Decorating Pages Podcast: Inside the Art of Set Decoration with Rosemary Brandenburg

Inside the Art of Superman Set Decoration with Rosemary Brandenburg

Host: Kim Wannop

Guest: Rosemary Brandenburg, Set Decorator

Introduction to Rosemary Brandenburg & Her Iconic Superhero Work

Keywords: set decorator, Rosemary Brandenburg, film set design, superhero movies, Superman, Spider-Man, Star Wars

• Background: Rosemary shares her beginnings and love for Superman, referencing early TV and the classic Donner films.

• Superhero Favorites: Discusses her experience choosing and working with iconic superhero franchises, emphasizing the creative opportunity in rebooting Superman from scratch.

The Creative Journey: Redefining Superman’s World

Keywords: Superman set design, Donner films, production design, color palettes, film reboots

• Artistic Approach: Not a sequel—an all-new vision for Superman, referencing classic comics for vibrant, rich color inspiration.

• Color & Tone: Comparison with previous Superman films, especially differentiating from the "Man of Steel" darker aesthetic.

• Daily Planet Set: Deep dive into designing the vibrant, classic newsroom, the challenge of working in a historic bus station, and sneaking in Easter eggs for fans.

On Location: Building Cinematic Worlds

Keywords: film locations, Atlanta film studios, Trilleth Studios, Macon Georgia, Daily Planet, Cleveland, Art Deco train station

• Studio Work: Filming mostly in Atlanta’s Trilleth Studios with numerous rotating sets.

• Notable Locations: Transforming a historic bus station into the Daily Planet and filming at the iconic Art Deco train station in Cincinnati to match comic book origins.

Behind the Scenes: Designing Details & Collaboration

Keywords: set decoration, collaboration, design departments, color coordination, upholstery, furniture design

• Collaborative Process: Teamwork with costume designers, paint departments, and upholsterers to create cohesive looks.

• Custom Creations: Sourcing, painting, and upholstering unique furniture—revealing insider tricks, such as adapting existing bus station benches into newsroom furniture.

Decorating Key Character Spaces

Keywords: Lois Lane apartment, Clark Kent apartment, set builds, film interiors

• Lois Lane’s Apartment: Crafted as a build, filled with layered easter eggs and personal touches reflecting Lois’s character—discussion on lighting and palette choices.

• Clark Kent’s Minimal Home: Bare, functional, and intentionally sparse to support the story—a “cover” apartment symbolizing his double life.

Fabrication & Fantasy: The Fortress of Solitude

Keywords: custom fabrication, film props, Fortress of Solitude, sci-fi set design

• Complex Builds: Challenges of creating the Fortress’s key elements, such as the robotic chair and healing console, and multi-department collaboration required.

• Prototyping: Use of CAD design and foam prototypes to finalize complex geometric pieces with actor input.

Bringing Small-Town Roots to Life

Keywords: Kansas farmhouse, practical locations, set authenticity, character backstory

• Authenticity in Kansas: Intentionally “ordinary” farm life decor, balancing period accuracy with relatability.

• Clark’s Bedroom: 1990s and early 2000s inspiration for set dressing, with references to personal trophies and cultural roots to ground Superman's human upbringing.

Movie-Wide Logistics & Team Coordination

Keywords: film prep, set decoration workflow, location logistics, team management

• Scope & Prep: 10 months of intense work, half dedicated to prep, involving a vast team across multiple locations.

• Moving & Teamwork: Managing transitions between shooting locations (like Georgia and Cleveland) and coordinating with regional crews.

Highlights from Rosemary’s Filmography & Industry Insights

Keywords: Rosemary Brandenburg career, set decorating industry, director collaboration, filmography

• Varied Career: Rosemary’s experience working with top directors (Spielberg, Tarantino, Zemeckis, etc.) and production designers.

• Favorite Sets: Insight into her most memorable sets, including Star Wars, Hocus Pocus, Amistad, Public Enemies, The Hateful Eight, and more.

• Advice for Set Decorators: Value of research, flexibility, and creative problem-solving in set decoration.

Easter Eggs, Fan Service, and Attention to Detail

Keywords: movie Easter eggs, set details, fan engagement, graphic design

• Hidden Surprises: Strategic placement of nods to comic and film history throughout sets to delight eagle-eyed fans.

• In-Depth Decoration: Every desk, wall, and piece of set dressing adds story layers, even if blink-and-you-miss-it.

Conclusion: The Passion of Film Set Decoration

Keywords: film design inspiration, behind-the-scenes, movie magic

• Team Effort: Acknowledgment of the many artisans, designers, and department heads involved.

• Proud Projects: Rosemary and Kim share their appreciation for the collaborative, transformative experience of large-scale filmmaking.

Want More Behind-the-Scenes Film Design?

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Rosemary Brandenburg [00:00:00]:

It's just a giant. It's just a giant coordination project and through lines and. Yeah, it's just a different.

Kim Wannop [00:00:08]:

Yeah. Alrighty, let's get started. While I was looking at the last couple films that you've done, you've done Superman, Spider Man, Star Wars. I mean, in the superhero world, who's your favorite? Who is your favorite to decorate for?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:00:29]:

Well, I've always loved Superman just as a character.

Kim Wannop [00:00:32]:

Oh, nice.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:00:33]:

Since I was a kid. I mean, since it was the guy with the baggy tights and the pot belly and the, you know, big chest. And I just loved him. He was in black and white, and I used to watch him on reruns. I'm not so old that he was first run, but he was not far after. And I loved him. I mean, I've always loved Superman. He's a great character.

Kim Wannop [00:00:58]:

I love the Donner films, and I've showed those to my boys. So I've watched that Superman movie, the Christopher Reeves, a couple times in the past year. And so I was interested to see where Superman would fit in your world there, because I love it too.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:01:14]:

Well. And I guess maybe a lot of the times the superhero movies I've done, I've been coming in and having to do the third or the ninth or the whatever. And that's like a whole journey of diving into this stuff that's actually pretty challenging. So this was an opportunity. This was stated as an opportunity to just start over. That was. It was not meant to be a sequel of anything.

Kim Wannop [00:01:41]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:01:42]:

Which. And, you know, I mean, who doesn't know the Superman story? I certainly do. So that was pretty great. I mean, yeah, we looked at the Donner series and we looked at some old comics that were sort of super classic with a lot of rich color, because, you know, this was going to be a whole different look.

Kim Wannop [00:02:02]:

Yeah, it's. It certainly is more. The tones are deeper, but not as dark as the man in Steel ones. I felt like those were too dark. And even in story. But with this, I also really appreciated that it wasn't really his origin story, which was nice. Like, you're. You're coming in and they set you up in the first minute of 3,000 years.

Kim Wannop [00:02:24]:

Three million years ago. Three minutes ago. Like, it's a great way to, like, start this film. You shot in Atlanta, correct?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:02:33]:

We shot in Atlanta. We shot in at a. Mostly at a movie studio south of Atlanta called Trilleth, which is just a studio, rent a studio. But we had huge stages there, probably six that constantly turned over lots and Lots of sets. And then we shot a little bit in metro Atlanta, not much. And then a good chunk down in Macon, Georgia, which is in southern Georgia, for the Daily Planet, which was shot at a bus station. That's a historic bus station. And we had to totally revamp it to be the Daily Planet.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:03:09]:

And then that was a big revamp. And then the. We also shot, you know, where Clark Kent was brought up by Ma and Pa Kent down there on a little farm. And then we went up to Cleveland, Ohio, which we made into urban metropolis. And then the last day was in Cincinnati. And the reason for going there was because they have a beautiful classic art deco train station. And that train station was drawn into the very original Superman comics as. Oh, wow, the Justice League headquarters.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:03:50]:

So we're the first movie to take advantage of that. And, of course, the reason was because we were going to be in Cleveland anyway. And so we got to go there, and we shot interior and exterior there.

Kim Wannop [00:04:01]:

I was so bummed. I could not find any photos of that, but I definitely wanted to ask you about that, but I could not find any online photos of that set yet. But what a. What a great little, like, Easter egg in there for. That's great.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:04:16]:

There was a lot of nods to the first family. You know, in fact, there are, you know, children, grandchildren of those guys that actually were on set a lot. And they were lovely people, and they were really excited to be included. And it was such. I mean, I don't mean to say anything against the way that the man of Steel series did it. That was their absolute choice to make him darker, stronger, tougher stories. That's a perfectly good choice. And it was very popular with lots of people.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:04:47]:

And people, you know, till briefly, before the film was really. Our film was released, were like, oh, you're never going to do justice. And, you know, they're going to have their point of view. But. But, you know, this was just a different take on it, and I think quite successful, obviously. And a lot of people. A lot of other people were really ready for a brighter, more optimistic feeling, you know, and that's shows.

Kim Wannop [00:05:16]:

Oh, definitely. I. It's definitely more lighter and I think more relatable. It's a relatable Superman you have here. He's back to these vulnerabilities and everything that he has.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:05:28]:

That's it right there, which some people were really slamming when some of the early PR came out, because you could see he was in pain. You could see he was anguished. And, you know, everybody's like, oh, gosh, Here we're gonna have a weekly, you know, and. And of course, now everybody's like, oh, what a great choice.

Kim Wannop [00:05:43]:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I. I was wondering about the color palette in the Daily Planet, like, all of the oranges that you have.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:05:51]:

Yep.

Kim Wannop [00:05:52]:

And even working with, and, I mean, costumes really has a lot of oranges going on. Was that. I know that we're in present day, at least I'm assuming, but was that to give it, like, a different error type?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:06:08]:

Well, you know, it's a timeless era. It's not stated exactly what year it is on purpose. It's. Everybody has a fairly classic look. The sets have a nod to mid century stuff. You know, know, the locations are picked with that in mind, too. There's. There's a classicism to the whole thing.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:06:26]:

So, yeah, I mean, we had very elaborate color conversations and very specific directive. And Judy Anna Makofsky, the costume designer, who's just amazing at this stuff, she. She was part of every one of those conversations. So we did. We all worked together. Our department, Sadiq, everything, upholstery, textiles, paint. I had a wonderful paint department headed up by a guy named Gabe Harrington, who, you know, we would work out these swatches and we test them. We do tests, and we'd all get together with the production designer and say, is, is this the right pumpkin? And.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:07:08]:

And then upholstery, too. We did a lot of upholstery in the. In all sets, but it's certainly in this one, those rolly chairs. There was a fellow who emailed the Set Decorator Society the other day asking, where can I buy a chair like that? I need it. It was like, good luck, buddy. Yeah, yeah, that was. Yeah, we found the frame someplace, ordered those up, but everything else, you know, we actually repainted the frames, put new wheels on, you know, completely upholstered the pads. Actually, I do think we sent him the fabric and he was good enough to.

Kim Wannop [00:07:40]:

Oh, that's good.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:07:41]:

Particular case. But, you know, we bought lots of this color fabric and made these crazy little seats on the ends of the.

Kim Wannop [00:07:49]:

Yeah. These little, like, banquettes and.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:07:51]:

Well, this is a little clue, a little insider tip. This is an old bus station, and we could not remove the huge benches. Oh, wow. There already.

Kim Wannop [00:08:01]:

So the desks are built around them then.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:08:04]:

Yeah. Well, so our art director, Dominic Silvestri, came up with this idea of building the desk, you know, the desk pods on top of them, and then revealing the end of the bench as a little capper. And it worked very well. It was a great idea. We did have to polish up the ends and make them look great. And we did. And so that's a little insider tip. And then we.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:08:28]:

We. When we were working out the ground plan of this vast space, we came up with this. These little tripod desks that were like Y shaped out in the open space, which would make it easy to circulate, give you an obstacle, but not too much of an obstacle because there were a lot of crosses in the. And yeah, that was a really complex set. They paint, not set deck, but the art department made these huge murals on the side. I don't know how much they really showed, but on one side and the other side were these windows. We had to make these giant blinds because their blinds were completely destroyed from years of sun down south. Anyway, there was an enormous amount of work in here.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:09:12]:

And of course, that huge globe wasn't there. The perception desk wasn't there. There was a ton of work in here, and we did as you can. It does show in the film the amount of detail.

Kim Wannop [00:09:22]:

Oh, yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:09:25]:

And every single desk was like.

Kim Wannop [00:09:26]:

I mean, every desk is layers.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:09:28]:

The Gothic cat, the gossip columnist and the arts people, and the sports reporter and the Jimmy Olsen's photographer desk. And who was. Who was at the, you know, world desk, who was the opinion writer. We had all that worked out. I mean. I mean, some of it shows and some of it doesn't, but that's what we do. We just do intense amounts of detail.

Kim Wannop [00:09:50]:

It just helps, too, that you're not in the monotony of like, oh, let's dress another desk. When your dressers sit down, or when you sit down and say, well, this is a journalist for sports, then you know, like, oh, well, let's open up the sports page. Let's do it. I mean, it helps us, you know, even if it's never seen, as we all know. But that's. It's a huge space.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:10:11]:

So.

Kim Wannop [00:10:11]:

So what was your prep on the film?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:10:14]:

Well, I was on the movie for about 10 months, and my prep was probably half of it. Five. Five or. I can't remember exactly five or six months. And then the filming was five or six months. I can't remember which way it went. But, you know, half and half. More or less.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:10:32]:

Yeah, there, there. It sounds like a lot of prep to people. I just was talking, meeting yesterday with a younger set decorator who had like, Oh, I had nine days for a movie, Tier 1 film. I was like, my eyes popped out. That's enough for me to, like, you know.

Kim Wannop [00:10:49]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:10:50]:

Start figuring out a Budget and hire a couple of people and, you know, start absorbing all the research that's been done. I mean, that, you know, I haven't done anything of that shortness for a long time. I mean, we. The prep is very intense. There's, you're, you're involved in a lot of design discussion. I have a whole department of designers as well. I have my own graphics team, fabricators, designers, my own illustrators. And, you know, they're working too, to draw things and make things and all that stuff, as well as assistant set decorators, buyers, set deck coordinator, lead, and lots of builders, whether it's welders, prop makers.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:11:37]:

In Georgia, it's a little more relaxed. So you don't have to be quite so careful about the lines in terms of using only people who are classified as prop makers because it's a mixed local. So. But we had some really work there.

Kim Wannop [00:11:52]:

Luckily you've worked there before. You know, some people who, you know, you want to bring on. And, you know, that helps too, because some of your prep is dedicated to finding a good, supportive team for, for this venture.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:12:06]:

Yeah. And happily, I've worked also with, well, people there, but also Jason Beddick, my key, super key lead man who's worth his weight in gold and putting a team together in terms of the nuts and bolts side of things, bringing, you know, quite a number of gang bosses from LA as well as gang bosses from Georgia. And in this case, we had in mind to bring even more gang bosses from LA, but from Local 44. But of course, there were some budget constraints. It was a time of contraction of budgets, which it's probably still is. So. But we did very well with our, with our Georgia team as well. And then when we got to Cleveland, we had a Cleveland team.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:12:53]:

So it's like it was quite a vast movie.

Kim Wannop [00:12:56]:

Well, that too, because you're, you're shoot, you're prepping and shooting and then moving a whole company across states. I mean, there's a lot of logistics to go through there and prepping that before they get there while still, you know, being on a different film set.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:13:12]:

Yeah, so that, and that, that's how I use this instead. Decorators, though, I, you know, we slice and dice the ski, kind of do it by the schedule and, and to some extent by their area of special specialization. But the people I had were excellent. For example, Monica Montserrat Day, who is from Puerto Rico, who I met years ago when I worked on Rum Dyer. She's come to Atlanta and worked with me several times. Last time was the time before this was Guardians of the Galaxy. We also did, you know, we did a pretty substantial movie in Puerto Rico together and. And then she came back and did Superman.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:13:50]:

And we had another person from Atlanta named Liz Ayala. And I mean, these were really. These are really talented people. Liz. Liz Ayala helped me with Macon set this, the Daily Planet. And Monica helped me with, for example, Lois's apartment, the Baravian Palace. And then she. Those sets were done early enough that she zoomed off to Cleveland to prep that for me.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:14:20]:

And you know, we're in touch all the time.

Kim Wannop [00:14:21]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:14:22]:

But I can't possibly be in all these places at once. So that really is non functional. So I would zoom up there when I could and, you know, fly up and check things out and have conferences and la la. So that's kind of how it goes. It's like a whole deep frog.

Kim Wannop [00:14:39]:

Yeah. Because once they start. Well, once prepping, but once they start shooting, really, you're not shutting down unless Superman gets hurt.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:14:49]:

Oh, yeah. I mean, but there were times when they would be in a big set that was done and established and I could run off or at least. And there was a couple of sets that were a few super fantasy sets like the Pocket Universe or, you know, on stage, flying around in front of that. I could run away. Not for very long, but, you know, make it a long weekend. Go on a Thursday, work with everybody Thursday afternoon, Friday, you know, probably Saturday too. And then collapse and then get up and work with them again on Monday and then zoom back. So that's how it kind of went.

Kim Wannop [00:15:27]:

I'm assuming Lois's was a build.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:15:30]:

Yeah, this is a stage set. There was translates outside. We had blinds on the windows. Lois was, you know, it was quite an operation getting everything. There's a lot of Easter eggs in the set and there was a lot of special requests and demands and special artwork. And she had her Pulitzer Prize winning article up over the mantelpiece and her Pulitzer Prize next to it. And even the arrangement of the books became a big back and forth. Whether they should be really neat, whether they should a lot of books, whether they should be in the middle.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:16:10]:

I mean, you know, that was something. And then there was one. At one point we had a lot of plants in there because we thought she was. Would like that. And then, oh no, she doesn't have time for that. They're gone. So, you know, it was an interesting journey and there was a lot of input and it was an early set, so it was important. Everybody.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:16:31]:

She came in, Lois herself Rachel Brosnahan is a wonderful person and actress and very involved and she gave us lots of wonderful notes. They came in for an early rehearsal period before shooting and even began. And she had a lot of fun with this apartment, and she gave us lots of notes, so that was fun.

Kim Wannop [00:16:55]:

I didn't notice it in the film, but when I looked at these photos. Is this a framed picture of him skywriting Lois?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:17:06]:

Well, not. Not Superman, but it is. It is a skywritten Lois. Yeah. So as though somebody has written Lois in the sky, but not Superman.

Kim Wannop [00:17:17]:

Oh.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:17:20]:

You never think of that.

Kim Wannop [00:17:22]:

Other lovers are writing in the sky.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:17:26]:

Yeah. I mean, it was just.

Kim Wannop [00:17:27]:

She gets around.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:17:29]:

Maybe because she won the Pulitzer Prize.

Kim Wannop [00:17:31]:

Yeah, that's true. I did see that in the film. I don't have it on here, but I do love the layered and the. How much of the books tell the story of Lois in the film and how comfortable her place is and the different textures that you used. And. And the palette is a little bit darker, but it doesn't seem heavy. Like the. The furniture doesn't seem heavy or anything.

Kim Wannop [00:17:56]:

But it is a darker palette.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:17:59]:

Yeah. I don't know that any of us were prepared for quite how dark it was going to end up, lighting wise, but. But it did work in the end. The dark green sofa or dark blue? Green sofa. Blue. Green was a light motif throughout the film, but for several cents. But it's. You know, we found a sofa and completely reupholstered it and changed the height and, you know, and then, believe it or not, that little chair is straight out of Warner Brothers.

Kim Wannop [00:18:33]:

The little.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:18:33]:

The little upholstery chair and the chair that. That Clark Ken is sitting in that I got at the sale from Faux Library. Oh, yeah.

Kim Wannop [00:18:44]:

So did you. So you brought a truck from LA of dressing?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:18:48]:

Oh, yeah. Many, many. Yeah, we brought up. We brought a bunch of stuff from la, but, you know, that was. Many trucks from la. But that was just the beginning. Sprinkle. Really, it was a very large warehouse filled with stuff.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:19:02]:

And there were a lot of sets in this movie. So, yeah, it's like domestic science fiction exteriors, you know, all kinds of stuff. We had a full. You know, we had full shops in our warehouse, drapery shop, fabrication shop, paint shop, as well as the usual storage and, you know, craft. Craft Elfie kind of things going on. So there was. There was a hub of activity and it's a very large space right next to effects, who we collaborated. Collaborated with very heavily because they built a lot of things for us as well.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:19:38]:

There was plenty of money going, filtering through the set deck department into the economies of Los Angeles and great city.

Kim Wannop [00:19:49]:

We love spreading the wealth when we can.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:19:51]:

Yeah.

Kim Wannop [00:19:52]:

And then you have the. The sleekness of Clark's apartment or Superman's apartment. And I mean, there's only really two views. You don't see much in here. Talk about darkness, but I get it because they're looking outside and you have these beautiful, like, translucent drapery or sheers on the windows. Was there a lot of talk about, like, as minimal as we can with Clark? Was that the note? Like what was.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:20:21]:

Yeah, absolutely. The no, was he never spends any time here. This is almost like a cover apartment, you know, because he just generally would fly up to his, you know, his Fortress of solitude in the. In the icy north or south. I said, you can't remember Pole. But yeah, the idea was he's hardly ever here. It's really. Just make sure he has an address so nobody figures out he's Superman.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:20:45]:

And. And yes, lots of discussion about those shears and just how heavy they would be and exactly what position they would be in, because, of course, exactly where he was going to fly in the window was. Was very much of a discussion. And then, you know, we. It's established right in the beginning they've had a relationship for a few months. And so she has a key and she just comes in and makes him a cup of cocoa when he's having a rough, very rough day.

Kim Wannop [00:21:14]:

Yeah, rough week. I think he's had a rough week.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:21:19]:

Rough patch.

Kim Wannop [00:21:21]:

I love that you have blue dish soap in there. Like, every detail is, like, so well thought out in these. In this film. And I think. I mean, the design of this too, of even the starkness in his apartment and the white in the background almost mimicking his Fortress of Solitude and the blues and the whites and keeping him cool. And it's really. It really says so much.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:21:48]:

Yeah, I mean, it was absolutely meant to be just your kind of high rise condo, typical kind of cabinetry. Although not very many places have that gorgeous blue of cabinetry, but, you know, there you go.

Kim Wannop [00:22:01]:

I was trying to think. I don't. I mean, I. I only saw, like, man of Steel maybe once and Superman I've seen. But I was trying to think. I think this is the first time we see Superman eating because he eats a bowl of cereal in Kansas.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:22:16]:

You could be right. I hadn't clocked that because I was.

Kim Wannop [00:22:19]:

Looking at this and I was like, oh, I guess the fruit's there for Lois. And I was like, oh, wait, he's eating cereal. Oh, he's drinking Coco.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:22:26]:

Yeah, no, he's normal. He. He does everything that humans do. Yeah. We've had a long discussion about whether he. What we. What food he would have on the counter. We decided he would Apples and bananas because he's healthy.

Kim Wannop [00:22:37]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:22:38]:

He eats, he's wholesome.

Kim Wannop [00:22:40]:

So the discussions you never thought you'd have in life is. That's the life of a set decorator.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:22:46]:

Oh, I have those discussions constantly.

Kim Wannop [00:22:48]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:22:49]:

That's.

Kim Wannop [00:22:49]:

Never thought we'd argue that, but here we are. Well.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:22:54]:

You know, he just doesn't really use the kitchen much. But he loves hot cocoa.

Kim Wannop [00:22:59]:

Oh, yeah. Who doesn't? I skipped over this one, but I wanted to go back to this chair, which I'm assuming you had made in the Fortress of Solitude and that huge desk and everything that's there. It's not quite a desk. I don't know. It's like a power station. I don't know what to call it. But you're touching a little bit about the fabrication and everything and the amount of detail that goes into it and the amount of, you know, prep time needed to get all this done beforehand. Do you ever struggle with those? Like, was it like, oh, we got that seat in there in the last minute, or was it, you know, do you find that you're.

Kim Wannop [00:23:38]:

We're all on time and we're all. It's all moving along.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:23:41]:

Yeah. Well, let's just say that the Fortress of Solitude fabrication elements were a collaborative effort between many departments, including special effects, set dressing, upholstery, set, you know, practical lighting, as well as the people that made the robots legacy.

Kim Wannop [00:24:02]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:24:03]:

Because there was a whole conversation about that these buttons that they push had to fit into their robot fingers.

Kim Wannop [00:24:09]:

Oh.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:24:10]:

So, I mean, the robots, they had one suit there as a reference. Obviously, then they were animated in visual effects robots. But there were people, you know, in dot suits pretending to be robots, but they couldn't do all of the activities. Anyway, long story short, yes, it was very last minute on those particular pieces. There were certain departments that fell a bit behind. It was. There was. These were.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:24:38]:

We had a very, very skilled art director working on this set named Alex McCarroll, who is sort of well known for these complex geometric sets and st. Spaceships and things like that. And he is the one who made sure that this was actually drawn and illustrated, the table, the big desk and this spaceship chair. And it was. Let's just say it was really complicated.

Kim Wannop [00:25:03]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:25:04]:

It had many layers. If you looked at it from the side There was this sort of translucent layer that you could see these particular sci fi bits and parts. I can't remember if there was a shot that really showed all that stuff that we did. Of course the thing had to spin, turn, go up and down, you know, assume different angles depending on the healing rays of the sun that were required. The upholstery itself was multi layered with a particular kind of vinyl and then a, a translucent kind of mesh. Yeah, that was handmade and hand designed in 8,000 tests trying to figure out exactly what, exactly what colors of silvery blues everything was going to be. So you know, it was a really. And then at the last minute they wanted even more light, especially around the head area.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:25:59]:

So our fixtures department was under the gun. I mean there were some all nighters pulled at this place, let's just put it that way. And yes, it was very late.

Kim Wannop [00:26:05]:

Oh, I know, I mean I know from doing just for roaming kind and fabricating these types of chairs or like dashboards full of stuff, stuff, it's an army of people who need to be involved. You think that it's oh, it's just a simple design or we'll just do this and then it's like. But the fabric has to be higher than the light pen on this and this and everything sort of, you know, there's just so many layers to getting one piece of set dressing done. Sometimes it's really incredible.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:26:33]:

I was just looking through some shots over the weekend looking for some fun crew shots. I still haven't put it on social media, but there's one picture of this chair with like I swear 20 people working it all at once. You know, just between the turntable below it and the little nerny detail and putting on, putting in lights and testing the buttons and. Oh God, it was, it was a lot of concentrated effort.

Kim Wannop [00:27:02]:

Was it comfortable?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:27:04]:

Yeah, it was very comfortable.

Kim Wannop [00:27:07]:

Was it a nap spot? Did it be after they were done with that set? Was it a nap spot? Because that's what a lot of things turn into with crew.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:27:13]:

Well, it's funny you mentioned that, that the, the chair is meant to rise up out of the floor when he comes, you know, so it's not there all the time. So there wasn't much napping in it because it was resting on the floor outside the set half the time. But we actually, as a, as a part of the initial prototyping process for this thing, we actually had the effects department took the drawings, translated them into a kind of CAD program that they, they could send to their special robotic Carving machines, and they had it cut out of bead foam, out of, well, a dense kind of bead foam, so that everybody, including David Cornstott, the actor playing Superman, could lay in it. Everybody could look at it, the director could sense it, and we could decide if it was the right proportion, if it needed to grow 10%. 10%, what the height should be when he first gets in it. We've. You know, one of the things about James Gunn, the director, is that he can be very, very precise on the day about his requirement for exactly what this interaction of the actors with these kinds of pieces of dressing. So that was a very useful exercise because I can't remember which way it went, smaller or bigger, but it was kind of a big deal because it went, I think, 10 or 20%.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:28:42]:

And that put it. That's one of the. One of the things that put a little bit of a monkey wrench into the works because it ended up adding a lot of redrawing time on. Because effects had their own people. The effects department, led by incredibly talented Dan Sudik, had their own people who did those kinds of drawings. And that takes time.

Kim Wannop [00:29:06]:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:29:08]:

It's a really complex process. So, I mean, to have all those bits and pieces and parts, it's not like the easy button. Oh, 10, 20.

Kim Wannop [00:29:17]:

Yeah, no, sounds like it should be, but it isn't better. Better in prep than on the day. But yes, it is still a big deal. Yeah. I was just so impressed with everything in the Fortress of Solitude because the different versions of it in. In the different films are always so interesting to me of how it's interpreted, and I loved it. The. The complete opposite of Fortress of Solitude is his own bedroom.

Kim Wannop [00:29:48]:

How much fun. How much fun was that doing?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:29:52]:

Yeah, this was a funny little place that locations found for us down in. Oh, I can't even remember the name of the little teeny weeny town down in southern Georgia. But the idea that the director had was that it was a really ordinary. Because the other movies had a rather idealized farmhouse. You sort of, you know, Martha Stewarty farmhouse. Yeah, this was meant to be really, really people who just raised cows and were very basic and did not have a diamond. Just the biggest hearts in the world. But, you know, they weren't meant to have classy taste or.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:30:32]:

And in fact, we kept. Some of the buyers would bring in beautiful things and we kept getting dialed back.

Kim Wannop [00:30:41]:

For the house. For the house. Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:30:44]:

So. But it was a location and. And it was inside and out and same place. And they really did this farm that we found. This really did raise Angus cattle, beef cattle. And. And I think a few of them made it into the movie. I mean, they had to actually work on cue, one or two of them.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:31:02]:

So I think they snuck in a couple of cows that were trained. But yeah, this bedroom was wonderful. I mean, this. This was one of those other ones that had a lot of Easter eggs. The Mighty Crab Joys was a whole photo shoot that we did with the young lady. The young. I can't. They're all.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:31:20]:

Some of them are nepotism relatives.

Kim Wannop [00:31:23]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:31:24]:

Of producers and directors and things. But they were adorable. And we had a real local punk band in the background to add verse millitude. And then, yeah, a whole work on. With my graphic designer, Kelsey Brennan, coming to. Coming up with the format and the typeface. And that was a long conversation, really long conversations with James on that. Lots of different iterations.

Kim Wannop [00:31:46]:

It looks very 90s. It looks like, oh, was this a 90s photo that they just tweaked? So look, it really reads.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:31:52]:

It's the whole thing. And then, you know, the translucency of the curtains and the translucency of the, of the window shades and because he, you know, there's a whole thing about sunrise and then everything that's on the bulletin boards and NASA posters and. Yeah, trophies. Because, you know, he was a good kid and, you know, manly. And the dog, the dog wasn't really.

Kim Wannop [00:32:16]:

There, but was the dog ever there? I. I'm, I'm actually really confused if the dog was ever real. I know what. It's. James Gunn. This. I saw a thing where it's like he based it on his own dog. But I don't know if.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:32:27]:

But the, but the stand in dog was a beautifully trained.

Kim Wannop [00:32:30]:

Oh, there was movie dog.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:32:32]:

Jolene was her name and she was on set whenever Crypto was supposed to be there. And she was beautiful and wonderful and she would, you know, stand in. And then I think the behavior was probably more based on James Gunn's dog. And I, I don't know how they do it. I didn't get a chance to talk to my friends in visual effects led by the incredible Stefan Ceretti, but aided admirably by Susan Pickett, the visual effects producer and really lovely people to work with. I, I don't know how they did it exactly, but I can. The dog is so expressive. Crypto is so expressive.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:33:11]:

I can imagine, you know, how they do it. I mean, those of us who have been around this stuff have seen all these performers with dot suits and dots.

Kim Wannop [00:33:18]:

Yeah, faces.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:33:19]:

I bet they put dots on whether it was James's dog or some other wonderful dog he had a guess, you know, for, for the expressions and for the movement of the ears and the nose and eyebrows and the tail and I mean, they did beautiful job. Just it was not a moment when you, when you doubted if you hadn't known how these things are done, they wouldn't think it was a real dog.

Kim Wannop [00:33:39]:

Yeah, I, I mean, and I think the, the dog aspect brings not only the comedy, but the, the human, like, man and dog love and like, experience. And everybody who has a dog is just sort of relates in a sense of like, oh my God, my dog would do that. Or like, oh my God, sit down. Like, just sit down. Like, so I loved having the dog in there. I think that was such a great touch. And was wondering too about, like, how if that was a real dog ever on set. So did you have any nightmares or like, freakouts, like, what would Clark Kent's bedding be? Because I feel like that would be my freak out of like, I would need to really look at a lot.

Kim Wannop [00:34:21]:

That's my thing. Betting for me is like a big thing.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:34:25]:

You're absolutely right because, you know, it's, it's as important as the costume in that particular set and that particular shot. I mean, not that the costume was in doubt at all, but, you know. Yeah, I think we had about six or eight choices laying around. This combination finally came together. Yeah, you know, it just, it was the perfect quiet, yet made a statement. Yeah, you know, stripes on plaid, the quietness of the brown and blue. I think we had some stronger options, but it just wasn't working because obviously with any kind of bedding, you, you need to play second fiddle to the actor or actors that may be playing in the bed. So.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:35:07]:

But so it needs to complement the action. Say something, but not too much. So that's kind of what we were going for. The bed itself was another conversation. It started out as a wooden headboard, and then we kind of found that we were getting too cute and too country and too old fashioned. And we realized, you know, James kept reminding me, listen, he was born 20 years ago or 30 years ago. Right. So, you know, and we say it's kind of now ish, you know, that puts us at the, you know, maybe the bed was bought, you know, late 90s, you know.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:35:43]:

Yeah, well, early aughts, whatever, you know, when he turned, you know, Right. When he's got bigger being a baby. Right. So, you know, so we, we actually Went and looked in Sears catalogs and things like that and said, well, look at this tubular metal. It's metal stuff. It's perfect. Let's find something like that. And that helped us because everybody was bringing in stuff that was really y olde worldy, and it was too.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:36:05]:

It was too ye olde. So there was a lot of, like, this is where we need to be. We need to be reflecting the time. Even though it's timeless, it's still. He still needs to be a product. Because of the Mighty Crab, Joy's references and the rock references, there is a certain definition about when he grew up.

Kim Wannop [00:36:25]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:36:25]:

So, you know, we need to follow suit with that stuff. James's scripts are very specific. He writes them early, and he. Other than a couple of dialogue changes, he doesn't realize that much. So he knows what he's going for. And he also write. He also creates the storyboards, which are a little hard to read, but because he draws them himself and doesn't use an artist, do it for him. And it takes a little while to understand them, and I still get confused because they're rough.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:36:59]:

But he knows what he's going for. So it's a. Obviously a pleasure and a terror to work with somebody that specific because really try to catch these references and understand what. What he's going for. Yeah, I was busy, so I don't always get, like, these lengthy meetings with him. I mean, I. I do my best. I do boards, I do presentations.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:37:18]:

I show him what we're going to do. But again, he's a busy guy. He doesn't want. I'm talking about either. So, yeah, you just try to be ready on the day with some options and get it as close as you can, and that's how you do it.

Kim Wannop [00:37:32]:

I would. I was wondering, too, with someone that specific, because we've all been there. But it's. Some people will bend and some people won't. Are you. You've worked with him before, so you had a clue of, like, I know that he's either gonna bend. Like, is he a bender? Or is he like, nope, this is what it is like. Because if you're finding locations and you're like, well, we can't.

Kim Wannop [00:37:55]:

Can we do that? Because even though it's written like, some writers are like, no, it has to be something else, or creators or showrunners, like, it has to be something else.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:38:04]:

But, you know, I wouldn't characterize James Gunn as being on the flexible side of the spectrum.

Kim Wannop [00:38:09]:

Yeah, he's.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:38:10]:

He's pretty specific. And I know that our production designer, Beth Nichol, who's a gem, worked really hard finding this house with our location manager, Ian. Sorry. Having, like good old Ian. Ian's lovely. Thank you. Okay, here it is. I found it.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:38:30]:

So Beth Mickle, our lovely production designer, worked with Ian Easterbrook finding this farmhouse. And they looked at a lot of places because there were very specific blocking requirements and shut requirements. Being able to see from one room into the other. As you see here, you're in the living room and you're seeing into a dining room, and it's connected to a front door right behind the chest of the can. See. Is that. I guess that's Clark. Is that Clark?

Kim Wannop [00:38:58]:

This is Clark. Yeah. They're watching tv.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:39:00]:

Yeah, that's in the scene where they come in from outside and they're watching the tv. Okay. So very specific things that he's asking for. And he would walk into a house and say, nope, this doesn't have that relationship. And it took a while to find this. We also changed the interior here quite a bit. It happened to be a home where that wasn't being used. It was.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:39:20]:

You know, whoever was the resident had passed away some years back, and the family hadn't gotten around to doing it any minute or selling it. So. So we were. We had, to some extent, some free reign, I think. I can't remember if that pillar divider was there. I think it was altered. But anyway, we completely refurnished. There was a couple of things that we kept that we used, but most of it is completely brought in.

Kim Wannop [00:39:46]:

I mean, I find it when someone's at, like, a. Like when I work on Ryan Murphy shows, that's what he wants. That's what you give him. And it's kind of clear of like, well, then I know what I'm doing. I don't have to, you know, you know, play around. I know that I gotta find this and get the closest to the target as. As we can get. And it.

Kim Wannop [00:40:06]:

But it has to be in the target. Like, there's, like, this. But it kind of helps, you know, in our world of like, I'm not looking for anything else. This is what I'm looking for type thing. There is a part of me that I resist of, like, well, why can't we have more input here? Or, like, what is our. What am I doing here if I'm just, like, repeating your. Your words or whatever? But I do.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:40:31]:

I think you're selling yourself short. Being able to read into what some of this direction is is a tremendous skill. And Being able to interpret it, because you are. No matter what you're doing, you're still doing a selection, and you are still creating a cohesive whole out of this set of instructions. That probably isn't as clear as what you're. What you're implying. I mean, the instructions I get from James Gunn, it may be clear as a bell in his head, but the rest of us are like, anything is this or this. You know, I mean, it's.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:41:06]:

It's. There's a wide spectrum of options that it could be. So trying to get it to the right feel, the right kind of lampshade that's, you know, gonna be thinking through when they would have bought it, how they're gonna get it, how they. What it would it have been, her taste, you know, and in a set like this, you've got family photos to beat the band, which is a whole McGilla, you know, trying to figure out whose baby Superman and who's baby Clark, Ken, and, you know, getting family photos from the actors and getting all that organized and then compositing together or doing photo shoots. I mean, it's a. That's a whole ordeal in itself.

Kim Wannop [00:41:51]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:41:51]:

Then, you know, artwork. Okay, so what do they have? You know, is it. And then, of course, you got it. Once you find it or make it or whatever you do, then there's the whole clearance process for all that stuff. I mean, I think we had probably four different sets of dining chairs in mind, you know, in our warehouse by the time we were done. I do a thing where I set the setup in the warehouse before it ever goes to location. I rehearse it, and then I let people, as much as I can, I bring people out to the warehouse, certainly the production designer, certainly the art director involved in the set. And if I can get the DP to come out, if I can get the gaffer to come out, if I can get.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:42:38]:

If I can, to the warehouse, if I can get, you know, the director, if I'm so lucky. But at the very least, photographs of that, and then discussions and discussions and reviews and, you know, people take all this. I'm not the only one who takes it seriously. I mean, you got to take it seriously on a movie like this. It's a. Every single thing is going to be scrutinized, and it's going to echo through the film and origin story set. Like this is pretty important to everybody.

Kim Wannop [00:43:08]:

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's. I mean, when you. You have. I mean, even in, like, your Star wars work, like, every frame is is looked at by people who are so into these films. And. And I love that. I'm sure you do, too.

Kim Wannop [00:43:24]:

I mean, I love when people are, like, looking at things and looking in the background and noticing things that we spend time losing sleep over putting in there, because that's, you know, because we have the passion for it. So I love when people, you know, figure something out in the background or. Oh, I guess that's why they have that artwork and, you know, things like that. I love that. And yeah, I mean, I'm with you. If I can set up something or take pictures or something and try to get a key into it. Does this work for everybody? That's the best. I mean, that's always great if we have the time and the, you know, the resources to do it.

Kim Wannop [00:43:58]:

Because you don't want to get there. I mean, I don't think you're. You're not getting there on the day. And that's the first time everybody's seeing the set, though. I feel like you have, like some sort of prep, right? I don't know. I feel.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:44:12]:

No, I mean, it depends. I mean, there's a lot going on for James Gunn, so whether he's been able to get down there. I mean, it was pretty far to this little spot. I can't remember if he came in the day before. He might have, but I don't know. I've certainly been around him. I mean, I've certainly been on a set with him. On one set on Guardians, it was.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:44:31]:

We were doing the TV special at the same time, and we were doing a Christmas decorated home. And he got there and he was like, this is nearly enough Christmas lights. And it was like Gilla trying to get more Christmas lights on the day. But, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, they're. If somebody wants something done differently, you know, what are you gonna do? Yeah, just do it. Yeah.

Kim Wannop [00:44:53]:

Just always have more. More. I'd rather more than less. That's. That's how I live these days.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:44:59]:

Less is actually way easier than more. But on the day. But yeah, there's always changes. There's always, you know, I don't know, it's just rehearsing things and getting things right. This set, I had some, you know, some really good buyers and helpers out looking for great stuff and helping me with it.

Kim Wannop [00:45:21]:

Yeah, this was.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:45:23]:

This was fun. It was, but it just. Everything's more work than you might think.

Kim Wannop [00:45:29]:

The. The Lex Luther office. I could not find a great shot. But he is throwing this beautiful desk of yours, which I'm assuming you had built or unless you got really lucky with a like 10 foot long table of beautiful.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:45:45]:

Well, this is a desk. This is Lex Luthor's office in Luther Corp. And there is a brief shot of it without being thrown. And then, and then Superman is very angry.

Kim Wannop [00:45:59]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:46:00]:

Because. Because mistreated and by Lex. And so he comes roaring in and very angry and does that throw. So of course the desk itself is just a desk. It's actually a desk that again we found at our dear late friend Mark Myers faux library. But that desk has been around. It used to be at Modern Props and I'm pretty sure now it's back at Warner Brothers. But the Throne desk was a complete.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:46:31]:

Was a copy made by our friends in special effects, specifically by special effects foreman named Jeff. Otto's an old friend of mine who does Marvel's work. So you cannot tell that it's not a real desk?

Kim Wannop [00:46:45]:

Well, no, not at all.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:46:46]:

And we had lots of interesting objects on the shelves and crazy 1970s style chair and this brown leather and a little lounge. And we did lots of stuff that you don't see. Yeah, and lots of egocentric pictures of Lexus and all of his scientific inventions. And his, his mug is a, is sort of a, a spaceship that he's designed. And the other size that our graphics.

Kim Wannop [00:47:21]:

Team put together, his like beehive of where he's working and all the computers are and everything. That's a really fun set because it's, it's like wide, it's all glass and everything. And it's a very like eye in the sky type thing. And you eventually find out why. But it, that's also an interesting thing. You've having all of that, all of those desks and monitors and everything fabricated for that set.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:47:48]:

We call that the set. We called it the comms hub. I don't remember referred to that in the movie, but it was the comms hub. And that set was an enormous job. Yeah, we started by creating. I had a set designer, Bria Kinter, who did a wonderful job designing those desks. And that was also a set art directed by Dominic Celestri. And he had the initial sketches of the, of the layout and the idea of the desks.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:48:19]:

But then we had to actually draw them very specifically. And that's another one where every single person had a specific function and had specific screens, specific little microphones, specific buttons that they had to do things and they had to have this very specific seating order. But the desk. But the, but the room actually gets narrower as you get closer to the front. And so the desks had to change sizes as you got closer to the front. So the front row desks are narrower than the next row and so on, which made it very difficult to interchange when. When somebody might change their minds about where somebody's at. So what we did to avoid difficulty on the day was that we created foam core versions of these desks full size.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:49:06]:

And early on we had. When we had plenty of room in the warehouse, we set them all up and had James out and he went through the entire scene. And it was very helpful because that was a lot of very complex fabrication to get those right. And there was a lot of compound surfaces and they were supposed to look like wood, which is relatively impossible. And there was just a ton of different things that had to be figured out. I also had a gang boss named Jason Olson who worked with me on fabricate, on finding all of the electronic bits like buttons and screens and handles. And it's a lot steering wheels and all different kinds of stuff that we had to have. And then some incredibly skilled prop makers.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:49:55]:

Robbie Sadaka and Remington Potato. And Rob. I'm having a blank Rob, who helped us manufacture all these things. It took months to make these things. And then we found. Again found chair frames and then altered them. So lots of things in there, of course, more than you see. There was a whole reception area that lots of stuff gets cut.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:50:22]:

There were more scenes in Lex's office that never made it in.

Kim Wannop [00:50:25]:

We need to have like a. Like a design addition to film sometimes, like just to show you what else was outside those doors that you never opened or, you know, all of that. I don't have a picture of the hall of justice, but the murals on the wall. But the furniture that you have in there, what was the decision to go with that, like, mod look? Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:50:52]:

You know, they're a little wacky. The old justice gang and Beth Mickle really enjoyed the warm tones that were in that set. Well, it's the old train station again in Cincinnati, and it's got some fantastic color in the room already. So we just went to town with the oranges and yellows and with, you know, mid century modern style that was derived out of art deco. It's later than art deco, but it was derived out of those curving forms. So since that station is classic art deco and the idea is that these guys are being funded by Mr. Lord, the Uber millionaire, that's on the kind of good side of the millionaire spectrum. And so he's got.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:51:47]:

They've Got nothing but money. And so they got all this custom furniture made, and we made the desks, and we designed and made the desks, the furniture. We found a couple of them and made more and reupholstered everything. And it was fun. It was just. The idea was it was really a fun kind of loungey.

Kim Wannop [00:52:06]:

See, they're not doing anything. I mean, they're, like, reading newspapers. There's. They're like. It's like a hangout. But they're. It's.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:52:12]:

They're waiting for stuff to happen, and.

Kim Wannop [00:52:13]:

They have, like, stuff. Like it's unpacked. They haven't really moved. They're still deciding on their name, on their furniture, on.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:52:21]:

Yeah, you got the concept. That was exactly the idea. Yeah, they're unpacking, and they're not working too quick, any of that.

Kim Wannop [00:52:32]:

Did you have a favorite set for this film?

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:52:38]:

Well, there's, you know, set decorators generally focus on the. The. The decorating sets, like Baravia, which was this beautiful. Yeah, the Eastern European way. There's Lois's apartment. That's everybody's. Well, it's that one. And then, you know, this little farmhouse for the character.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:53:00]:

But, you know, I'm. I'm really happy with the way our little red tea craft turn out. That's a spaceship. We also worked really hard on that transport container thing that we call. I mean, that's a huge amount of citrus.

Kim Wannop [00:53:17]:

Oh, yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:53:19]:

And a lot of deciding shapes, sizes, figuring out what tech's gonna go where. Tons of consoles, you know, like those portable consoles that run that thing. We do all that stuff, those. And then, of course, the Fortress of Solitude, we built a whole lab, which is unfortunately relegated to one set. I mean, one shot. Pardon me. Where. Where he sees what damage crystals crypto has done to it.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:53:47]:

But that was going to have more shots and did have more shots, but they didn't make it into the movie. That was enormous. We made these fantastic. We looked into the whole lore of the Fortress of Solitude, and he had, like, a dinosaur zoo, and he had, like, plants from out of space that he would have transported and kept preserved. So we created these giant ice blocks with. With these wild extraterrestrial plants in them. I mean, it's like a nanosecond in the movie. But we worked on it for months, and we made a lot of really cool lounge furniture.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:54:24]:

We figured out how to make, like, crystalline ice tables and, like, table surfaces by hand. Marvelous craftspeople worked with us on that. I mean, I just had the most fabulous team. So I really enjoy that kind of intrepid manufacturing and design and figuring out that, you know, a whole lot of set decorators in our world don't get a chance to do. I mean, when I work in England, it's. A lot of the big movies have. They always have fabricators. We're just not as used to it in la and it's often seen as simply a sourcing job.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:55:03]:

But I don't treat it. I mean, that's not what I do. So I like all. I mean, it's kind of like asking, what's my favorite kid? You know, I just don't have one. They're all. They all take a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of thought. And I'm, you know, really lucky to be able to work on a movie like this where everybody. This movie in particular, Superman, everyone was super into it and really.

Kim Wannop [00:55:27]:

Oh, that's awesome.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:55:28]:

Really deeply involved. So that was pretty fantastic.

Kim Wannop [00:55:33]:

I am going to do just a minute of talking about a couple of your awesome films because I can't not talk about your history, your resume, your career, who you've inspired. Me and I know countless other decorators, whether you're starting out or where you. Whether you just watch Superman. You are inspiring, I have to tell you that. Always. I started to look into it, like, makes me kind of like, woozy. The directors that you have worked with.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:56:11]:

Yeah, me too.

Kim Wannop [00:56:12]:

Wes Craven, Christopher Columbus twice, Kenny Ortega, Wolfgang Peterson, Michael Bay, four times. Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, Gus Van Sant, Terrence Malick, Robert d', Mexico, Robert Zemeckis, Nancy Myers, Tim Burton, Gore Verbinski, three times, Tony Scott twice, Peter Berg, Michael Mann, M. Night shyamalan, Quentin Tarantino, J.J. abrams and James Gunn twice. And there's more. But that's like. You've covered like the plethora of the talent of directors in the past 20 years. I mean, it's.

Kim Wannop [00:56:52]:

It's unbelievable that just that look. And then when you go to the designers that you've worked with, Jack Fisk, Rick Carter, John Huntman, Rick Hendrickson, Hendrix, Jeff Mann, John Murr, Neil Specig, I always say that wrong. Nathan Crawley, Jim Bissell, Jeffrey Beecroft, Peter Wenman, I mean, Doug Meredick, Darren Guilford, Ramsey Avery twice. I mean, you've worked with Beth twice. I mean, it's an amazing amount of people to have been in contact with in the universe of film. And you've been able to branch to all of these different genres and all of these different designers and decorators or designers and directors. Like, I'm in awe when I look at your accomplishments, I really am in awe of you sometimes.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:57:56]:

Thanks. It's not without, I mean, it's joyful to be able to work with all these incredible geniuses. It's also very complicated. I mean, they're complicated people. I mean, they've got very strong opinions and they, you know, you know, some of them are rather obscure about what they want. Some of them are very specific. Some of them are tricky and change their minds. I mean, there's situations where people are in another country while you're prepping and they have come in for a meeting and then suddenly they go away to do many other things that they do because some of them are very busy people.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:58:35]:

And then they come back and you've developed some ideas that you thought you were doing right, and they don't want those anymore because they changed the script and they forgot to tell you.

Kim Wannop [00:58:42]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [00:58:42]:

So a lot of things happen. And so it's, it's, it definitely keeps you on your toes. And it's, you know, people sometimes ask me what do you like period or period historical fiction movies or biopics, or do you like romantic comedy or do you like tech movies or do you like, you know, current day, you know, action films or superhero movies? They all have a lot to recommend them. And I guess the big privilege for me is not having been pigeonholed. And I don't mean to, to imply that people who do specialize and say tech films or really would rather only do period movies have any flaws. I mean, that's fantastic. I just, honestly, I don't even know if it was by choice of mine that my career ended up being so varied, but I'm thrilled that it did. My early theater experience, building sets and doing lights and making props and having to make something out of nothing, ended up serving me well because I was able to focus on the fabrication process pretty early in my career.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:00:00]:

And it was, it became second nature as I started to do it early. Early on I did the first really big build that I did was the Flintstones. And again, we had set decoration, had illustrator, had set designers, had builders, had painters, had sculptors, the whole gamut. And you know, that was almost like, I mean, it wasn't really, really early in my career, but it was early enough that I was still drawing on that super early experience. And I think that was wonderful that that sea got planted because it, you know, guess what? I was able to ride, ride a lot of fabricated movies for a long time. But I always love diving back into historical projects like Cape Late or Something like that. That was fantastic working with Quentin Tarantino. You know, one movie, one director you didn't have to mention was one of my favorites was John Watts from Spider man, no Way Home.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:00:54]:

What an ace of a director character. He was something else. Great guy. Really together, focused and clear and fun to work for. But there's lots of them. I mean, they're all interesting. They all have a completely different tone. I mean, that's.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:01:16]:

That's the. That's the cool thing, right, is they all are completely different. And the, like the set that you've got on the screen now, which is actually from Spider Man.

Kim Wannop [01:01:26]:

I know. I just realized that I have, like, the wrong name and I have the wrong.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:01:29]:

That's okay. But it's Spider man, no Way Home and Movie. And this particular set was the Filipino guy. That's his nana's home. And that was a lot of fun. What. What does a Filipino grandma in the US look like? What does her place look like? And that was so fun. I mean, every time you get to dive in to a cultural newness or.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:01:55]:

And you've talked about this on your podcast, treating that respectfully, absorbing it, reflecting it, checking it with people that are experts in that, in that particular nationality, culture, religion, whatever it is, avoiding tropes, making it genuine, having it feel inhabited. Yeah, you know, that's true for spaceships, too. I mean, they have to feel like people live there and work, work there, and it's got a reality and it makes sense. Sometimes. I mean, a spaceship can be designed by me, by us, in my department. Sometimes I get the design from other people. Sometimes I just. And, you know, you talked about early or what am I just, you know, an executor? Sometimes I am like, somebody else drew that bench.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:02:48]:

I didn't have that much to do with it. We just had it made. Actually, I'm lying. I think construction built those benches, guardians of the desk, the desks and things like that. I mean, there was, you know, but there's always interpretation along the way. No matter what. No matter whether you're handed in an illustration and said, here, make this. Make this be.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:03:07]:

There's always interpretation along the way because maybe what was drawn was going to fall over, right? And it's going to need some counter balancing and maybe it needs more legs and maybe we've got to figure out a way to do that. Or maybe it doesn't really accommodate the action because part of my role is to make sure it's actually going to fit the scene that's written for it. Or that's rehearsed on it. It always changes as rehearsals happen. So, you know, part of my responsibility is not to just do exactly what's been drawn. I have to make sure it's going.

Kim Wannop [01:03:37]:

To work on the day because there's other elements in the room that you have in mind or that, that you're planning to use that if it doesn't work with. Also, I find that, like, oh, this is built this way, but this doesn't really go, you know, can we alter. I know I can alter this. I can't alter what I've chosen here. And if they work together more, you know, that's one of the great things about fabricating that you can make changes if time and money are allotted, you know.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:04:01]:

But, yeah, I mean, I've been working on some larger budget films, but when I, you know, occasionally. Just a few years ago, I needed to stay in town. I think we were moving or remodeling or something. And I took. You mentioned Doug Mierdink, who's a lovely production designer. I did a small movie with him yesterday with Jennifer Garner and a small domestic comedy. It was fun. But that was great.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:04:29]:

I mean, just having, you know, coming down and doing just a normal people's living room was just. It was fun. And, you know, oh, gosh, Hocus Pocus.

Kim Wannop [01:04:39]:

I have to ask about Hocus books because it's such a. People love that. People love that movie and they're so into that. There's going to be a part two. I mean, there was a part two. Well, that's.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:04:52]:

Part two came out. I must admit. I didn't see. But yeah, I mean, the reason why Hocus Pocus is so popular and when I have young people in my department and I tell them I did Hocus Pocus, they just about fall down.

Kim Wannop [01:05:04]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:05:04]:

But it's because they saw it when they were two.

Kim Wannop [01:05:06]:

Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:05:08]:

I want.

Kim Wannop [01:05:09]:

All I want to talk to you about is Teen Wolf. Okay. That's all I want to talk about. But I'm not, you know, I don't.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:05:16]:

Know if I can remember Teen Wolf, but okay. But yeah, I mean, we made some wonder. We made a custom cauldron and we made, you know, beautiful portraits of wishes and wonderful. We made a lot of stuff for this movie. William Bill Sandel was a production designer. It was a. It was a lot of fun. And it was, you know, it was a lot of fun doing Hocus Pocus.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:05:37]:

We got to go to, you know, Massachusetts and visit all the witch museums and the sailing museums and just all kinds of great stuff. It was a lot of fun. We in this film, we had a lot of Halloween decorations because, you know, we go back and forth in history, of course, and modern day Halloween happens a number of a lot of Halloween decorations. And we had a pact that we would never buy Halloween decorations. Every single thing was homemade. And the tricky part was pumpkins because we shot so long, we ran out of pumpkin season and they all started rotting in the warehouse. So we ended up discovering back in the day when they were fairly new freeze dried pumpkins.

Kim Wannop [01:06:17]:

Oh, wow.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:06:18]:

Saved our butts.

Kim Wannop [01:06:20]:

Wow. That's the trick because I usually have to do. I feel like I've done Halloween in like July and August so many times. That's the one that episode comes up or whatever and it's always like, are they ripe yet or can we get some? Can we go buy some?

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:06:36]:

I'm pretty sure they still make freeze dried pumpkins.

Kim Wannop [01:06:39]:

That's a good.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:06:41]:

They are actual pumpkins. So they don't have. They don't look all like each other. Yeah, and those are great.

Kim Wannop [01:06:47]:

That's a great tip.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:06:49]:

They didn't rot.

Kim Wannop [01:06:50]:

How about Amistad? Do you have a good. Do you have a memory of that film?

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:06:54]:

Yeah. Amistad was, was dramatically wonderful project for us. Another one where we were able to, you know, do some traveling. We were all over the place. I was working with a storied production designer, Rick Carter, with whom I've worked with a couple of times including Star Wars Rise of Skywalker. So Spectrum with Mr. Rick Carter. Yeah, yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:07:20]:

I mean, this is amazing. I mean, being able. This was very specific period. 1840. We were shooting all over the east coast as well as on stage in la, on shoot ships all over the place. I had the opportunity to do everything from the Queen of England to the President of the United States to middle level lawyer's office. This is John Adams library. The picture you have here all the way down to slave ships and African plantations and slave markets.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:07:47]:

We shot in Puerto Rico. That's where I first worked in Puerto Rico many, many eons ago. And so the spectrum of 1840 that I was able to. Had to learn about and portray because the thing about an era is that you have that wide variety of slices in every era, so in nationalities. So this was a wide ranging movie. And you know, I had to learn about argon lamps, which is what you see here. You know, the transition between whale oil and other kinds of oil. Just.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:08:23]:

It was really a project of discovery. I was Lucky enough early on to be in Rhode island and I went over to Wintateur, which is an amazing museum and garden and they have the most wonderful exhibit, exhibits of different periods of American history and especially decorative arts. And the curator was so kind and he gave me this whirlwind tour of everything 1840. And I was so grateful. Oh my God. Because you can read about it and read about it and read about it, but when you've got it in front of you and he can tell you the difference between this is 1840, that's 1830, that's 1860, don't make the mistake of putting 1860 in 1840. You can put 1830 in 1840, you can put 1800 in 1840, but don't go to 1860 and explaining the differences between the fuels because it completely changed the lighting at this period.

Kim Wannop [01:09:19]:

So the things we learn, it's an amazing job. This is one of the best things I love about this job is the research. I love it. I love researching things I would have never had an interest in or anything. And just learning and the day to day life. Like you're saying, like how it changed their light. Like that's crazy.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:09:39]:

Yeah. There's a bunch, there's a series of books by a guy named Witold Rabinski that I find to be wonderful for understanding how people live. Material history impacts their environments and how they live. Like, did they have a lot of stuff? Did they not have a lot of stuff? I mean, what we do, it's really important to know what's real. And then a director or a designer may want to tweak that a bit on this film. I remember being schooled a little bit by Rick Carter. There was a big fancy dinner scene that we shot, one of the mansions in New Newport, Rhode Island. And I had, I was going to town researching the fabulous ancient, you know, period cookbooks and period decor books and, or, you know, publications that were all drawn.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:10:34]:

You know, there's no photography yet and you know, the beautiful cakes and the beautiful floral decorations between the chandeliers and just fabulousness. And he just turned to me and went, don't go over the top, Steven. Steelwork's not going to like it. It's going to distract the point. So I just went, you know, I was so excited.

Kim Wannop [01:10:58]:

I'll take it home.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:10:59]:

No, beautiful, you know, but I mean, it was still beautiful, believe me. But it was, it was a good lesson and it really was. It goes back to what we were talking about, about the bed for Superman. I am not the movie is not about the bedspread. The movie is not about the dinner table. It's about the conversation. So support the conversation in every way you can and you'll be golden.

Kim Wannop [01:11:19]:

What about Castaway?

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:11:23]:

Castaway is a movie that I shared with the lovely and amazing Karen o'. Hara. So I did the part that was before he went to the island.

Kim Wannop [01:11:31]:

You're. You're the. I couldn't. I was like. I took a chance.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:11:37]:

He did an incredible job. And then she went on to do what Lies Beneath with Robert Zemeckis, and I did not. So we did. We did a FedEx plane that crashed. We did a FedEx facility. We did a house where Tom Hanks. It was a big Thanksgiving dinner scene. I can't even remember all the sets we did, but we did this sort of.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:12:00]:

Before he gets. Gets. We did the plane crash, but we didn't do the aftermath where he's cast away on an island. So that's. That was one. It was wonderful to be able to split that with such a fine colleague.

Kim Wannop [01:12:14]:

Yeah. Well, I love that movie. I've watched it too many times. How did you like doing Psycho and trying to duplicate a classic? How was that? Was that. I'm talking about pressure. I mean.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:12:27]:

Well, yeah. I mean, Gus Van Sant's a really interesting guy, and watching the original movie was fun. I watched it a whole lot of times and. And, you know, I mean, we took a little bit more liberty than you might think in terms of the set. But, you know, and we. Ours was much updated. You know, it wasn't. It wasn't in the exact sets that were the same by any means.

Kim Wannop [01:12:57]:

So still. Psych. I mean, you still were able to, like, redo Psycho. Like, that's. That's an amazing feat in itself. Like.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:13:06]:

Well, again, it's. It's selection.

Kim Wannop [01:13:08]:

It's your interpretation of it, but it's still.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:13:10]:

It was an interpretation. So we didn't copy. I mean, some things. You remember the old house of props that went out of business some years ago. They actually had some stuff from the original Psycho, which was fantastic. There was some. There was a particular kind of Victorian mourning, art of mourning, like. Like they were really into.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:13:35]:

Because a lot of people died of either dread, diseases, wars, Civil War, you name it. And Civil War was so damaging, so many people died. So there was a grief industry. And there were these folded hands that you find in various ways. And these were folded. They were little bronze folded hands on a pillow that were, you know, kept in people's boudoirs. Or something to remember their poor departed relative. And these hands were.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:14:02]:

That were in the original Psycho. There they were at. So that was pretty fun. And I think there were some other things, some, some statues and some things like that. So, you know, when we could, we would put them in as an homage. But our brief. I was working with. I was working with Tom.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:14:23]:

God, I can't remember the name of the person. Anyway. Tom Foden. Tom Foden was a production designer and he, he actually really was pushing the envelope to go different. And then the director and Gus Van Sant was kind of reeling him in. There was a little bit of a back and forth on that. Conversation was interesting, but. Yeah, it was interesting.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:14:41]:

I mean, yeah, I mean, there's always going to be a check in table, which is this motel check in table. But I don't think it looks like the original one at all.

Kim Wannop [01:14:51]:

I mean, it's, it's a different version, but it's. Yeah, I don't. I, I feel like if, if that, if an opportunity came like that to me, I would jump on it and then I would be like, oh, oh, oh, all right. Like, I feel like I would have like, oh, no. This was, this is supposed to be exciting. And now I have all this pressure.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:15:15]:

Well, the hardest, the hardest part of that movie for me was that when you go into the basement, our basement was quite different than the basement in the original Psycho. But we, but there was, there was a. There's a taxidermy theme that also comes from the first movie. And we were, we were meant to have a taxidermied owl.

Kim Wannop [01:15:33]:

Okay.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:15:33]:

And it, because that was in the original set, they go. Now it turns out that you can't have, you can't even have a taxidermic owl, even if it's old anymore because it's sort of like eagles are protected, so it's a thing.

Kim Wannop [01:15:48]:

Fish off. Didn't have an owl for you.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:15:51]:

Well, they, if they had, they wouldn't be allowed to rent it.

Kim Wannop [01:15:54]:

Right. Oh.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:15:56]:

So we had to create a taxidermied owl, which took a few tries, let's just put it that way.

Kim Wannop [01:16:05]:

Now I know. Now you know. Now you know why there's no taxidermy owls in films. It's not. You can't have it. Yeah, see, who knew? Did you have fun on Public Enemy?

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:16:16]:

Well, it was actually called Public Enemies, but yes, I did. It was in Chicago and Wisconsin and we actually shot in the original. That's my dog waking up from a nap. We shot in the original cab, like getaway Hotel where Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. John Dillinger. Johnny Depp as John Dillinger. Where the actual John.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:16:44]:

John Dillinger holed up and then was. Was tremendously shot up by the nascent Secret Service. Or. So we shot there. We shot all over Chicago. We built some. A few sets in Chicago, shot prisons. I was an amazing.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:17:04]:

It was a really complicated movie and that we had hardly any prep on. And it was really fast. I got to work with Nathan Crowley. It was amazing. But it was all really quick. And the 1930s thing, I mean, Michael Mann is from Chicago, Very specific about certain areas of Chicago. His father was a grocer. He got all over me like flies on rice because I wasn't stacking the cans correctly in the window of the grocery store next to the theater, which is where Giant Depp was killed.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:17:38]:

So, I mean, it's just, you know, some of these guys are complicated. You know, they're. They're some people. I mean, you talked about specificity from a director. Michael Mann is a very specific man. So. And we prepped this really fast. I brought truckloads of stuff from la, Got truckloads of stuff from all over the place.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:17:58]:

Collectors of this kind of office furniture that was from the early century. All the Steel Casey stuff. Steel, whatever the name of that place. Those fabricators of the early metal furniture for offices.

Kim Wannop [01:18:16]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:18:17]:

I've had to have my brain stuffed with so much information. Furniture company. I mean, all I could think about was the name of that furniture company for three months. But now I can't remember. But so, yeah, I mean, you get to be an expert on lots of things on every project. And it's a lot of fun looking at old pictures because it's like, oh, yeah, look at that.

Kim Wannop [01:18:39]:

I'm not going to keep you too much longer, but I have to ask you about Star wars because to me, that is. That's my. Like, that would be the ultimate for me to work on anything. Star Wars. And so how were you in the project? Were you nervous about taking over a Star wars film? Or were you like. Yeah, yeah. And it was really a lot.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:19:08]:

I mean, you had. First of all, I was. I did not, you know, nurse at the. The mom of Star Wars. I was. I had to learn it and I had to learn everything because I. I had seen them, but I had. I hadn't absorbed.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:19:21]:

Well, and it was a very, very wonderful happenstance that I got the job that I went. Got to go to England, live in England for over a year, work with an amazing crew that had been Doing them. So thank God, at least some of them. My prop master was. Is Jamie Wilcomson. Hardly my prop master. He is the prop master for Star wars and he continues to work on things connected to the, this franchise and many other incredible films. So he, the prop master in England is, is an equivalent to a prop master, B, lead person, C, head of fabrication.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:20:02]:

So it's a completely different job. And set decoration is larger also because you're in charge of the job is bigger. You do all hardware down to the hinges, down to. And that includes like made up hardware, like spaceship stuff.

Kim Wannop [01:20:16]:

Right?

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:20:18]:

All consoles. I mean, this is from design to execution. This is all the way through. So I had like 175 people working for me. We also did. We're also in charge of graphics. The graphics team works for Sentex for the movie.

Kim Wannop [01:20:31]:

Oh, wow.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:20:33]:

And you know, I had a very. I had a large art department of my own. And then of course, you know, the buying team, assistant set decorators, the whole prop making teams, painters, gardeners, sculptors. It was a lot of. It was 175 people most of the time. So. And we were in several countries. We were in, in London as well as Jordan.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:21:02]:

And we built a new civilization in Jordan with tents. And it was a religious celebration. And that was like. I had this huge drape routine we made. We covered a quarter of an acre of the desert in, in Jordan, the Wadi Rum, which is a beloved national park that many people have visited on their trips to Jordan. Um, it's incredible. Quarter of an acre full of tents that we made in our drapery shop and in our, our elf shop, like people making all kinds of stuff. Puppet tents and food tents and trinket tents and hangout tents.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:21:46]:

And these things were huge. And drawing them, conceiving of them having concept artists. I mean this is an enormous, enormous effort from the, you know, the first order spaceships to the rebel environments to this. This, this particular set is in the, the snowy city, as it's called. It has a name. And this is the basement of the, the robot workshop. Excuse me, the droid workshop. I do that mistake sometimes.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:22:23]:

And for this one we manufactured like a zillion robot legs and robot arms and robot heads and robot parts and there's Easter eggs all over the place. People troll this set and say, I can't believe there's a red bad robot in that set that's such an obnoxious little Easter egg. I was like, well, hello, the director.

Kim Wannop [01:22:42]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:22:45]:

And there were all kinds of, of little Easter egg robot asteroids in the Set and then, you know, the oil bath and all that stuff. So it does go on. I mean, there was a lot of complicated things. We also redid the interior of the tattooing.

Kim Wannop [01:23:05]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:23:05]:

You know, we made. It just goes on.

Kim Wannop [01:23:07]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:23:08]:

Oh, my goodness.

Kim Wannop [01:23:08]:

There's so many stuff. There's so many things.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:23:11]:

It's dramatic. Yes, a lot.

Kim Wannop [01:23:13]:

Well, especially when it's not. It's not real history, it's someone making it. I mean, that's even harder, I feel like, to learn the history of, like, Star wars and all of that. Besides, like, opening a book of, you know, 1860 or 1830, like, there's a difference.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:23:27]:

It's kind of is a history, I mean, because it's equally complicated, if not more so. And you have to learn it. You have to learn the logic behind it. You have to learn the lines, the linear languages of the different cultures. Because there's a cult. There's a linear language. For the. For the first order, there was actually two production designers in the end, Kevin Jenkins and.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:23:50]:

And Rick Carter. Kevin Jenkins was promoted from being the, like, supervisor of illustration for. For Lucas. And he ended up being a wonderful source of information. Like, he should. Showed me and sort of schooled me on how it all came out of NASA. Early NASA, because some of the German scientists had come over and helped and designers, like graphic designer people had been working in, you know, engineering and things like that came over and ended up designing, like, panels for NASA spaceships early, early. So that the astronauts wouldn't be confused if there was.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:24:29]:

If the cabin got smoked up or the lights were all off or, you know, they were trying. There would be, like, lines around every little panel of controls with a certain logic. And that was absolutely brought in because. Because George Lucas hired some of these guys to work for him. And I mean, the lore is in the books, but I had never read it, so I. It was great to know all that. It is like, learning history and then the style of the. Of the.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:24:56]:

Of the Resistance and the Rebellion, it's. You can even go to Disneyland and see the swooping wires and, you know, all the things that you have to do, but you have to interpret them in a way that's original and new and cool. In my Skywalker, I probably were. My Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, I probably worked. I worked a lot with textiles. I was. I was having a lot of fun coming up with, trying to come up with something different. And the other thing I tried to de.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:25:24]:

Emphasize was using things from India because a lot of the set decorators and it looked great, but I just wanted to do something different. Used a lot of things straight out of India because it's like the exotic. It looks exotic, but I just said, you know, I mean, we. Believe me, we use some things from India. But, you know, I tried to get away from it. I tried to come up with something a little different. And we think we're pretty successful.

Kim Wannop [01:25:46]:

Oh, yeah, it's such a great. I just showed the boy. The boys had seen the original three, and. And they love the Java the Hutt stuff. But then I was like, you know, there's more movies. There's when, you know, Scott, he was a little boy, and I tried to explain that these actually came first. And then we had. I had to, like, draw it.

Kim Wannop [01:26:03]:

And then I was like, these are the last movies.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:26:05]:

These are.

Kim Wannop [01:26:06]:

You want to go to the. And so we watched most of them. You know, they play a little bit in between, but the. The big scenes and everything. So they've seen basically all nine of three. Yeah, nine of them. They love. They love Star Wars.

Kim Wannop [01:26:19]:

I guess I've turned them into little dorks. But it's fine. I don't care. They loved it.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:26:25]:

So that's a lot of viewing hours.

Kim Wannop [01:26:27]:

Yeah, well, not in, like one weekend. This is over. Over time. But yeah, believe me, they play in between. It's. It's in the background. But they still love it. It's still a great series with, you know, it's still the.

Kim Wannop [01:26:41]:

The sword playing and, you know, all the dark and light and the good and the bad and, you know, it's awesome.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:26:48]:

They love it and they did a great job on it. And you know, those guys that make Oops, that make the droids, the Creature Shop, are incredible. They're just amazing. They're inspiring.

Kim Wannop [01:27:04]:

The Kingsman, I was such a fantastic film. So, I mean. And that was your. That's what you did right before Superman, was that.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:27:14]:

No, that was some years back. That was during my England phase because I was in Atlanta for like four.

Kim Wannop [01:27:21]:

Oh, Captain America was what you did. Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:27:24]:

Before that I did yes Day, which was my la. LA little movie. Before that, I did Star Wars. Before that, I did another little movie in la, similar hotel selling room something. And then Kingsman was also in England before that. So that was in. Came out in 2017. So that was with my friend, the designer Darren Guilford, and director Matthew Bond, and who conceived of this concept.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:27:53]:

And this was the second in the series. And yeah, the conceit is that, I mean, you may know the story. It's the Kingsman are a highfalutin British nobility looking bunch of guys who hide in plain sight. But really, they're.

Kim Wannop [01:28:09]:

They're really fun movies. They're really.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:28:11]:

Yeah, but there's a lot of, you know, cartoonish violence and some people object to that, but, you know, it's. That's what he does.

Kim Wannop [01:28:17]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:28:19]:

Very funny film.

Kim Wannop [01:28:20]:

Yeah, it's a good.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:28:22]:

Julianne Moore was great as our villain in that because we made this huge set. Poppy. Poppy's villager. Poppy, whatever we call it. And it's. It was. She was exiled out to Southeast Asia someplace, and she lives in this jungly mountaintop, but she's created this 1950s city for herself that's all fake and has a beauty salon. It's all 1950s.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:28:46]:

And. And the big set is a diner interior. And so we build facades and neon and movie theaters and it was crazy.

Kim Wannop [01:28:53]:

That's a lot of.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:28:54]:

So there was a lot of big builds on it. This particular set that you have a picture of is. Is when the Kingsmen come. They made an alliance with a group, similar group in the United States. That is their cover is that there are Whiskey distillery in Kentucky. And so this is the Kentucky Whiskey distillery conference room.

Kim Wannop [01:29:12]:

Yeah, I love the tone on tone and like the hugeness of the room and that they nice wide shot of like showing how different all of your films are. I'm just, you know, trying to get these pictures to thinking like, oh my gosh, there's just so many different times and so many different styles and you just have gotten to do so many. It's so awesome.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:29:35]:

I found a lot of good help over the years, I can tell you that much. Certainly don't do it alone.

Kim Wannop [01:29:39]:

All right, last one. I know I'm kept you so long, but I have to ask you about Hateful Eight. Was it awesome? Was it hard?

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:29:45]:

Was it Hateful eight's awesome? I mean, Quentin Tarantino is a really interesting guy, so. And he's got a lot of great ideas and he's wonderful the actors. He creates this incredible tone on the set. Nobody can bring a cell phone anywhere near him. You've got to check it at the door. He's got a PA specifically organized to keep people off their phones. And it's real. Everybody pays attention and everybody feels like it's a real.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:30:09]:

A real artistic space.

Kim Wannop [01:30:11]:

Right.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:30:13]:

And you know, we were in Telluride, Colorado or near there. Anyway, we're staying in Telluride and drove a while to get to our site where we built this beautiful, huge sort of lodge, which was like a stagecoach stop. And the idea is that it's around 1870, so it's after the Civil War. And the themes are coming out of the Civil War from the racism and the hatred and the death and all of that stuff. And so it's got a really rich and interesting backstory. And.

Kim Wannop [01:30:50]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:30:51]:

You know, again, put on plenty of violence. Yeah.

Kim Wannop [01:30:55]:

And.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:30:55]:

And we did. We had a wonderful time kitting out the stagecoach. I mean, it was. We granted a stagecoach, but it was. Had to be quite. Quite changed. We did a beautiful tool leather backdrop for, you know, behind the heads. And we did, like, new, like, leather shades and luggage.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:31:14]:

And, you know, all this kind of stuff worked with. Oh, actually the prop master was dominoic and shared the luggage thing. And just a lot of things had to happen because it was almost like. Was it a stage play?

Kim Wannop [01:31:30]:

It's almost like a play because a lot of it happened. Almost all of it happens in this one lodge.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:31:36]:

So my theater experience, again, comes in handy because you realize that you can make a decision where a big fur is gonna be ca. You know, thrown over a beam, but it might be in the way of a later scene. So it's this whole rehearsal process trying to figure out where everything's gonna be and the, you know, the stunts. Quentin is famous for the blood blocking out his stunts in advance. But I will say that no disrespect intended, but that might be a slight exaggeration. So there was a lot of, you know, figuring out on the day or a couple days before and lots of refabrication of slip covers or something.

Kim Wannop [01:32:18]:

I'm sure that's. That would be. My blood goes everywhere. A lot of blood.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:32:23]:

And, you know, Quentin has his own specific blood formula at whatever blood place he gets it from, and there's a lot of it. And also, when we were shooting this, we shot it in. We shot the exterior and interior on the mountain and Telluride. It happened, unfortunately, to be a very warm winter, so he wasn't getting the snow that he wanted. So I can't remember if it was in the cards in the beginning, but it became pretty evident that we were going to have to rebuild this whole cabin interior on stage, pack it up over, like, a long weekend. This is a big cabin. This is not just a cabin.

Kim Wannop [01:33:02]:

It was huge.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:33:03]:

And redress it all in LA. And then he refrigerated the stage to, like, 32 degrees or something during the summer, so it. Or it was hot. So that was another adventure that we had. But one of my favorite sets here we had a beautiful barn that we did. It was so stark and gorgeous, but this was a lot of fun. I had, again, some incredible help on this.

Kim Wannop [01:33:31]:

You have a ton of dressing and, like, period dressing and cups and hanging in a country store.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:33:41]:

Karen Frick and Alex Brandenburg, my niece, helped me with it. A bunch of wonderful people as well. Graphics was huge. Again, I. I really like having my own graphics department. It makes a huge difference. I know a lot of set decorators don't get to have that privilege, but it. It's just.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:34:00]:

I really don't like to be at the bottom of anybody else's due list, I can tell you that much.

Kim Wannop [01:34:03]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:34:05]:

And when the work starts to multiply, people really underestimate the importance of graphic design, and so they tend to underfund the area. And there's usually maybe one, maybe two people doing it for. For the whole art department, and it's never enough. Those people are always under the gun. Graphics just snowballs. I mean, it's.

Kim Wannop [01:34:23]:

It comes up and. And then you have one more meeting, and then something else comes up and, oh, we need to cover this. Or, you know, let's get a specific calendar or whatever it is. It. It does. It's always.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:34:35]:

Yeah. And this is a store, so there's just all this period packaging that we had to manufacture. So, you know, and. And Quentin, of course, was making up brands, so he had specific Easter egg ideas that he had. So there's lots of that, too.

Kim Wannop [01:34:49]:

That's fun. I have kept you way longer than I promised. I'm sorry, but I have. I had you. I had to ask about all this wonderful, wonderful things that you've done. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you being able to talk about it. And I loved.

Kim Wannop [01:35:04]:

I loved Superman. I would. I would go see it again. I have off. I might go see it again. I don't know.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:35:09]:

I hope you will. It's. It's a really fun film.

Kim Wannop [01:35:12]:

Yeah.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:35:12]:

Really proud of it in front of all of us. It was a big group effort.

Kim Wannop [01:35:16]:

Congratulations. It's really, really super film.

Rosemary Brandenburg [01:35:20]:

Thank you, Kim.