1 00:00:09,301 --> 00:00:13,295 [del Toro] Nightmare Alley is a movie that celebrates cinematic style, 2 00:00:13,388 --> 00:00:16,972 and we wanted it to feel real. It was a monumental endeavor. 3 00:00:17,059 --> 00:00:19,221 [Deverell] The first thing Guillermo said is, 4 00:00:19,311 --> 00:00:21,018 "We are not making a film-noir film." 5 00:00:21,104 --> 00:00:24,438 We are doing a contemporary version of that, 6 00:00:24,525 --> 00:00:28,484 a Guillermo del Toro version of that, which has its own visual range. 7 00:00:28,570 --> 00:00:30,527 [del Toro] And action! 8 00:00:32,074 --> 00:00:36,068 Every Guillermo set that I've worked on is very baroque, 9 00:00:36,161 --> 00:00:39,028 because his worlds are very gothic. 10 00:00:39,122 --> 00:00:41,238 You know, they're like made-up worlds. 11 00:00:41,333 --> 00:00:45,292 Worlds of fairies and witches and vampires and stuff. 12 00:00:45,379 --> 00:00:48,337 This one is very grounded in reality. 13 00:00:49,383 --> 00:00:51,875 For him as a filmmaker, it's a new vision for him, 14 00:00:51,969 --> 00:00:54,051 a more mature vision of the world. 15 00:00:54,137 --> 00:00:57,755 I think he's just exploring some different parts of his psyche 16 00:00:57,849 --> 00:00:59,931 with us as his audience. 17 00:01:00,018 --> 00:01:03,352 [del Toro] We're trying to get some of the cues of the movie 18 00:01:03,438 --> 00:01:05,520 from American realism. 19 00:01:05,607 --> 00:01:08,975 The idea of modern America 20 00:01:09,069 --> 00:01:13,404 that tries to reconcile the pastoral origins of the country 21 00:01:13,490 --> 00:01:16,573 with urban and modern living. 22 00:01:16,660 --> 00:01:19,527 We went into researching a lot. 23 00:01:20,330 --> 00:01:22,446 [Deverell] The research on this was very much twofold, 24 00:01:22,541 --> 00:01:24,782 because there's two very different looks in the movie. 25 00:01:24,876 --> 00:01:28,039 There's the carnival of the late 1930s, 26 00:01:28,130 --> 00:01:33,045 and there's the whole Art Deco realm of Buffalo in the early '40s, 27 00:01:33,135 --> 00:01:35,877 which is glitzy and glamorous and a very different look. 28 00:01:40,475 --> 00:01:43,593 [del Toro] Tamara had so many sets that looked real 29 00:01:43,687 --> 00:01:47,521 but were constructed. Uh, some of them enormous. 30 00:01:48,734 --> 00:01:53,524 [Dafoe] The carnival was built outside of Toronto at a fairground. 31 00:01:53,614 --> 00:01:54,820 They just built it. 32 00:01:54,906 --> 00:01:58,570 You'd go there, and when you'd shoot at night, it was so beautiful. 33 00:01:58,660 --> 00:02:01,948 With the extras and period costumes, you know, it was fantastic. 34 00:02:02,497 --> 00:02:06,661 One of the decisions was, let's build a carnival on location. 35 00:02:06,752 --> 00:02:10,290 So we can be affected by the wetness, by the wind. 36 00:02:10,380 --> 00:02:13,293 When you are inside a tent, and you're outside 37 00:02:13,383 --> 00:02:16,375 the tent breathes like a giant lung. 38 00:02:17,054 --> 00:02:20,342 If you build it on stage, it becomes like a cartoon. 39 00:02:22,059 --> 00:02:24,721 We rigged the earth underneath the carnival 40 00:02:24,811 --> 00:02:28,349 with thousands of feet of line 41 00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:31,273 that steamed through the ground, 42 00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:34,148 so the atmosphere would have steam all the time. 43 00:02:34,237 --> 00:02:38,982 We always kept it muddy, uh, with hay, with texture. 44 00:02:41,119 --> 00:02:42,655 We went after every detail. 45 00:02:45,165 --> 00:02:47,873 [Deverell] We had a lot of moving parts. We have a lot of banners. 46 00:02:47,959 --> 00:02:50,667 Fantastic designer Andy Tsang, who's basically done 47 00:02:50,754 --> 00:02:52,540 all the banners you see in the carnival. 48 00:02:52,631 --> 00:02:56,465 The banners, to me, tell the story very much so in terms of the colors. 49 00:02:56,551 --> 00:02:58,758 [del Toro] In the carnival, you have all these colors. 50 00:02:58,845 --> 00:03:01,883 You have really beautiful pale blues, 51 00:03:01,973 --> 00:03:05,887 reds, golds, every color. 52 00:03:07,729 --> 00:03:10,517 [Deverell] It's one area that we just used all the colors 53 00:03:10,607 --> 00:03:11,642 for our main carnival. 54 00:03:11,733 --> 00:03:14,441 Like, we just kind of exploded with color, 55 00:03:14,528 --> 00:03:16,064 and then aged everything down 56 00:03:16,154 --> 00:03:19,567 so it had this del Toro kind of feel to it. 57 00:03:28,166 --> 00:03:30,908 [del Toro] The fun house... Actually, what we wanted 58 00:03:31,002 --> 00:03:36,338 was to create a fun house that was about religion. 59 00:03:36,425 --> 00:03:42,171 So, hell and sin and salvation were that dynamic. 60 00:03:42,848 --> 00:03:44,714 The barrel is of course real. 61 00:03:44,808 --> 00:03:49,848 The eye opening was a real eye on carnivals. 62 00:03:49,938 --> 00:03:52,851 The devil mouth, not so much. 63 00:03:52,941 --> 00:03:57,856 But I really wanted this idea of transcending through purgatory, 64 00:03:57,946 --> 00:03:59,732 and the mirrors and all that. 65 00:04:03,160 --> 00:04:04,525 [Perlman] The set is magnificent, 66 00:04:04,619 --> 00:04:06,485 where there's just enough glamour and glitz 67 00:04:06,580 --> 00:04:10,619 to kind of, like, get the rubes to kind of throw down their dime. 68 00:04:10,709 --> 00:04:13,792 It's damaged goods, as are the people in it. 69 00:04:13,879 --> 00:04:15,415 It's brilliantly executed. 70 00:04:20,802 --> 00:04:23,339 - Mark. - And action! 71 00:04:23,430 --> 00:04:24,920 [crew member] Action, action! 72 00:04:29,895 --> 00:04:31,385 Looks good. Perfect. 73 00:04:34,399 --> 00:04:37,232 [del Toro] We have found pristine locations 74 00:04:37,319 --> 00:04:39,356 in and around Toronto and Buffalo, 75 00:04:39,446 --> 00:04:41,608 that seem to be time capsules 76 00:04:41,698 --> 00:04:46,488 of what it was to live at the end of the 1930s, beginning of the '40s. 77 00:04:46,578 --> 00:04:50,537 And they all-- The locations and the sets needed to blend seamlessly. 78 00:04:52,834 --> 00:04:57,499 The look of Buffalo, which is really known for its Art Deco look, 79 00:04:57,589 --> 00:05:01,082 was really influential in the whole look of the movie. 80 00:05:01,593 --> 00:05:03,083 There's a visual code that he has. 81 00:05:03,178 --> 00:05:06,466 There's a certain repetition of shapes, like circles. 82 00:05:07,224 --> 00:05:11,309 The shapes that accompany from the beginning to the end is the circles. 83 00:05:11,394 --> 00:05:16,764 There's the Ferris wheel, the arena, the viewing window in the cabaret. 84 00:05:16,858 --> 00:05:20,101 The cabaret itself is two big circles. 85 00:05:20,195 --> 00:05:22,562 The circles on the floor and the lamps 86 00:05:22,656 --> 00:05:25,114 that are circular in the lobby of Rendell, 87 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:28,192 Stan is always heading for that circle. 88 00:05:35,168 --> 00:05:38,581 The one design clearly that felt like the center, 89 00:05:38,672 --> 00:05:42,836 like the linchpin of what the movie was, was Lilith's office. 90 00:05:44,219 --> 00:05:46,460 It was elegant but cold. 91 00:05:46,555 --> 00:05:48,512 There was a sense of menace to it. 92 00:05:48,598 --> 00:05:50,088 [Blanchett] When you look at the sets, 93 00:05:50,183 --> 00:05:53,392 there's no need to suspend disbelief when you walk on set, 94 00:05:53,478 --> 00:05:55,970 because it's all there. I mean, down to the ceilings, 95 00:05:56,064 --> 00:05:59,227 every single detail has been really well thought through. 96 00:05:59,734 --> 00:06:02,726 I mean, when I first walked into Lilith's office, 97 00:06:02,821 --> 00:06:05,313 the room is a character in and of itself. 98 00:06:05,407 --> 00:06:08,991 And Tamara Deverell's production design is extraordinary. 99 00:06:09,077 --> 00:06:11,819 The wood paneling was like a Rorschach test in and of itself. 100 00:06:11,913 --> 00:06:13,074 Every single ornament. 101 00:06:13,164 --> 00:06:16,907 You know, the desk, the way the recording devices were hidden, 102 00:06:17,002 --> 00:06:18,333 that was fantastic. 103 00:06:19,921 --> 00:06:22,879 You got a smoother line, but you run a racket. Same as me. 104 00:06:22,966 --> 00:06:24,582 Is that what this is? 105 00:06:27,220 --> 00:06:28,756 [Deverell] To create Lilith's world, 106 00:06:28,847 --> 00:06:31,305 the bulk of it is in this office set that we built, 107 00:06:31,391 --> 00:06:37,228 so it was very much trying to make a powerful woman who's glamorous 108 00:06:37,314 --> 00:06:42,400 and make this office almost, like, glowing around her. 109 00:06:43,028 --> 00:06:45,190 It was full of wood and warmth and shine, 110 00:06:45,280 --> 00:06:49,274 but it was still this geometric kind of configuration 111 00:06:49,367 --> 00:06:52,029 that exemplified everything that was her character, 112 00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:55,488 in terms of strength and power, 113 00:06:55,582 --> 00:06:57,198 female power, in particular. 114 00:06:57,792 --> 00:06:59,157 [Lilith] You barely know me. 115 00:07:00,170 --> 00:07:03,879 I knew that that was the set 116 00:07:04,674 --> 00:07:07,587 that I needed to do what I called "the reveal." 117 00:07:07,677 --> 00:07:13,093 In every movie I do, there is a set that gets "the reveal." 118 00:07:17,687 --> 00:07:20,520 This is what declares a certain aspect 119 00:07:20,607 --> 00:07:23,315 of the reality of the movie coming to play. 120 00:07:23,401 --> 00:07:26,814 And this moment was needed, because you were saying, 121 00:07:26,905 --> 00:07:30,193 "This is the world that is different from the carnival." 122 00:07:30,742 --> 00:07:32,153 We are at war. 123 00:07:32,786 --> 00:07:33,947 [Stan] I'm aware. 124 00:07:34,621 --> 00:07:37,739 [del Toro] And that shot is not just to show how great the set is, 125 00:07:37,832 --> 00:07:40,870 but it tells you everything you need to know about the character. 126 00:07:40,961 --> 00:07:43,373 This is an incredibly powerful, 127 00:07:43,463 --> 00:07:47,422 sophisticated, elegant, but threatening space. 128 00:07:47,926 --> 00:07:51,169 I always think, you know, there's bodies in them walls. [chuckles] 129 00:07:51,262 --> 00:07:54,505 In a Guillermo del Toro film, there probably usually is. 130 00:07:56,351 --> 00:07:58,342 [breathes heavily] 131 00:08:01,231 --> 00:08:04,098 [Deverell] What is in Guillermo's head in terms of movies 132 00:08:04,192 --> 00:08:06,149 and the library of visual references, 133 00:08:06,236 --> 00:08:09,274 is beyond anybody's imagination, I think. [chuckles] 134 00:08:09,906 --> 00:08:11,863 For a production designer, any production designer, 135 00:08:11,950 --> 00:08:14,738 to work with a director like him, there's just no comparison. 136 00:08:14,828 --> 00:08:15,818 It's a different world.