Guy Hendrix Dyas received his Bachelor of Arts from Chelsea School of Art and a Masters Degree from The Royal College of Art. Guy began his career in Tokyo working as an industrial designer for SONY. During that time Guy joined the Industrial Light and Magic team in California, this is where he began his film career as a visual effect Art Director on the film Twister. Guy developed his skills as a concept artist for many years before his first production design assignment X2: X-Men United for Bryan Singer. Guy has also worked on films such as Superman Returns, Elizabeth, The Brother’s Grimm, Indian Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and of course Passengers. Guy is currently working on The Nutcracker. 

Guy Hendreix Dyas  Production Designer – Passengers [2016]

iHorror: Can you tell our readers about production design?

Guy Hendrix Dyas: This new generation of filmmakers have a very healthy balance as to what should be CGI and what should be practical and two interesting things to watch as a production designer is firstly the performances of the artists improves. When you put them in an environment when they are really there whether it be in a space ship or a creepy forest their performance improves, it really does. I know, I have worked on both kinds of films. Secondly, there is more realism to the lighting no matter what people say. If the green screen is there, it is going to contaminate the colors of the set, and all of that is going to need to get fixed. When you use backings as old fashioned as that sounds, if you need a motion for example and you need a village, and you need to see smoke stacks or a waterfall, that is a time to bring in a green screen. But when you have something stationary that doesn’t move that is a time to use a backing. Then you save money ultimately as well.

iH: it is important to find that balance. I find a lot of films are overloaded with CGI, too much is going on. Like you said, having the balance between the two greatly improves the quality of the film.
GHD: It does, there is something else that happens as well which is the discipline of the filmmakers. When you are allowed to backload everything into post and say, “yeah we will deal with it later” the storytelling becomes a little bit sloppier because you don’t have to figure things out, you’re pushing it down the road. But if you are forced to figure it out, there is the set, there is everything, you do not have an excuse, you have to capture the scene, you have to capture the performance. I think that was very much Morton’s philosophy with PASSENGERS was let’s try and capture these emotions of people that are falling in love in space, which is what made that project so special. There were no guns, there were no monsters, it was so appealing in so many ways it reminded me of the classic sci-fi films. Very much for me, it felt like the film Silent Running from the 70’s. Do you remember Silent Running?

iH: No, I have never seen it.

GHD: {Laughs} They used to play it on reruns when I was a kid all of the time. A fantastic film about a man in space trying to save the lost forest from Earth. Very topical. A little goofy to look at night, but still the idea the thread of that idea is so clever, I think that PASSENGERS falls into the same family of thoughtful and clever scripts. When I was watching the trailer, I noticed immediately that it was very neatly pieced together it really did flow. Many times I will watch a Sci-Fi Trailer, and there is just so much going on it can become very confusing. The sets are amazing, and it will appeal to a lot of people. I am not going to lie to you. I am under a lot of pressure and a huge worry right now. For the set design, I tried to break a few rules in terms of what our expectations are. I worked as a concept artist on many science fiction films, and this is the first time as a production designer that I have had the chance to be in charge of that. For me, I wanted to avoid the trappings of coming up with aesthetic and look for the spaceship that ran throughout. Usually what happens with spaceships and it makes sense when you think about it. You come up with a look, the color of the walls the color of the floor and those colors tend to run throughout the space ship because they would. But in our case, we have a spaceship that is basically transforming passengers over vast distances. Once they arrive at their destination, there is a period of rehabilitation to go into drop ships down to the planet. That is four months of retail hell heaven; however, you want to look at it, and for me, that was our playground for playing with the color of the film and allowing us to change the mood. I am sure that you guys have noticed that there is a bar, an Art Deco bar right in the middle of the spaceship. Film geeks like myself are going to notice some interesting parallels with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Very much Morton and I were talking in the early days how do we capture the relationship between Chris’s character Jim and the Barman, how can we create that bond? It had very similar characteristics to Jack Nicolson’s character in The Shining and we love how that film helped project loneliness as well, from Jack’s point of view. So, that was a huge influence for us when it came to the bar. I just took the essence of that notion and increased the décor, increased the richness and warmth of the set. In a world of isolation and loneliness, we needed a beacon we needed a place for the two passengers for Jennifer and Chris to want to go to. So there is this warm Jewelry box. There is this very seductive space, with this very charismatic robot who serves them, the only other human that they can experience even though he is synthetic, so we need somewhere that felt like it was fun for people to go and yet sophisticated. For me, it was a delicious idea to put something from the 1920s on a space ship that was so far in the future, and we took that concept, and we ran with it. We wanted them to have a romantic meal. Hell, why not make an 18th-century French restaurant with huge 18-foot columns and a classical window looking out to space. So, you are sitting there with your loved have a candle lit meal and the Universe is spinning around outside, and that is a trippy idea. We felt as if we would never get another chance to do this, so that is why we ran with it.
iH: What about the swimming pool in the film?

GHD: We searched for months and months for a real swimming pool in Atlanta where we shot, and in the end, they pulled the trigger at the last minute we dug a swimming pool in their nice new spanking parking lot at Pine Wood. [Laughs} They weren’t too happy about it, but they loved the set when we were finished with it. So over six weeks we dug a hole we lined it and produced this Olympic sized swimming pool with this huge domed window, and it was a beautiful moment. That is really Aurora Jennifer Lawrence’s character place of refuge. We were really working these deep blues that was really symbolic of cleansing. It was a place where someone could go and hide away, someone in her predicament.

iH: I really think that you achieved what you had set out to accomplish with the scene.

GHD: Thank you

iH: It was beautiful and to now know that it was actually built and not CGI is quite amazing.

GHD: The set that is going to make people not believe it was built just because it is so bizarre is something called the observation. It is a large space with these very dynamic ribs that come around. They are so beautifully made of wood, carefully sanded down, they look like these futuristic alloys, but on film, they may look like they are made on the computer.\

iH: Thank you so much, Guy!

Stay tuned for a review of the film and more interviews for Sony’s PASSENGERS in the weeks to come!

 

 

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