Spotlight Production Design

Although it may not seem like it, the production design by Art Director Stephen H Carter of Spotlight was beautifully thought out.

Put simply it was the story and its telling that was important; the design needed to support that by disappearing into the background. It was done so well.

The tones of the entire movie were kept the same throughout. Colours were muted in both costumes and sets, and sometimes one blended into another. When Mark Ruffalo's, Mike Rezendes, meets Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) early on in the film, his rumpled shirt almost matches his surroundings.

Of note was a scene with a choir in a church...

Taken from a still of the trailer

Everything has been thought about here. Red is such a strong colour but it is handled beautifully. The curtains and flowers are deep shades of the colour, while the children in the choir and even a high number of the congregation are wearing burgundies. Everything has been done to avoid distracting the eye. No colour jarred throughout the whole film. Perfect.

On a side note, Stanley Tucci's wig was superb. It was so well done that you could even see where touches of his scalp seemed to peep through in what was slightly thinning hair. Brilliant.

The Big Short

Visually, The Big Short drove me nuts. The costumes where fine, the sets were fine, but the wigs and hair!!! Good grief, what was going on there?

The condition of Christian Bale's hair was explained away because his character (Michael Burry) cut his own; OK, fair enough, but it was so obviously a wig. This was a man who cared little about his appearance, and yet his hair never grew, it never changed, and it never got overly long before he hacked at it with nail scissors or whatever was to hand.

Steve Carrell for some reason had streaks. I can't imagine Mark Baum, a man who wore cheap looking checked blue suits and had little patience for anything, sitting in a hairdressers enduring the process of having highlights put in.

Finally, and worst of all was Ryan Gosling. His hair colour was so obviously out of a bottle, and done minutes before filming started. You could almost see the staining on his hairline and scalp.

Although there were a number of moral questions I felt the film raised (and they are not for here), I enjoyed the film; but visually, I was tormented by hair! On the other hand, Brad Pitt's do was just right, untouched and left natural, just as his character, Ben Rickert, would have left it.