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How do you make a murderer empathetic?
Maybe give him Josh Harnett’s face. Position him as a goofy dad with a star-struck daughter. Sprinkle in some tragic backstory. And top it off with some movie wizardry, like costuming and production design, to win the audience to his side.
We’re talking about M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie, Trap, by the way, a delightful cat-and-mouse story of Cooper (Hartnett), the serial killer who unwittingly puts himself in the middle of a dragnet operation at a concert. He’s got his daughter in tow and is surrounded by preteen girls and a jealous PTA mom.
Will he escape? As an audience member, you really end up pulling for the guy who should be a villain.
The film knows exactly what it is and leans into it with aplomb, unspooling in a series of fun obstacles and encounters, giving us a stellar performance from Hartnett and some fun songs from Saleka Shyamalan as Lady Raven. And its ability to make Cooper a protagonist to root for is really deft on several levels—including the production design.
Debbie De Villa helped craft the design on the film in the traditional sense but also had to design Lady Raven’s concert sets in a way that mirrored character journeys. The environments offered subconscious storytelling, which we learned about during our chat with De Villa. Learn about these secrets and other advice below.
Editor’s note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
No Film School: I’d love to know more about your background and how you came into production design.
Debbie De Villa: Well, I started very early, actually. I decided when I was still in high school that it was a career path I wanted to pursue. And really it was a very unusual one at that time. It wasn’t even possible to go to college for it. It didn’t exist even at that time.
So what I wound up doing is studying set design for theater. From the research I did, it seemed like that would be a good pathway in. And then when I was in college, I spent as much time as I could in the film department. I went to SUNY Purchase, and I worked on many student films. I worked with the faculty, and that actually became my network when I graduated. So I had access to entry level jobs in the film industry from that.
NFS: Did you just know that you wanted to be in the art department?
De Villa: I knew I wanted to be in the art department. I was kind of obsessed about art from an early age, building dioramas and collage and sculpture, everything. I was really consumed by it.
And we are going back a few decades. Things were very different for women, and I didn’t know how I was going to make a living with art. So I started thinking about that in high school in terms of, what career paths would I have as an artist besides an art teacher, what could there be?
I went to see an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and it was about production designers and showed the art and craft of production design. And I knew I had an interest in storytelling as well. So it seemed like a perfect marriage for me. Once I started college and I started studying set design in general for theater, I was in my element. The idea of taking a story and transforming it into a three-dimensional environment really suited me.
NFS: On Trap, what was your process? How did you and M. Night Shyamalan get started?
De Villa: He’s an amazing talent, and it was a great experience to work with him. We started a soft prep probably in the spring and started a full prep in the summer.
But in the soft prep, we would have some meetings, looking at images together, starting dialogues about color and how we felt about the story. And one of the main aspects story-wise for visuals to me, was the idea that Cooper … the audience should have some empathy for the guy. And how do you support that visually? So that came about with color and texture and working with the costume designer.
NFS: Oh, I’d love to hear more about that. How does the color play into us wanting to root for this character that we probably wouldn’t otherwise?
De Villa: Yeah, I think we were talking about earth tones and softer colors so that he wasn’t scary looking and he didn’t have anything hard-edged on him. And he’s a dad. He’s just kind of a cuddly, lovable dad. But then there’s the dark side. So that’s what we were working with.
And there were two worlds, design-wise, in the film. There was the arena, and then there was once he’s out of the arena, and the palette did shift a little bit. And when working with his house, again, there was, not to give away too much about the film, but there was a contrast we were looking for between the female energy and the male energy in the house. And I worked on that with saturation and a little bit cooler in the dining room for that end scene.
NFS: The beginning felt like a lot of purple, and a little bit of orange, if I’m remembering correctly. And then the latter half of the movie is colder.
De Villa: It was warmer. There were reds, there were purples. It was definitely warmer in the beginning when he has all the threat and danger around him. And then when it transgresses into his home, it was a little bit more cool and organic.
I was trying to give him that feeling of the empathy, the everyman in the neighborhood, and what he was presenting to the neighborhood.
NFS: In terms of the arena parts that a lot of people have probably seen in the trailers, what was it like working in those sets?
De Villa: That was actually the most exciting design aspect of the film for me because it’s such an unusual element in a film, working with more of a theater vibe going into the arena, what the restrictions would be. We were in the middle of rehearsal, and then we had to load out, or they had a show one weekend and then we could load back in.
So the set that I designed had to have a certain amount of flexibility to allow that, because we knew that going in, working with a lot of screens and working with some lighting technicians and other more theatrical people on the film. So that aspect of the collaboration was a very different and unique experience for me. We did design the concert as a whole as if it was a full production, and that was challenging to do while trying to design the film as well.
Night had a strong idea of what he wanted stylistically of the concert. So then I took that and interpreted it per song. We knew how many songs would be in the concert, and we were looking to express Lady Raven’s growth. And Night also liked the presence of elements.
So what I did was, each song connected to a different element. It progressed to air. So we did fire, we did water, we did air. And so the idea that by the time it’s air, she’s free and released. And I think the “Release” one, the song when she’s on stage playing piano, you might remember we had a lot of water, green. So we were trying to tie in elements visually with the songs and have that progression.
She is coming to her power in the concert, we’re showing her growth. And I think that we were looking to parallel that through the film, that by the time she’s in the bathroom scene, she’s got her power and in a very scary time, she’s holding her own.
And if you remember when Cooper is walking towards the backstage at that moment, we use a black scrim to project her image on. And so she was really, really large over him. So we were playing with that connection between the two of them through the concert.
Warner Bros.
NFS: I love that, because throughout the film, he is so large, he’s taller than everyone. Is there a set that was your favorite to work on?
De Villa: I personally loved the TV monitors that they were dancing in. I thought that was very successful, in my opinion, from what I was trying to achieve.
And there was so much about looking at screens in the film, whether they were their phone screens, monitors, just a lot of people were using their phones to videotape her, this whole connection to monitors. So I used that image to build that on the set.
And when the choreographer saw that, she then riffed off that, and she did some beautiful work with the dancers on there, and I thought it all just came together so nicely in terms of a moment in the concert.
NFS: Do you have any advice for anyone wanting to get into production design or the art department?
De Villa: I think education is helpful. To a certain point, I think an appreciation of basic art and design principles is entry point. But people do come into the art department from many different avenues, and I happen to have studied set design. I’ve worked with people who’ve studied architecture, art, history, fine painting, but usually some kind of craft of the arts to enter in.
I am a big believer in dabbling in a little bit of all the different departments in the art department. We are a big team. I always feel like we start so much earlier than the camera department. So we’re almost a movie on its own in the beginning. But we are a very large team and everybody’s contributing. Everybody. It is part of the whole picture. And I think it’s very helpful.
Just do props once. You might not love it, but understand what the relationship is for the actor to what they’re holding and the connection with the director and the action. So that’s a very big piece.
The decorating, you might not really enjoy working with picking out curtains, but it’s still good to understand every detail of what you have to shop for and think about and create, et cetera, et cetera. So I do think a little bit of that broad overview of the art department is super helpful and networking is very important.
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