This month we're happy to welcome production designer John Paino ('The Last of Us', 'Big Little Lies', 'The Leftovers', 'Dallas Buyers Club'), who shares his favorite design books below.
PUNK HOUSE - INTERIORS IN ANARCHY (Abby Banks, 2007)
"Most interior books tend to look like catalogs. Not this one." - JP.
Punk House features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists' studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces. In over 300 images of fifty houses in twenty-five cities in the US, photographer Abby Banks finds the already weathered face of a seventeen-year-old runaway; the soft hands of a vinyl junkie (record collector); the mohawked show-goer; the dirty dishes in the sink; silk screened posters on the wall; and many other revealing glimpses of these anarchist interiors.
Buy the book here.
THE KEN ADAM ARCHIVE (Christopher Frayling)
"Amazing book on one of the greatest film designers, chocked full of drawings. I have always been inspired by the simplicity of his sketches. Every designer wants to out do his war room set from Dr. Strangelove." - JP.
A giant of production design, Sir Ken Adam was the architect of Cold War satire and the inspiration behind the sinister lairs of James Bond’s adversaries. Featuring an unmatched wealth of material from his archive of sketches, concepts, and photographs held by the Deutsche Kinemathek, this book honors an indelible, decorated career.
Buy the book here.
ALEXANDRE TRAUNER: DECORS DE CINEMA (Alexandre Trauner and Jean-Pierre Berthome, 1992)
"Hard to find but worth it book about this great Hungarian designer. His concept drawings are true works of art in their own right." - JP.
Designs and decoration of Hungarian production designer Alexandre Trauner, known for his work on 'The Apartment' (1960), 'The Man Who Would Be King' (1975), and 'Witness for the Prosecution' (1957).
Buy the book here.
HITCHCOCK AND ART: FATAL COINCIDENCES (Dominique Paini and Guy Cogeval, 2000).
"An exhaustive overview of art in and influenced by Hitchcock’s films. Almost every page has insightful connections across disciplines. I’ll often pop it open for inspiration because it is so full of pictorial material, almost like a history book of art." - JP.
Movies are unquestionably one of the cutting-edge media in 20th-century artistic production, a discipline that has contributed more than any other to fashioning the visual culture of our contemporaries and of the artists of our day and age. The Center Pompidou continues its policy of publicizing trail-blazing references to cinematographic culture by presenting the exhibition Hitchcock and Art.
.
Buy the book here.
DEREK JARMAN'S MEDIEVAL MODERN (Robert Mills, 2018)
"A great and inspiring book about how the British filmmaker and production designer (if you haven’t seen his work in Ken Russel's 'The Devils', please do, it’s brilliant) adapts and is influenced by medieval iconography. A good read for designers, as how we adapt / use / borrow from humanities vast visual history is a big part of our job." - JP.
The artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-1994) had a lifelong appreciation of medieval culture. This book is the first to uncover a rich seam of medievalism in Jarman's art. Taking in major features such as Caravaggio, The Garden and The Last of England, as well as some of the unrealised screenplays and short experimental films, the book proposes an expanded definition of medieval film that includes not just worksset in or about the Middle Ages, but also projects inspired more broadly by the period.
Buy the book here.
FEDERICO FELLINI - FROM DRAWING TO FILM (Museum Folkwang, 2021)
"This an exhibition catalog from a show of his drawings. As a lover of all manner of concept art and Fellini movies in general, I often tote this around from show to show. I went to school for cartooning, and Fellini stared as a cartoonist for his local newspaper, so there’s that as well. The directors thoughts and ideas of the relationship between dreams, theatrical realism, and comedic absurdity are all here." - JP.
Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, presented the exhibition From Drawing to Film in 2022. The show included around 220 drawings by the filmmaker and screenwriter, which were juxtaposed with realized film scenes in film stills and excerpts, script extracts and film posters. This provides insights into Fellini's creative working process and illustrates the importance of the drawings for his filmmaking.
Buy the book here.
The collection can be explored through an online catalogue.
TODD HAYNES - RAPTUROUS PROCESS (Museum of the Moving Image, 2023)
"Another book full of a filmmaker’s drawings, reference materials and process notes that is a great window into his world building." - JP.
Published upon the occasion of Museum of the Moving Image’s 2023 retrospective and exhibit exploring the work of Todd Haynes, this book features a foreword by Julianne Moore; an in-depth career interview with Haynes by the Centre Pompidou's Judith Revault d'Allonnes; an essay by Michael Koresky; a conversation with Kelly Reichardt; and hundreds of images of items donated to the Museum by Haynes from his personal archives—including drawings, paintings, and storyboards, as well as notebook fragments, on-set photographs, and costume and set designs. Todd Haynes: Rapturous Process is a testament to a filmmaker's astonishing creativity and ceaseless ingenuity.
Buy the book here.
CONVERSATIONS WITH DEAN TAVOULARIS (Jordan Mintzer, 2022)
"Synecdoche publishing puts out a great library of books about filmmakers like James Gray and Darius Khondji, and this is their latest. Not only is it filled with a lot of insight about his process and long history in film, the drawings and storyboards for films like 'Apocalypse Now' are breathtaking. He even drew the concept art for the actors' costumes, and the progression of them over time! Truly astounding knowing the demands on anyone designing a show, especially one of that scale." - JP.
Conversations with Dean Tavoularis retraces the incredible odyssey of the man who began his career as an animator under the direction of Walt Disney. After having cut his teeth in the biggest Hollywood studios, on films such as '20,000 leagues under the sea' or 'Guess who's coming to dinner...', he became production designer on one of the films that would contribute to the advent of New Hollywood, 'Bonnie and Clyde'. But it is alongside Francis Ford Coppola that Dean Tavoularis devotes most of his career. Hired to work on 'The Godfather', they formed a unique creative couple for more than three decades.
Buy the book here.
Comments