Sarah Greenwood is a Production Designer, most recently responsible for the perfect dreamland of Barbie (2023). This follows a prestigious career including numerous Oscar nominations for Pride and Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), Anna Karenina (2012) and Darkest Hour (2017). She was kind enough to take the time to discuss her career, thoughts on theatre vs. film, scenic art in her work and how they made Barbie appear ‘toy’
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Thanks so much for speaking with us Sarah. I’d like to begin by asking about your journey into film, especially since I believe you began in theatre design?
Originally I was going to go and do fine art, then I went around various colleges and I was so underwhelmed by what I saw. Then I saw a poster advertising theatre design in Wimbledon School of Art. My family come from Stratford-upon-Avon, obviously the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, so I used to go to the theatre a lot. But it had never occurred to me that you could study theatre design. So, it just seemed like an answer to everything, because it was completely creative but it also had a purpose. And it had what I loved about theatre, which was a definitive kind of parameter – a beginning, a middle and an end. I creatively need parameters. If I was just sitting in a garret somewhere, painting, I just wouldn’t paint anything frankly.
So I went to Wimbledon and had amazing, amazing experiences there. This was the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, so it was all quite political and extreme. On my final project I worked with Derek Jarman. He was our tutor on A Winter’s Tale. We had access to the most amazing people. Afterwards, I got an Arts Council bursary, where they paid you to work in theatre for a year, which was incredible. I worked closely with friends who were theatre designers for a few years, who I thought were geniuses. But I knew I did not design in the way that they did. I admired the way they designed, but I just knew that was not necessarily the way I designed, or could design.
What were the differences between how they designed and you designed?
The kind of theatre that I really liked – and still really like – is the kind of theatre that is minimised. It is refined to the nth degree, rarefied, and cut back. Whereas in film and TV the design is much more practical. If you’re doing a room for Molières as a theatre stage, it’s about what’s not there. But instead what gives you the essence of the play and the period. Whereas, if you were doing Molières as a film, you would be looking for something that captured the period. What I know now about my work is there is a kind of theatricality about it. But you still have to give enough for the film camera. When you’re designing for theatre, you’re designing for one POV; it’s a wide-shot. But TV and film is about designing for the most massive macro close-up right up to the biggest thing in the universe. You are designing universes.
You were telling me about your transition into Film?
I had gone to the BBC, and I loved the BBC. I loved how fast the turnover was. Once you’ve shot it, it's gone. In theatre, sets last for months, possibly years, but with film I loved how it was “here today, gone tomorrow.” Although another crossover between Theatre and TV at the BBC was that some of it was shot live. So you did have that element of reaching a point where you had to get it ready, come what may. I worked out things like Blue Peter; it was just crazy, bits of the set would be lost on a ring road and you’d just have to go “OK, we’re just gonna shoot without” [laughs].
I was at the BBC for about 10 years, which was an amazing training ground. It’s one of the reasons why I think Film and TV in the UK is so brilliant, it was such a strong baseline of learning. I also did lots of music/arts like The Late Show and Later… with Jools Holland but towards the end of my time at the BBC I was doing lots of dramas which, after going freelance, led into feature films.
Didn’t you first work with Joe Wright at the BBC during this time?
I’d actually left the BBC by then, but went back. We both went back to the BBC. Kate Howards was the producer. Nature Boy (2000) was the first thing I worked on with Joe, which was a 4-part show. And then we did Charles II (2003), which we shot in the Czech Republic.
Working with Joe, it was the most amazing meeting of minds. Again, it's this theatricality that he loves and I love. One of the rooms we did on Charles II was based on Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” (1632). So, the inner council chamber was that, and we painted all these faces on the walls around them. It was like they had all their faces in the room. And he has all these faces behind them looking over their shoulders. It’s already starting to play with scale and painting.
Joe Wright studied fine art and video at Central St. Martins. Did you find a commonality in using other mediums within film?
Yes, I think so. But not knowingly. It was part of our language – the way we talked, looked, enjoyed things – but it wasn’t conscious. Plus, Katie [Spencer, Sarah’s regular set decorator] and I both come from Theatre, and in Theatre you can’t put a piece of paper between director and designer. What happens on stage is very much a conversation. It goes back to that idea of refinement; what is the nub of the scene? That’s certainly something Joe is interested in investigating, capturing the essence of the moment.
That’s interesting, because I would have assumed there’s lots of formalised preparation for Production Design. But it sounds more malleable and fluid from what you’re describing.
You’re right it is very formalised. What I’m talking about is more in the conception. What is it about? What is the key? Then you go away and translate what you talked about. I remember for Pride & Prejudice (2005), me, Joe and [locations manager] Adam Richards spent a good six weeks out on the road. We looked about places, talked about scenes, why they would/wouldn’t work. And through that we found our way in.
One of the most important things for filmmaking is having to find your key. It can be imagery, colours, texture, light, mood. It can be anything. It’s never the same way twice. You’re trying to wrangle something nebulous and is the essence of the piece you are making. Another difference between Film and Theatre, is that “essence” can always change on stage. In a film that “essence” needs to be captured but can happen 1000 times, and then you’ve got to hang them all together. I’m baffling myself here, because I’m thinking it’s very complicated! [laughs]
There are a lot of moving parts! I wanted to ask about those initial stages of production, when you are visualising the films. Is there a way you particularly like to go about it, both researching the material as well as visualising and presenting it?
Communicating what it is going to be is one of the most critical things. In Theatre you can make painted detailed models which are 1:25 scale. In Film, you generally don’t have time to do that (that said I’ve made quite a few models!). But there’s no rhyme or reason to this process. It’s whatever is best for the designer, the director, the producer, the studio, whoever. When I’m working with Joe – and we don’t have time or money – I can just describe something to him because we have that language. Whereas other directors require more. Having recently worked with Greta [Gerwig], she said she has complete and utter confidence in me, but that sometimes she doesn’t understand what I say.
Visualisation is important not just for persuading the director, but often you have to show the studios for funding. I use a lot of reference material. I work very closely with Phil Clark, a visual researcher, and we talk in great detail about each project. The images we pull together may be very left-field, and it's about the editing of those images. It challenges certain preconceptions, and you begin to find ones which are absolutely spot on.
Thinking specifically about Barbie (2023), there was a photograph of a suburban circle from above. The key thing became having those BarbieLand houses in a circle, so that was a very critical reference. Truth be told, on Barbie we started with 15,000 visual references – photographs, paintings etc. – and you refine it down from there. So you might have 50 sets, and maybe 20-100 images each. Then you work with concept artists – I work closely with about half a dozen – and they all have their different ways of drawing and seeing, and you’re honing that down until what you’re left with.
I’m glad you brought up Barbie, because it’s somewhat a break from standard Production Design, in that you’re really noticing the Production Design of those artificial houses and painted backdrops. Obviously, there are scenes in the real world too, but BarbieLand particularly stands out, so I was hoping you could talk about them and the old-fashioned Golden Hollywood sensibility that Greta Gerwig has mentioned (comparing it to The Wizard of Oz)?
Barbie is such an epic – and one of the most intellectually and cerebral and philosophical pieces I’ve ever done. It was huge to get into exactly what was in Greta’s head. She started off with certain visual references. She very much wanted that 40s/50s/60s Hollywood Soundstage quality. One of her favourite references was a Californian artist called Wayne Theibauld. What was interesting about his painting palette was pastels, he didn’t use any black or white. All the shadows were made up of turquoise and dark purples. We also didn’t use any black or white in BarbieLand, white was pale pink or pale blue.
A designer’s job is about telling the story and creating the world that you’re in. So with Barbie it was all about “what is a toy? How does a toy exist? How do you make something toy-like?”. Studying toys, believe it or not, is about studying the scale of toys. Plus, with the ‘unreal world’, you’re creating one without elements; it has no water, it has no light, it has no electricity, air, wind, rain. You’re creating this hermetically-sealed world, which is where we arrived at the idea of a soundstage.
It's like being in a box. And then you go into the idea of a box, and how toys are in a box. What Greta wanted it to be was when you open a box at Christmas, but it's usually disappointing. So in Barbie you want to open that box and it has to be perfect. There was the studio backdrop, but one of the key things came from looking at these American dioramas in Museums where you have a full-sized stuffed bear, surrounded by real grass, in a glass cabinet with a painted backdrop. And somewhere between the real, foregrounded stuffed bear and the backdrop you go into a false perspective – and there’s this transition between the one thing and another that’s absolutely “real” even though it obviously isn’t. So that was a really critical approach to how we created the scenic worlds of BarbieLand.
How did that sense of scale impact the rest of Barbie, including the performances?
We didn’t want to make it CG or effect them as actors. They were totally real and tangible. So it was finding out what makes them “Toy”. One of the first things Katie and I did was buy a Barbie Dream House. When you start playing with the dolls and Dream House and you realise how it’s very short – you put Barbie’s hand up and she can touch the ceiling. And when you’re playing with Barbies and you try and put them in a car, they can never fit. Everything is reduced in scale, about 23%. So, everything is smaller, which makes the Barbies look bigger, which makes them look more toy, weirdly.
So in the film we made everything more scaled down and simple. The shapes were minimised into a graphic art style. Everyone went “I had a doll’s house like that one”, but we did not recreate Mattel’s houses since there was too much going on. We had to simplify it for our story.
Greta described the acting brilliantly. She mentioned when you have two dolls kissing, they have their arms stretched out. It’s very Brechtian, as at occasional points, they become toys. Kids don’t bother going down the staircase, so Barbie jumps off the roof. Kids don’t care if the toothbrush is bigger than the hairbrush. It goes back to the ‘reality’ of what we see in the background. The mountains are the perfect mountains painted on the perfect day, with the perfect skies and perfect colours. Barbie wasn’t my usual métier of filmmaking, but Greta approached us since we build complete and controlled worlds.
Yes, it’s easy for others (and me) to say how different and stylized Barbie is from your other work. But even if you look at something like Pride & Prejudice (2005), which is a beautiful film and feels very naturalistic, it also has this wonderfully romantic lighting and luscious gardens (which I’m sure cinematographer Roman Osin helped with). So in each of these films you are creating a world that fits the story, but not the ‘real world’.
And a world can only be the world of that story. It’s like when people say it’s a “period piece.” My house is 200 years old, and it has items which are very old and some which are new. The film reflects this. The Bennet house was an inherited Manor Farm, but they have no money, so all the furniture is at least 100 years older than the house of the period that Pride & Prejudice is set in. To our eyes, everything is exceptionally exquisite, but to Mrs. Bennet, it’s all old-fashioned and she just wants to get rid of it.
When they go and visit the other family, they all sit down and sigh. Jacqueline [Durran] made the costumes of linen and they are literally hand-sewn. And there you can see they’re just a scruffy little family in his nouveau riche ‘of the moment’ room. As much as it's about the aesthetics, it's about the storytelling of the piece. Because if it isn’t about that, you might as well be an interior designer.
I was also fascinated by your work on Anna Karenina (2012) – also directed by Joe Wright. We talked earlier about the blend of Theatre and Film, and that’s a movie which revels in the mixture. Can you tell me about the approach for that adaptation?
It’s funny, because it came about by default. We were going to shoot in Russia for six weeks. So we went there on a scout, which was incredible. But then we went from being able to afford six weeks, to 5, 4, 3, 2… oh, maybe we can’t afford to shoot in Russia at all!
We were then asked if we can shoot in the UK. Having seen the houses and landscapes from our scout, I knew that wouldn’t work. But one of our references was Alexander Palace in London, which was very derelict at that point. Joe really loved it and wanted to use it for one scene. The film was on a knife’s edge, but one day Joe phoned up and talked about the horse race scene, and how it all took place in a derelict theatre, and how we just apply that principle to every scene.
We built the theatre from scratch, over in Shepperton. Joe and I went into a huddle for a week, where we talked about every scene in the film. My Theatre training came back in too. We only did two things ‘conventionally’ on the stage: the opening and the Opera sequence. The principle became, if you had a scene, how minimally could you do it? What said you were in the stables? A post in the middle of the floor. That’s where the scenic art came into play. In the ice-skating scene, we had these amazing art books from Russia, and that painted background of the frozen river Neva is from roughly that period.
When we explained this idea to [screenwriter] Tom Stoppard, the only line he changed was adding “this all takes place in a derelict theatre” at the beginning of his script. So the actors had to believe, when a scene was set in a prop store, that they were in the Oblonsky house and not a prop store.
We made certain rules. Like Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) is the only pure one, and therefore can exit the theatre into the real world. That one scene was shot in Russia on Kiy Island.
You said earlier how Barbie was a hermetically-sealed world, which informs the character of Barbie wanting to go into the ‘real world’. It’s a quite similar story with Anna Karenina and its sealed world, a woman who wants to experience real life and passion, but is trapped within this system that prevents that.
That’s true, and that’s what kills her. It is like being stuck in a doll’s house. Her husband Karenin (Jude Law) keeps a condom in a locus cabinet where the doors are shut. I’d never thought of that, but it’s a good interpretation of having no escape to the real world.
Another film referenced in Barbie was The Red Shoes (1948) by Powell and Pressburger, which obviously has the stunning ballet sequence. Do you have any affinity for that film, and the way it blends Theatre and Film?
Powell and Pressburger have a kind of truth. They create a world with truth to it. It’s not slavish to reality, but it's real. Going back to Anna Karenina, you have the little boy with his train set. Then you zoom inside the carriage. You’re playing with the perception of reality. But the boy believes that this is the train his mother is on, so the action is a belief in the reality.
To be crude, it’s also a solution. Powell and Pressbuger couldn’t go to Nepal [for Black Narcissus (1947)], but they don’t do it either half-heartedly or realistically. I always wonder what would have happened if they had CGI in those days. That shot looking down the valley via the bell is so incredible. I’ve seen photos of them on the Pinewood backlot on the set they built and the matte painting around it. They held the shot on that matte painting for so long, they were saying “this is what it is”. The artifice is true.
Those films have a transportive quality. I love Black Narcissus and playing with the perception of what it is. It’s not an intentional thing. You can see it retrospectively, when you look back on all the films we’ve done. Even back to Charles II. The Red Shoes had a massive play in Anna Karenina, when the theatre manager has his room up above. When we talked about where Karenin lives in the theatre, he’s up above in his managerial suite.
I do think there is a growing appeal to these kinds of films. Ones which take a skewed, stylistic approach to reality. Of course with Barbie, but also Beau is Afraid (2023) and Asteroid City (2023). Because green screens and CGI can be so effectively photorealistic, that they’ve reached the limit of what they can do. Having those limitations can be beneficial, too.
I totally agree with that. This year, the big three blockbusters were Barbie, Oppenheimer (2023) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023). One has Tom Cruise doing his own stunts. I know [Nolan’s Production Designer] Nathan Crawley really well who says – although he didn’t do Oppenheimer – that Nolan likes doing as much in-camera as possible. So in Dunkirk (2017) there’s lots of ‘bigatures’ where ships are tilting over, shot from a particular angle.
Greta obviously likes to do it all in-camera too. For us, being toy-like, it had to be tangible. What do children do when they start playing with things? They put them in their mouths. Even children are so au fait with CFI now, there’s no “wow” in it anymore. So many people, who had nothing to do with the filmmaking, said they loved the real sets in Barbie. It makes them absolutely ecstatic.
We make massive backlots all the time. But this one really captured their imagination. I do think CGI is an amazing tool when used correctly. Ditto with AI. But I think it's something to be wary of. I hope there’s still room for the obscure stuff. I mean, Barbie is a huge blockbuster and it's full of obscure old stuff. So I got away with it.
Yes, CGI and VFX can be used to great effect, and I don’t want to minimise their work here. But there is a certain appetite for that tangible reality. You feel like you can touch the world yourself.
You can feel it. Your sixth sense kicks in. But I didn’t necessarily set out for that, except maybe in Barbie. We used lots of miniatures there, including when they were driving down past the street. They were scanned in as VFX but were made for real. So, again, it felt very toy-like. Let’s face it, people just like playing with toys. That’s why we all got into this business. [laughs]
Orson Welles called his film studio “the biggest electric train set a boy ever had”.
That is exactly what it is. All the toys in the toybox. One just has to be careful how one uses the toys, because you can just tip them out. Then you get Weird Barbie.
Thanks again to Sarah for her time and behind-the-scenes images.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.