by Josefine Lindner

1) TO grouse

About bed linen, image design and the best possible taste

Let's start with a (not so) fun fact: Every year at the Cannes Film Festival, in addition to the prestigious prizes for directing, producing and acting, awards are also presented for cinematography, best sound and the so-called Palm Dog Award. For the most convincing dog role. If it wasn't so symptomatic, I would find that quite funny. But when you consider that at the vast majority of film festivals no prizes are awarded for any of the film's design departments, i.e. no trophy for production design, no award for make-up and no award for costume design, I'm rather appalled: Really? The best dog role?

There is a gap in the general view of films. A kind of "blind spot" opens up when it comes to the perception of film design. The viewer might sees on the screen (for example): People sitting around a table, perhaps in a kitchen. They see: These figures are dressed in some way. These people look a certain way.  But this realisation is incidental. It even seems banal in the context of a filmic work that is about far more important and artistic things than identifying individual characters wearing certain costumes in specific rooms. Trivial, even if we are dealing with hundreds of characters in hundreds of scenes in hundreds of locations that we encounter in the course of a film and from which our understanding of its story is constituted piece by piece.

No Godard, no Eisenstein, no Arnheim has ever written about questions of cinematic design in the context of the total work of art that is film. Even in contemporary works of film theory, the interested reader has to browse for a long time to get to passages that half-heartedly "lose" one or two pages to film design or costumes. Of course, there are standard works (mostly written by colleagues for colleagues). But I wonder what causes such special treatment in the context of general considerations about films?

The assumed insignificance of costume, make-up and set design is also reflected in the disinterest of contemporary critics in mentioning these trades when discussing new film releases. This is expressed in the lack of mention of colleagues by name as part of the creative body of films, whether in film magazines, library catalogues, streaming services, (online) encyclopedias like Wikipedia or even on the websites of public television stations. The gap is widened by the ignorance of the general public, who are rarely aware of the challenges and the effort involved in creating images for feature film productions. In the face of such a void, how could this public possibly develop an awareness of it?

But the gap is also revealed in the comments of colleagues - for example, in negotiation discussions with astute colleagues, where I (as a production designer) was more than once fobbed off with the varying speed and ability to pick out bed linen when it came to potential overtime pay. I don't know how time-consuming the selection of pretty bed linen may be for colleagues in the private sector? All I know is that carefully selected bed linen for film sets is rarely the cause of overtime for a production design team. Dominik Graf unintentionally gave expression to this widespread attitude when he degraded the rest of the film team around the director and screenwriters to "supporter[s]" and "people with the best possible taste" in the course of the Contract 18 debate [1] . Even if this quote seems somewhat out of context, it represents a rather common attitude among colleagues.

I wonder, how something that is so obvious to us when we watch films can be seen as so secondary? How does this disparity come about between the (significant) contribution that production, costume and hair & make-up designers make to the film through their work and the very subtle resonance of this in the collective memory of others when it comes to watching and discussing films?

I have an immense need to free the whole matter of film design from thoughts of purely decorative stuff. Production, costume and make-up designers are not just "people with the best possible taste". This is by no means about simple decoration and decorative accessories. And certainly not at all about pretty bed linen!

1 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/kontrakt-18-zweisamkeit-bis-zur-schmerzgrenze-1.4076534 (Last access: 17.01.24)

2) LANGUAGE

Is there, we ask, some secret language which we feel and see, but never speak, and, if so, could this be made visible to the eye?

VIRGINIA WOOLF

The film image fades, so how could it be made to leave a lasting impression?

In his analysis The Structure of Film Language, Jean Marie Peters examines the parallels between (spoken) language and film. He notes that, like words, film images are signs - a form of abstraction that are able to stand for something other than themselves. They are capable of expressing thoughts, feelings or desires and are thus part of a language through which filmmakers can communicate with their audience about life.

If the aim of the film image is to express feelings and thoughts, then this is the challenge of film, to be able to formulate something that is difficult or impossible to grasp with words. Otherwise we could limit ourselves to the written or spoken word when telling stories. Then film would be obsolete. 

"All this, which is accessible to words, and to words alone, the cinema must avoid", writes Virginia Woolf in her wonderful essay The Movies and Reality [2]. This poses a great difficulty, as Rudolf Arnheim already recognised: Where writers need only a few words to put readers in a certain situation, the director is dependent on the appearance of the actors or the explicit action. In Film as Art, he remarks: "A sentence as simple as: »She lived godforsaken alone in her little house« is extremely difficult to express on film because it does not represent a momentary process but a permanent state (...)." [ARNHEIM: 167]

I disagree with Arnheim and claim that the set, costume and make-up design - in co-operation with the camera - are very well able to convey exactly THAT by means of a few images or a targeted camera pan: A permanent state, or the inner state of a character; the span of an entire life; a deeply uncomfortable feeling; the absence of happiness and the like. From a production design point of view, we can think of, for example:

FIGHT CLUB (1999) - The uniformed IKEA flat of the nameless main protagonist: A  projection of that joyless, unhappy life, orientated solely on consumption, which the narrator tries to blow up into its small atomic parts; Or:

DOGDAYS (2001) - The lifeless, empty rooms of a detached house, whose bare surfaces reflect the misery of a traumatised family and from which all memories of a former shared happiness must pearl off; Or:

SE7EN (1995) - The 'Library of Cruelty': The room in which the serial killer keeps the meticulously kept records of his atrocities and the full extent of his perverse work is revealed; Or:

L'ATALANTE (1934) - The cabin of the wilful sailor Père Jules: the image of an entire life at sea, coagulated into a chamber.

So, how can films communicate without words? How do wishes, thoughts, states and feelings find their way into the film image? And what does this emotional expressiveness of a film have to do with its design?

[2] https://newrepublic.com/article/120389/movies-reality (Last access: 04.07.2024)

3) THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE REGULATED ILLUSION

One is much more inclined to believe in the fiction of film than in that of a theatre play, claims Christian Metz in a text Zum Realitätseindruck im Kino. Film is able to do this because it conveys a credible reproduction of what the world presents to us. According to Metz, film knows how to address its audience in the convincing tone of the evidence of "it is so".

In How cues on the screen prompt emotions in the mind, Keith Oatley explains how the images and sounds of a film generate emotions in the audience. Namely, by acting as cues or triggers that activate and at the same time nourish certain preconceived schemes and ways of thinking in our consciousness. In view of this world and its mechanisms, people construct individual mental models about the people and things they encounter and experience. In doing so, they use so-called scripts and schemes in order to understand how the world (and its mechanisms) works and thus to be able to categorise it in the reality of their lives [OATLEY: 269].

Schemes are individually developed mental structures of cognition and understanding about how the world works or is supposed to work.
Scripts, in turn, are schemes that incorporate an idea of certain processes and states. As an illustrative example, Oatley describes a visit to a restaurant, the process of which is divided into various stages that are probably familiar to the majority of people: Going to the restaurant - ordering, getting and eating the food, paying afterwards, etc.

Scripts and schemes are, so to speak, universally valid and yet individually accessible mental projections of how the world should be. By transferring these scripts and schemes to what is presented to us on the screen, we can decipher what we see. Our ideas of the world overlap with film narratives in such a way that they are all fictionally constructed simulations of the real. We can develop and act out emotions within the framework of these regulated illusions.

Keith Oatley describes different ways in which images and sounds involve the audience. This works primarily by means of the audience's identification with what is shown (i.e. with the respective simulation of the real propagated by the film), which can evoke emotional reactions such as empathy, sympathy or even rejection.

Whether the illusion of a film can unfold effectively depends on the choice of all the means that filmmakers choose to provide the information that the audience needs to be able to interpret a work for themselves in a coherent way.

4) THE DAWN OF THE REAL

With this quote [BAZIN:145], we return to production, make-up and costume design. The fundamental task of these trades is to provide the audience with a setting that is as appropriate to the film as possible, as to say credible. Here, credibility is meant in the sense of the film's respective narrative and not credibility in the sense of non-film reality. Through their work, set, costume and make-up designers try to create "the unfolding and distraction of the [best possible] appearance", to use the words of French philosopher Jaques Rancière. To the extent that the topography of the shown spaces appears coherent to the viewer, the sets, makeup and costumes are able to carry the semantic field of a film. Through our work, we embed those cues that allow the audience to run their mental projections of how the world should be. This evokes understanding (or rejection), identification with what we see, an emotional connection to the world of the film we are watching.

SPACE EXCURSIONS

This connection between the coherence of the design and the credibility of the narrative can be illustrated using the example of a film setting that exists in many variations, namely that of a space station.

Only a small proportion of the general film audience is likely to have ever seen a real space station by their own eye. The general knowledge about the appearance and everyday handling of such stations is limited to lore, i.e. descriptions and illustrations from literature and news reports [3]. At the same time, the space station is a frequently shown setting in films, and its designs in film history provides several examples of pioneering production design. A publication by the American Institute of Aeronautics, Science Fiction Film as Design Scenario Exercise for Psychological Habitability: Production Designs 1955-2009, deals with the potential of production design concepts in science fiction films with regard to the development of real-life scenarios for future, manned long-term space missions.

The study of so-called habitability designs is a field of modern space research. It is dedicated to the hypothetically assumed psychological challenges faced by future crews on long-term space missions. In the future, the success of such space endeavours will therefore depend not only on the psychological preparation of the participants, but also on the development of a habitable, i.e. liveable and psychologically bearable environment during such long-term missions [PELDSZUS, DALKE, WELCH: 5]. The focus of the habitability design is on the physiognomy of everyday life, for example: Private accommodation, the quality of nourishment, space for interaction and leisure activities of crew members, interior design | decor and windows [4]. 

Three out of a total of thirty examples analysed in the study with regard to their production design are: MOON (2009), SOLARIS (1971) and 2001: A SPACE ODYSEE (1968). In all three examples, the state of a long-term space mission is conveyed in different ways through the design. It is currently impossible for us, the audience, to know what credible parameters of a convincing, i.e. psychologically bearable, long-duration journey are. Since such an endeavour has never been undertaken. Also, the designs shown in the mentioned films are very different from the actual reality on a real space station.

[3] So far existing space stations: twelve, ten of which were manned; SOURCE: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumstation

[4] „Psycho-environmental design recommendations specifically include countermeasures to address social and sensory monotony and boredom through habitability components such as interior design, food, special occasions, personalisation and leisure applications" (quoted after Suedfeld & Steel, 2000 in: PELDSZUS, DALKE, WELCH)

↑ The audience cannot possibly know what the credible parameters of a psychologically bearable long-distance journey are. Since such an endeavour has never been undertaken. The designs shown in films are very different from the actual reality on a real space station (cf. collage of film stills and photo from the MIR space station).

Instead of looking to the stars, a completely earthly example could also be cited. Namely the (set) design in films that deal with long-term stays in prisons or other types of dungeons: Without the audience having to have "done time" themselves, it will nevertheless - in the sense of the ability to anticipate cinematic reality described above - grasp the pacing up and down on two square metres of cell floor; the staring at excrement-stained walls; the agonising longing for a view into the distance from a tiny, barred window (HUNGER, 2008). Or it understands the absolute antithesis of this - abstraction (THE DEVILS, 1971) or the prison as a colourful parody, place of longing and place to be (I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS, 2009).

As trivial as it may sound that the design has to reflect the narrative of a film, the way in which it does so is not self-evident. The room of the sisters locked up there for weeks in THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999) in no way resembles the room in which the protagonist Oh Dae-Su is held captive for years in OLDBOY (2003). And yet both sets convey a certainty that people were locked up here in a confined space for a long period of time.

André Bazin writes about the impression of reality in the film:

"The same event, the same objects are subject to different forms of representation. Each of them omits some characteristics, preserves others by which we recognise the object on the screen, each of them makes more or less strong abstractions for didactic or aesthetic purposes, which do not leave the original as a whole. At the end of this inevitable [...] process, the original reality is replaced by an illusion of reality". [BAZIN: 142]

All the countless cinematic illusions | simulations of reality seem to sink into us, apparently without leaving any concrete awareness of their details. The perceptual range of make-up, costume and set design seems to be very limited and linked to very unconscious processes. Sometimes it may happen that an indefinable feeling arises in the audience that something in the film image cannot be "right" if they do not perceive the world of a film work as coherent. For example, when a simple police inspector in a crime scene lives surrounded by exquisite furniture and paintings on a 300 square metre loft floor. The qualities of good film design seem to be so inconspicuous, that they are only recognised in extreme cases (both positive and negative).

So how can set design | costume design | make-up design be understood on the level of such an "emotional" perception as something tangible that needs to be recognised by others?

5) THE COMPLETENESS OF THINGS

"A representation that contains too few references to reality does not carry
sufficient symptoms for fiction to take shape [...] "

CHRISTIAN METZ

Works of art awaken the human desire for structure at the same time as they feed it, write Bordwell and Thompson in Film Art – An Introduction. By giving form to their work (designing it, I say), artists create patterns through which recipients can enjoy an experience what is both structured and intended by the artist. Basically, film, like all the arts, is about evoking a sense of comprehensibility [5]. "[T]he sense of everything is there" - this is how the two authors describe the viewer's perception of a coherent work. It is a perceived completeness of things. This unintentionally describes the essential characteristic or fate of the aforementioned trades of film design, whose contribution is usually felt but rarely actually perceived.

So let's return to the situation mentioned at the beginning. I claimed that the viewer could very well perceive in any given scene that, for example, several people had gathered around a table in a kitchen and that these people were dressed or looked "some way". However, in the context of a cinematic work and its narration, this realisation must appear quite banal and worthless.

However, this hypothetical and seemingly casual scene is a very good example to explain the full extent of information that "overcomes" us thanks to the set, make-up and costume design when we watch a film. Let's try to imagine such a film scene in a long shot: People are sitting around a table eating together.

[5] Even in works that attempt to evade comprehensibility, it is precisely this striving, or rather this attitude of refusal, that must be recognised in order not to expose these works to complete rejection as victims.

Without the camera moving; without even a piece of dialogue or music playing: What do we see? 

The time:

Not only the time of day (dinner, breakfast, ect.), but also the time of year (costume), and the time in which the film is set (a historical, contemporary, future or even timeless film?) Is someone sitting there in a suit or pyjamas? Smoothly coiffed or dishevelled?

The socio-cultural setting:

The milieu and origin of the group. Is it a family, a random group, a social community? Living conditions, clothing (silk or raw wool?), degree of (un)grooming and the given space provide information about wealth and status. Are we set in a one-room flat with a multi-purpose layout, a wooden hut or in a spacious kitchen with a chrome-plated extractor bonnet? Are people sitting at a table or kneeling around a campfire, in the centre of a tent or on plastic stools outside, or are they floating in space? Is there rice or muesli, fast food or space food from "Ziploc bags"? Are they eating with chopsticks, knives and forks or hands (clean or covered in dirt)? Are we in Soweto, Hong Kong, Berlin or the Siberian tundra? A casual glance out of the window (are there any windows at all?) may reveal endless expanses or a narrow backyard. Are there insignia of a certain religious denomination in the corner of the room, or is the room even paved with them?  

The psychological state:

Is the place neglected, functional or lovingly furnished? Is it an office, a nest or a prison? Is the family | group intact or dysfunctional - for example, are there (children's) pictures or photos on the wall and on the fridge? (Is there even a fridge?!)

The state of the moment:

Based on the decoration, props, costume and make-up, the respective situation becomes clear. Is it an everyday meal or are we observing a special moment? An opulent feast, a birthday party or a last supper? Is there enough to eat or are they sharing a miniscule meal?

6 ) INCONSPICUOUS QUALITIES

To see what is under one's own nose requires constant effort.

George Orwell [6]

These are just a few representative examples of information that is (or can be) conveyed via hair, makeup, costume and set design. They are all things that we see, that situate the respective film, but which are not directly negotiated. Because in the film it's rarely said: "Oh, this is a beautiful Japanese kitchen we're sitting in here!" Or: "This is quite a watery soup for lunch, I wonder if we'll get enough to eat?"

Both in the context of the film and in the context of its reception, this information is normal and self-evident. It is extremely incidental information, the inconspicuous qualities of the set design. The restrained visuality of the costume design. The subtle language of well-realised hair and make-up design. Because viewers are used to being provided with this information. They are "used to the scenery", so to speak, from the daily perceptual processes of their own lives.

In real life, we are not constantly aware of what the things around us signify. Just as the individual image of the film can only be read in its sequence, the information that is conveyed to the audience via the scenic space and through the costume and make-up design is often not "delivered" in just a single shot. This information is literally "foisted" on the viewer in its complexity over the duration of the entire film.

BATHROOM AND KITCHEN WORLDS | ABOUT THE MUM

It is also interesting to note the fact, which at first glance seems very unimportant, that in the vast majority of cases the audience immediately realises what kind of locations are involved in the spaces shown; the setting of a kitchen, for example.

In the reality of a film, as in the reality of real life, there are prototypical arrangements of things in spaces that we are able to interpret: We KNOW that certain rooms are (ment to be read as) kitchens or churches, hospital rooms, police stations or living rooms. We can clearly interpret the difference between bathrooms and classrooms.

This reminds us of the aforementioned models of this world, which our mind creates on the basis of prefabricated thought patterns (schemes & scripts) in order to be able to cope with life at all.

[6] Requoted: EVA ILLOUZ: 11

"The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the pyramids - these are optical "knowledge" that the film man assumes everyone has," writes Rudolf Arnheim in Film as Art [ARNHEIM: 166]. I assume that Arnheim was also referring to the film woman. Our reservoir of "optical knowledge" enables us not only to interpret cinematic spaces, but also to master our lives and everyday life. 

"Our everyday thinking," Arnheim also writes, "and our everyday language are designed to organise the things of the world under generic terms, to make them appear not as unique but as individual cases of certain genres, because this is the only way to bring the order into the world that is necessary for us to find our way around it; only in this way is it possible to assign generally understandable, valid names to individual things." (ARNHEIM: 169f)

We know, or at least suspect, what such spaces (or people) should look like in order to be able to identify them as such in their specific function for a film.

This is a particularly amusing moment in TEXAS - DOC SNYDER HÄLT DIE WELT IN ATEM (1993): Doc Snyder returns home after years of vagabonding through the world, to mummy, in a remote western cabin in the woods. Not only is "mum" a strongly built guy with a slipped mini dress. But "mum" also conjures up some indefinable cinder for dinner in a neat 60s fitted kitchen. The comedy of this scene stems from our knowledge of what can't be "right". Just as it is absurd that "mummy" looks like a corpulent man in his prime, we know that it is SO out of place: such a 60s kitchen console in a worn-out western cottage in the middle of nowhere. The visual codes of the norm are broken here, but in such a way that they remain legible. "Mummy" stands in a 60s fitted kitchen and cooks - physically deranged, to be sure - but still in the image of a clear cliché. Just "as it should be".

It is said that the director Cecil B. DeMille invented the modern bathroom in his films [7].

"At the time they were made, these bathroom fantasies were far more effective than they are now, because the sanitary facilities of the average city flat were very spartan and the rural population had neither running water nor toilets. What the audience saw on the screen were images from another world. DeMille gives an impression of what was actually meant by "dream factory". [8]

Apart from the fact that it was probably DeMille's set designers who invented the modern bathroom, it is clear from this how strongly the "Hollywood dream factory principle" also functioned through its design. All the lavishly furnished sets, opulent studio buildings and lavishly designed exteriors served as a projection screen for an audience that may not have had running water at home, but was very much in a position to indulge in thoughts about the advantages of a luxury bathroom.

[7] From the yearbook of the SFK 2001 according to Süddeutsche Zeitung | Das Kino | 09.02.1991
[8] https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Aber-bitte-mit-Orgie-3388179.html?seite=all (Last access: 17.01.24)

7) A RESERVOIR OF OPTICAL terms

Keith Oatley, mentioned earlier, explains that our visual perception is constituted around a patch of sharp vision about one Euro in size (OATLEY: 272). When you consider the speed of film images and the increasing editing frequency in contemporary cinema, it is a wonder that we perceive anything at all while watching films.

"[A] reservoir of fixed "optical terms" is an important treasure for the film artist, enabling him to say many things in a very abbreviated, very pictorial form," says Rudolf Arnheim [ARNHEIM: 169f]. 

8) CURATED PATHS INTO THE UNKNOWN

"Production design may, will, must mean. It contributes significantly to making the world of a film appear "as if snow-covered by existence" (Ilse Aichinger)." 

PETER KÖRTE [8]

Production design. Costume design. Make-up design. All three trades are highly communicative elements of the film. As different as their design variations may be, no matter how restrained or offensive they may display their expressiveness, they always have one thing in common: they are always transmitters of embedded genre and cultural characteristics. In a fort, the scenery whispers the context of the film into the audience's subconscious. Thanks to this informal activity, they are able to drive the narrative of a film forward in a significant way. By underpinning the film's credibility. They are an essential part of the narrative.

Not all "informants" are equally talented: According to the abundance and variance in which films come along, not all works offer the same level of design quality, perception and identification.

However, all the visual codes embedded in the design not only serve as orientation in the film space, but also provide the audience with socio-cultural information. They show the direction into which familiar or unfamiliar spheres the viewing of a work can lead. Are we confronted with familiar things - which usually cause us to look beyond the essentials - or does a new world of some kind open up that points us geographically, ethnologically, sociologically or fantastically into the unknown? Be it a yurt somewhere in the interior of Mongolia (TUYAS WEDDING, 2006), a dystopian future (BLADE RUNNER, 1982), a present costumed as an abstract, fragmented, futuristic past (POOR THINGS, 2024), or the streets of Berlin Wedding (KROKO, 2003).

At the same time, production, costume and make-up design teams create films from a very specific context. The subjective point of view of ALL artists creatively involved in the film flows into the work and thus creates the (supposedly) objective reality of the respective work. "Each image therefore not only shows a piece of reality, but also a point of view," writes Belá Balázs [BALÁZS: 77]. They are points of view in the midst of an immeasurable maze of interwoven socio-cultural codes.

This standpoint is the home of the intention of a work. The intention blows through the artwork - like a snowstorm - in which everyone has to find their own way and fight for their own views.

The artist's intention collides with the audience's ability to read the signs implemented in the work, because art is only possible if the existing forms of a particular system are established and known and are therefore available for the artist to play with and vary. The legibility of a work of art is always dependent on the audience's ability to read it. Without the embedded socio-cultural ciphers of set designs, without the communicability of the costume design, without the signs of a convincing make-up, films are arbitrary in the simplest case and unreadable for the audience in the most tragic case.

[8] Production Design + Film: 9

9) Neurotransmitters

Let's try to summarise what we have said so far. Film images are forms of intellectual exchange. They communicate with their recipients about life, as signs of a language with which filmmakers try to get in contact with their audience. By evoking universal, mental projections in the viewer about how the world should (not) be, film images involve the audience emotionally and the events on the screen become comprehensible. This is only possible if the viewer perceives the illusion of the world shown in the film as credible and consistent. The inner-film reality is constituted solely by the audience's perception of the completeness of things, which is conveyed to them by the (mostly) inconspicuous qualities of scenery, hair, makeup and costume design. All three constantly provide the audience with information that is fed from a reservoir of optical terms that are available to us humans for orientation in life. This enables the audience to locate themselves in the image in a fraction of a second and decipher what they are seeing, despite the fast pace of a passing film frame. Production design, costume design, hair and make-up design are thus neurotransmitters of the film's inner persuasive power, the breeding ground of a credible narrative and at the same time means of expressing a creative point of view, which must be found and defined anew in the context of each individual film work. Finding and shaping an individually convincing, creative point of view rarely has anything to do with pretty bed linen, but rather with hard, precise work.

SUPPLEMENT

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the border collie "Messi" on his well-deserved Palm Dog Award for his role as "Snoop" in ANATOMY OF A CASE (2023).