“We wanted to stay wide enough to get a sense that this is a little bit of a costume drama,” says Carpenter. “And it is, because of the fun that the brilliant costume designer Kym Barrett had with what she created.”
There was a definite color pallet for both Charlie and Viola. Charlie’s encompassed more pastels and flesh tones, limes, oranges, almost a Caribbean flavor, whereas Viola’s tones followed a pattern of whites, off-whites and crèmes and black. As for Kevin, Carpenter’s goal was to keep him looking rugged and to take advantage of his engaging smile because that’s part of his charm for Charlie.
The color pallet was conceived early on between Luketic and production designer Missy Stewart, in tandem with costume designer Kym Barrett, who only had about six weeks of preparation before cameras rolled.
Production designer Missy Stewart and her crew, headed by art director Jim Truesdale and set designer Susan Eschelbach, tapped into their own imaginations to come up with an informative yet stylish backdrop for the story.
“Missy and her crew gave us sets that are so imbued with such a level of detail that they again inform the audience of who our characters are,” says Luketic. “Right down to sections of the sets that were never actually filmed. They filled every set with minutia that tells us about each person’s unique life. And every character was treated with the same level of detail. I love that sort of passion. Make it a real place, not just a façade.”
Stewart and Luketic have worked together on all three of the director’s films, but this if the first time they have shot Los Angeles for Los Angeles. Because of that fact, Stewart felt she wanted to highlight the frequently overlooked beauty of the city.
“I felt like this film should be a celebration of the Los Angeles architecture,” she says. “So we went for the best. I wanted to put Viola in a Wallace Neff house so we searched high and low through Pasadena and Beverly Hills to find a Neff house or a look alike. At the very last minute, we found the most beautiful house with a rose garden and great architectural features like his signature oval, egg-shaped hallway.”
“It was a character-driven selection,” Stewart says. “Viola is bold and outrageous and smart, and I thought the house should be the same.”
As for Kevin’s gorgeous Craftsman home, she said, “Kevin is a doctor and somewhat refined. He probably moved into his house just before the action in the movie starts. Because he is Viola’s son, he’s been exposed to travel and culture, and probably met many of the people Viola interviewed as a youngster, so we decided on a Craftsman because it’s a masculine environment. Again, it’s a celebration of Californian architecture with some Asian influences, designed by the Hinemman brothers who used strong horizontal lines along with different kinds of woods in their houses.”
Stewart and the location team found Charlie’s apartment complex in the heart of Hollywood, although in the story, her complex is set in Venice Beach. The actual series of apartments were undergoing a complete renovation process while the production was shooting. The complex is typical of communal apartment living in the heyday of Hollywood, with spacious rooms, hardwood floors, crown molding and hand painted tile work in the bathrooms.
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