Tag Archives: Aaron Hunter

Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film – capsule

C. S. Tashiro’s Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film isn’t really about production design – at least not like some of the other texts I’ve reviewed here. While the term “production design” clearly features in the title, and the monograph … Continue reading

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Field Day Podcast: Polly Platt interview

At the end of July 2020, the kind folks at the Field Day podcast (specifically, Cormac Deane) invited to me to chat about my research and writing on Polly Platt. The conversation, which stretches just over an hour, ranged from … Continue reading

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Video Essay: Polly Platt – Designing the ’80s

Polly Platt is best known for two phases in her long Hollywood career. First, for her work as a production designer on some of the great films of the New Hollywood era (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, The … Continue reading

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Mise-en-Scène: Film Style and Interpretation – capsule review

Mise-en-scène can be a thorny critical area for students and scholars of production design. Nearly seventy years after its deployment by the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma, the term still carries the baggage of auteurism. Much of the scholarly writing on … Continue reading

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Art Direction & Production Design – capsule review

Art Direction & Production Design (I.B. Tauris 2015), edited by Lucy Fischer, is a must-read for anybody – scholar or otherwise – who hopes to deepen their understanding of how film design has grown and developed from the earliest days of … Continue reading

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Production Design: Architects of the Screen – capsule review

Jane Barnwell’s Production Design: Architects of the Screen was published by Wallflower in 2004, and it’s a fantastically handy guide for anybody who knows a bit about production design but is ready for a more thorough discussion of the process. Barnwell is … Continue reading

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Production Design Texts: Introduction

As any scholar who writes about production design will tell you, film studies has not traditionally been very enthusiastic in its engagement with the topic of who actually creates the practical images we see on screen – or how they … Continue reading

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Video Essay: “Pray for Mama”

“Pray for Mama”: Circumvented Trauma in Paper Moon Paper Moon (The Directors Company/Paramount 1973) is a lovely little film. Set in the Depression-era Midwest, it features charming performances by Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Khan, John Hillerman, and nine-year-old Tatum O’Neal (Ryan’s … Continue reading

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Video Essay: Polly Platt – Authorship by Design

As I’ve discussed in detail in earlier blog posts, Polly Platt was a key Hollywood figure for decades. She’s mainly remembered for her production design on a variety of films, in both credited and uncredited roles, between 1968-1987. But she … Continue reading

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Remembering Tom Petty

“Rock & roll songs are just cheap shit – nothing deeper than that.” – Tom Petty As anybody reading this knows by now, Tom Petty died this week, on Monday, October 2. I’ve been a pretty big fan of Petty’s … Continue reading

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