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Remodeling
a Monkey Planet
“Tim’s graphic inclination is for strong, simple design, and if you look at any of his films, you’ll find that that’s true,” points out Heinrichs who also did designs for Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Bedazzled. “People called Sleepy Hollow Gothic, but I was more interested in going expressionistic — at the time, I called it Colonial Expressionism. I’ve been working with Tim for just over 20 years and what appeals to us goes back to Dr. Kaligari and all that [German expressionist style]. Designs that are off-kilter, off-base, unconventional and more organic seem to express emotions more strongly. “In the case of Planet of the Apes, we were going for very specific, simple graphic looks to the physical locations [Lake Powell in Arizona, the Trona Pinnacles outside Death Valley, and blackened lava fields in Hawaii]. But that’s the only way to go when in a real environment — it needs to have something very strong and stark that helps stylize it. Otherwise, it’s just going to feel naturalistic — you’ll think you’re on Earth. Of course, [the original] turns out to be on Earth, but they made a virtue out of a necessity there — as we all do — and ended up with a Southwestern look, which we tried to avoid [on the 2001 version]. I believe that Bill Creber, production designer on the first film, was also going for a similar sense of an organic approach with a handmade quality to the Ape City.” “Without completely reinventing the wheel, our intent was to create a sense of the highest form of civilization on this planet — with a hint of its history,” Heinrichs continues. “For me, the combination of nature and civilization that’s put into the architecture is a comment on the intertwined nature of the animal and human-like characteristics of the apes. Because of the similarities to apes and humans and to this planet and Earth, I felt free to take whatever appealed to us from different cultures on our world. We actually studied a lot of ancient cultures that showed any sort of an artisan approach — sculptural and organic — to its architecture, furniture and cutlery.” Heinrichs dipped into the cultural reservoir of archaic history and modern eras to come up with an ape aesthetic that reflects those peoples whose dwellings mold the natural landscape in “harmonious co-existence” as opposed to conquering it with man-made structures. Among the architectural archetypes are the indigenous Indian civilizations of South America — namely, the Aztecs, the Incas and the Mayans — along with those of ancient Egypt. Of pyramidal stature, Ape City is a giant mountain slope strewn with overripe trees, weaving vine trellises, winding caverns and jagged mesas — none aligned in symmetrical fashion.“My background is as an artist and a sculptor and I find informal symmetry to be interesting. Designing this project was right up my alley, because I essentially had to establish order with the organic environment and reveal the natural forces at work that push-and-pull them. You might think that carpenters would hate that, but actually they are jazzed to be able to work with organic architecture compared to 90-degree angles. It’s harder to do than horizontal and vertical lines, but is much more interesting and gratifying when done well.” “One challenge at Ape City was getting quite a few different looks going within a fairly contained stage space,” maintains Heinrichs. “Since what the camera doesn’t see is almost as important as what it does see, you can create completely different environments just by shifting viewpoints around. Part of the design process there was combining different tableaux to create new vistas — whenever the opportunity presented itself — to have different places for action to take place. For the most part, we were successful in getting an all-over look to Ape City that works in a long shot, as well as lots of very specific environments you don’t necessarily know are part of the original master.” While the revamped Planet of the Apes benefits from immense advances in creature make-up applications, practical stunts and visual effects, the art department took a rather traditional approach. The process begins with a brainstorming session whereby Heinrichs and his team scour libraries and bookstores for interesting images. After pinning hundreds of color photocopies on his office wall in a giant piecemeal collage, they refine the process by picking pictures that fit concept parameters. Stage and location sets were pre-visualized using character models, with the art department later drafting illustrations based on those miniature mock-ups. Before shooting began, Heinrichs took three scouting trips to Hawaii’s Big Island to prepare his visualizations of the jungle set at L.A. Center Studios. The production team had hoped to actually shoot on location, but a real rain forest would have been too cumbersome for in-camera stunts involving apes jumping from tree-to-tree, crawling on all fours and swinging on vines Tarzan-style. “With all that wire work and the idea of having the apes climb up trees quickly or ‘loping’ along, we did specific alterations to some sets designed originally with just the look in mind. Knowing that certain actions were going to be taking place in a jungle done on-stage, we moved trees around, and made branches that could be easily removed.” In addition, some trees were removable or braced with an inner lining of cabled steel to support the actors. “In the last five to 10 years, it seems that the technology of stuntpeople has increased hugely — maybe it’s affected partly by the Chinese martial arts films and movies like The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Because they can do lots more with wires and cables, the stunt people are more acrobatically inclined, and seem to be pushing the envelope of what is possible. There were several sets built specifically for animal action. We shot quite a bit out in the desert with the apes ‘loping’ along on all fours that required some very specific stunt apparatus that had to be done on location and on stage. We recreated a portion of the desert on stage and the stunts were done with a number of the apes loping along with wires. ILM then stuck those into the scenes [shot on location] and erased the wires.” An exceptional slant on Heinrichs’ natural-merges-with-artificial aesthetic surfaces at the Calima, home to the age-old husk of the Oberon starship. Erected at the Trona Pinnacles, the many-spired monument protrudes from the rock-ridden terrain like a piece of abstract, avant-garde sculpture, and measures 70 feet tall by 120 feet wide. An unorthodoxoutline made it the one set that had to be pre-visualized in virtual form, using a digitized display of three-dimensional schematics. “It was possible for someone to sit down and actually draft it out, but that would have taken longer,” he reasons. “And with a three-dimensional, sculptural set, there’s more opportunity for drafting errors to occur. Drafting it in the computer also helped because we had to have an engineer spec it out for the construction process. Once the Calima existed in a virtual 3-D computer space, it became much easier for us to figure out what type of structure could support it.” With its outstretched prongs, the Calima salutes the iconic image of Lady Liberty’s spiked crown piercing the Forbidden Zone’s shores from the 1968 version’s awe-striking, about-face climax. “Without hitting it on the head too hard, having these spiky towers emerge out of the landscape is a little subliminal nod to the original,” remarks Heinrichs. “Back when we were throwing images on the walls, I thought of the work of architect Antonio Gaudi [of the Art Noveau school, 1852 - 1926], so it also has a little of the Sagrada Familia from Spain [an unfinished church in downtown Barcelona capped by several spiked mini-towers.] The Calima is an odd juxtaposition of elements. The way that the earth has swallowed it to some degree makes it feel like part of the environment, yet at the same it isn’t. This particular part of the Pinnacles had an almost semi-circle of rocky outcroppings coming up, and I was trying to tie [the Calima rubble] into that specific location as a force-of-nature happening within the environment. When I first saw Trona, it looked like the wrecked spaceship ought to be right there, almost pushing these rocks up out of the ground.” Besides the scarecrow-like ape effigies that Captain Davidson encounters perched ominously on the Forbidden Zone’s frontier, the Burton production also paid homage to the original picture by sharing one of its shooting sites — Lake Powell. Bordering the Arizona-Utah boundary, this arid expanse is the point from which Colonel Taylor and crew set off on an expedition after abandoning their sunken rocketship. The 2001 team, however, photographed the surrounding sandscape — dotted with 15 unusually shaped red tents — from the Utah perimeter. “In one of the first drafts of the film, this particular camp is actually called the Red Ape Encampment. But in the final version, the apes aren’t split up into those camps and that conflict wasn’t necessary to Tim’s vision. What feels right about it within that environment is that the apes are ‘the bad guys.’ Red is blood — it’s fierce and scary — and the camp represents a barrier that has to be crossed. The place where we were, Lake Powell wasn’t so much about Southwestern buttes and a desert look. It was more about this sense of a landscape sculpted by nature. All of our environments, whether sets or locations, have that sensibility to them.” Though the high-tech starship Oberon runs counter to the desert’s sand-chiseled settings, Heinrichs opted against a linear layout even when engineering its space age interior. Inspired by the austere, antiseptic expanses of white space within the USS Discovery in 2001 - A Space Odyssey, he finished the inside with a plain palette of white, off-white and gray tones, as seen in the box-framed monkey kennel and the oval-shaped command center. “In the spaceship, we mostly wanted a sense of the professional, calm atmosphere one might expect in any endeavor on a NASA spaceship. There’s a quiet professionalism that pervades, and it’s not just in the acting. The way everything is designed has a very, not flat, but even keel — it’s technical without being geeked-out.” Its interior and exterior shapes reference the blueprints of Spanish master builder Santiago Calatrava. Best known for his open structures, the still-surviving architect has designed such works as the Stadelhofen Railway Station in Zurich, Switzerland, the New York cathedral of St. John the Divine along with the Guadalquivir River Bridge and Kuwait Pavilion for Expo ’92 in Seville, Spain. “He always seems to start with an organic expression of action or strength, muscles or something else that feels alive. We were also striving for that. So again there’s contrast, but [this time] it’s between the clinical, professional, clean look and the organic shapes.” “Without getting too Freudian, having very ovular shapes gives the exterior aspect of the ship an almost maternal feel. The pod that Leo flies in is a seedpod — very organic, almost like spermatozoa. It’s not overt, but these thoughts were bubbling in the back of our minds when we were creating it. I wanted to give the pod an all-glass canopy at the very front, which created problems for Philippe [Rousselot]. But having the person controlling the pod sort of ‘out there’ in space is such a compelling look that I thought it was a good way to go.” Heinrichs’ long track record with Tim Burton has left him quite optimistic about any artistic rationale behind the director’s penchant for pitch-black atmospheres. While some production designers might balk at having a set construction left in the dark, an infinite blackout did lend depth and perspective to the stage-bound Ape City. “The big question is: How concerned is the director about naturalism?,” he poses rhetorically. “Tim is interested in the emotional quality of visuals rather than their literal quality. So night shots might not necessarily be very dark and look all fire-lit. Being a very good cameraman, Philippe could let some parts drop off into darkness and kept other parts in the light, and it still works within that milieu. In the dichotomy between naturalism and stylization, Philippe falls more towards a stylized way of approaching visuals. But the look should be about emotions and expression rather than literal truth — after all, it is a movie.” • |
Production
designer Rick Heinrichs is well-versed in Tim Burton’s often freakish
fancies, having filled any number of artistic roles on the director’s
far-out films. Their relationship actually dates back to a residency
at Walt Disney, when both were fresh products of the California Institute
of the Arts. After majoring in sculpture at Boston University, Heinrichs
spent a yearlong term mastering animation at New York’s School of Visual
Art, studying under Gotham-based cartoonists Harvey Kurtzman and Will
Eisner. After making the Cal Arts connection, Heinrichs devoted his
skills to Burton’s short flicks Vincent, Frankenweenie
and Hansel and Gretel as art director, set builder and producer.
He furthered his forte in 3-D, stop-motion animation as visual consultant
on The Nightmare Before Christmas, and then assisted Burton as
effects supervisor on Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, art director on
Batman Returns, and set designer on Edward Scissorhands.
Heinrichs reached an apex after his design treatments on The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow earned him an Oscar and other accolades from the
L.A. Film Critics, the Art Directors’ Guild and BAFTA.