 
Here is a link to a short video where he talks about working with Wes Anderson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aBPWhifgW0 

Here is a link to the BTS for Grand Budapest Hotel, a great resource I think to see how everything works together in a film like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QFxosolo88

And here is a link to a video talking about Moonrise Kingdom and it's storybook style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_5lCnwDEo4

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