Qumra 2019: Oscar Winner Eugenio Caballero On 'Roma,' 'Pan's Labyrinth' And The "Az-Tech" Approach To Production Design

Qumra is an industry event comprising lectures, masterclasses, labs, and mentoring sessions, held annually in the Qatari capital Doha for the benefit of emerging filmmakers from the region and worldwide, sponsored by the increasingly influential Doha Film Institute.

“Production designers are the great unsung heroes of the film world,” declared one audience member soberly during the Q&A portion of Eugenio Caballero‘s Qumra masterclass. “That’s the fun part,” Caballero replied impishly. “You don’t have the lights on you. It’s very cool.” Of course, inasmuch as any production designer has enjoyed the spotlight, he has, due to his award-winning, eye-catching collaborations with Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth“), Jim Jarmusch (“The Limits of Control“), J.A. Bayona (“The Impossible,” “A Monster Calls“) and Alfonso Cuarón (some little bauble called “Roma“). But it is true that production design (or “art direction,” as the Academy used to call it) does not have the profile of, say, cinematography in the popular imagination of behind-the-scenes film craft. Caballero’s delightful 2-hour masterclass, in which he took us through his dazzling career and outlined his singular approach, went a long way toward redressing that imbalance. Here are some of the many highlights.

In defiance of the bare-bones definition, Caballero believes production design’s fundamental function is storytelling rather than pictorial. 
EC: “The classic definition of production design is that the visual concept of a film is made by three people: the director with the vision, and two different technical or artistic characters, let’s say, who complete or transform that vision with their own specific skills. One is the cinematographer and the other is the production designer. And it’s hard to understand what is the border between both things in terms of concept, but the production designer takes care of what you can somehow touch, the tangible — that means the props, the sets, the walls, the location, the color palette when applied to a wall or an object. And on the intangible things, such as the light, the frame, or the color in terms of lighting and that’s all the cinematographer.”

“That’s the core of it, but for me that is too technical. Production designers have the chance to create a world — even if it’s a super realistic one, it’s all created. You can give some big context that might not happen through dialogue or action — in one frame you can show how the character is feeling, as well as what is the social or economic context. And you can help the actors to really develop their characters, to believe what they are performing.”

“And finally for me a very important thing is that you can really tell stories. You join the “quest” of the film, supporting the story using color or shape or texture: it is a narrative approach. I strongly believe that production design is not an aesthetic discipline, it is completely a narrative discipline.”

The three-way relationship between director, cinematographer and production designer is not without its difficulties and territorial squabbles.
“I try now to think a lot in light when I design, and then I transform certain things when the cinematographer comes if there’s some specific needs for that again. I discuss a lot with the director about the concept and I try to be a step ahead, so when the cinematographer comes or if we already know who he is, I will send the plans over for comments or whatever. But you know, you have this relationship with the director that is almost like love and then here comes another guy, and you have to let him go off with him. But sometimes we end up in a beautiful…[threesome.]”

He initially approached the challenge of creating the two worlds of “Pan’s Labyrinth” (for which Caballero won his Oscar) as a matter of shape.
“One [world] is reality which we wanted to have very specific code of shape. We wanted a lot of straight lines, a lot of angles, things to be more precise. We made a lot of furniture; this this film is all built. We decided even to make the main pieces of furniture [bigger] to make the girl looks small all the time — have a heavy thing on the roof, so she will be crushed and oppressed. [In the fantasy sections] you have no angles. You have a lot of shapes that somehow embrace the characters, a lot of curves.”

The Pale Man/banquet scene, which demanded one of the most spectacular sets in the film, taught him a valuable lesson in humility.
“I had a big lesson in practicalities when I was doing this set. I was super, super proud of presenting the set to Guillermo. He was really happy and I thought I had done everything! A lot of movable walls, so you could change everything… So I thought I knew a lot about the mechanics of filmmaking, but I forgot that there was this huge chimney burning gas. I never thought about extracting the smell. So this great day for me, we start shooting, and you know one hour later it was a nightmare, we couldn’t shoot because of the smell of the gas, everybody’s eyes were watering and burning.”

“It can be you know, an amazing set, but if it doesn’t flow, it doesn’t work. It’s important to always be thinking about the practicality.”

The forest in “Pan’s Labyrinth” taught him how much the director’s vision can change if you find a great location, but also how much has to be cheated when the great location does not quite chime with that vision. 
“The story takes place in the north of Spain. So you have this forest, beautiful forest very organic that they would look beautiful in the film. So we decided to completely change what was in the script and put in a forest of pines [instead] — these very big pines which are basically like being in a jail, they’re very aggressive, like spikes. But another thing in the script that was very important, was the moss, you know, everything is green and mossy and after we’d already decided to shoot there, we realized that pines don’t grow moss because they are resinous. So if the scene is full of moss, it’s because we put it there. Artificial moss.”