"Mad Max" production designer Colin Gibson (pictured) was responsible for the film's insanely tricked-out cars, trucks and motorcycles; Hot Chip's new album goes in a different direction for the indie-electro band; Deaf West Theatre moves its hit production of "Spring Awakening" to a larger space.
'Mad Max: Fury Road': How 15 years of design made 'the last real action film'
"Mad Max: Fury Road" production designer Colin Gibson says director George Miller's last post-apocalyptic vision has been a long time coming.
"George first took me into a small room filled with storyboards in the year 2000."
Finding the right desert
Gibson was tasked with finding a desert that was just right for "Fury Road." They'd wanted to shoot in Australia, but found that what they called deserts had enough scrubby vegetation that they weren't quite right.
"[George] was looking for dead, flat, absolute nothingness on which to play out his story. So I got to go to pretty much all the places no one else wanted to go to, which suited me fine — I love deserts. For those of us who are already sure of our own insignificance, there's nothing like it being confirmed again."
Potential deserts include Chile's Atacama Desert, Tunisia's Chott el Djerid salt lake and a location in Azerbaijan. The desert he found for the film ended up being in Namibia, with four different kinds of desert near a seaside town that Gibson notes came with its own brewery.
The production had previously looked at Broken Hill in Australia's New South Wales, but a flood of rain ruined that plan.
"The heavens opened up and the inland lakes filled, and the sea that people imagined existed actually formed, the desert bloomed, flowers were everywhere, the pelicans were dancing, and we had to go looking for somewhere else."
The film's cars were initially designed for that area, so they ended up being put to the test in a new environment.
All real — sorry 'bout your luck, CGI
"Fury Road" features a huge number of practical stunts, with real things happening in front of the camera rather than CGI. Sometimes harnesses holding the actors were removed in post-production, but the film is basically what you see is what you get.
"I was with the director on that. He had spent far too many years with pixels that did anything he wanted — tap-dancing penguins and pigs whose lips moved," Gibson says, referring to Miller's work on two "Happy Feet" films and two "Babe" movies. "And so we wanted to make it the last real action film, and to do the stunts as real as possible. And so we designed all of that into the vehicles as we went."
Gibson says that one problem they ran into was that Miller is, in addition to being a director, also a certified doctor who'd signed on to the Hippocratic oath.
"Apparently that meant you're not meant to go out and hurt anybody on purpose. Which was a little antithetical to the idea of 300 stunts at high speed. So each of the vehicles was designed with safety in mind, but also with each and every one of their specific stunts — their deaths, their character arcs, built into the design, into the very DNA of how they were put together."
That meant different departments working together to make vehicles that could fly through the air at high speed, ultimately delivering an explosion "safely but spectacularly."
Rebuilding the past for battle
The movie is built on the idea of found objects, with recycled items being made new again.
"All the objects became a fetish," Gibson says. "There's been a lot of degraded use of the idea of the apocalypse — anybody thinks you can weld a piece of barb wire to a Camaro and, my God, it's the future. So what we wanted to do was to build up a stockpile of things that had inherent interest or beauty, and that we could then take out of context and reuse."
They wanted objects that were beautiful enough that people would want to salvage them, and inspire people to think about those items' histories.
"I wonder what that was? What did they use it for? And now I'm going to repurpose it for war, for battle, for thirst, for the end of the universe. So all that flotsam and jetsam that washed up at the end of the world, we just put it to new and slightly brutal use."
One of the key parts of how the film was constructed, Gibson says, was designing the design process.
"We designed everything the way they would have come to it. We went out, we found things that were beautiful in and of themselves — now whether that's the curve of an airless spray gun, or a hills hoist, or a small jackhammer, but we'd repurposed them to weaponry, or to the forks of a motorbike, or to something else."
Another one of the deserts Gibson visited: Burning Man's outpost in the Black Rock Desert.
"We did tell the Burning Man people, for when the apocalypse does come, I think hiding in a concrete bunker with 64,000 cans of baked beans is far less exciting than going out and building a V8," Gibson says. "A lot of the people who worked for me in Africa, their next job after we finished was indeed going to Burning Man, stealing whatever they could from what was left over from our pile of salvage, and turning it into something fantastic, and I believe they all had a glorious time exploding things."
The War Rig
One feature you'll see on the film's vehicles, particularly "the War Rig," is a so-called "cattle catcher" on the front.
"Sadly, come the apocalypse, for those who like their burgers, there are no cattle, so the cattle catcher was already out of context. It was there basically as an impact. It was there to give everything head-on collision abilities," Gibson says — especially that War Rig, which in the storyline is required to be able to smash through.
The vehicle also features a turret built out of the shell of a Beetle.
"The War Rig is somewhere between an 18-wheel leviathan and hot rod," Gibson says. It's covered with a variety of violent imagery, with skulls and more. "They're also mixed with the heads of babies and dolls that have just been from toys — things that have no context anymore, but appear to be human-like."
Gibson says that nothing they built was just for looks — it all moved.
"I embrace physics, and that was one of things that we loved about this," Gibson says. "The design process was to design them the way they would. Take salvage, put it together, fetishize it, and give it the most power it could possibly have, because you are then sending it off to do glorious battle in the Wasteland."
The Gigahorse
The Gigahorse is made up of two 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Villes, which Gibson says he imagined as being two cars in the process of, ahem, making love.
"The idea was always that in a world where there was barely one of everything, the only one who would have a pair, if you would pardon the expression, would be the lead villain, and indeed he does have a pair."
Mad Max's Interceptor
The original Interceptor, a 1974 XB Ford Falcon Coupe, makes a cameo at the beginning of the film, as Tom Hardy takes over as the new Max. It gets destroyed — but not completely, as it does make a later comeback.
"This is a recycled universe that we live in, and nothing goes to waste, and it comes back jacked up on a new off-road set of wheels, tires, new suspension, new chassis, double-aspirated and weaponized to hell, and Max is forced to do battle with his own past."
Doof Wagon — the one with the flamethrower guitar
The film's craziest vehicle: The Doof Wagon, which comes with its own array of loudspeakers, spotlights — and a guitarist whose guitar shoots flames.
"George figured that every army has a little drummer boy, and his little drummer boy just required being slightly louder to be heard over 150 V8s, V12s, W16s, etcetera. And so it became instead Spinal Tap on wheels, with everything turned up to 11. So basically we took an 8-wheel-drive rocket launcher truck, stripped it back, rebuilt steel air conditioning ducting from the insides of a couple of large buildings, turned that into the reverberating drums of the taiko drummers on the rear, and then the last Marshall Stack before Hell screwed to the front of the unit."
The motorcycles
A group of older women in the films, the Vuvalini, ride motorcycles which Gibson says are the camels of the film's new desert.
"Yamaha supplied an awful lot of bikes for us kindly, which we unfortunately stripped down to component parts and made them almost unrecognizable. But the Vuvalini, the biker women at the last sand dune before the end of the universe, basically, their bikes were more fully formed out of history. So rather than completely rebuilt and remade, they were repurposed to a bedouin if slightly manslaughter-minded existence."
What vehicles didn't make the cut
While "Fury Road" has a lot of cool cars, you won't see many current vehicles. The Camry and the Prius don't look to have a ton of appeal after the apocalypse. Gibson says there were three reasons for that.
"George said everything had to earn its right to exist in our universe. And frankly, carbon-fiber bodies don't lend themselves to battle so well. The computer chip makes almost all modern vehicles fairly useless, whereas a decent, grunty V8 you can fix with a stick and a torn pair of pantyhose. And thirdly, I can't see anybody going to the trouble of schlepping a Camry halfway across the wasteland and salvaging it. So it didn't pass the beauty process. Which is not to say that come a prequel or sequel the Prius wouldn't make a proud entrance."
Seeing the vehicles he so carefully crafted be blown up could be seen as sad, but Gibson says it absolutely wasn't.
"That's what they were designed for, and to bring that to fruition — to watch the huge explosion that took out the People Eater's horizontal fracking tower as it hurtled across the desert made it all worthwhile."
Gibson says that there could be either a prequel or a sequel on the horizon. He says the stars are already looking forward to them, and judging by the hugely positive response to the current film, that's one to keep your eye on.
Hot Chip dares 'someone else better' to come take their place in the indie music scene
The British electro band Hot Chip has become one of the top acts in its genre after being around for almost 15 years. The band’s previous album, “In Our Heads,” debuted at number 1 on Billboard’s Dance and Electronic chart. Rolling Stone says the band is one of the “sharpest dance rockers” today.
Yet, on the band’s sixth and latest album “Why Make Sense?,” Hot Chip goes in a slightly different direction both musically and lyrically. The Frame caught up with lead singer Alex Taylor of Hot Chip about the process of writing for this new album, Taylor's love for D'Angelo and Prince and why he dares younger musical acts to take their throne in the electro-indie-rock music scene.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
How did you approach writing the new album?
When we were making this record, I was trying to be open to having a clear head. I feel like I've done a lot of music, which is doing its best to be confessional, but even when I was doing that I still was met with a lot of confusion from people who didn't seem to pick up on that. Just for my own interests in doing something else in music, I felt like stepping away from that a bit this time. So the music wasn't really so lead by realism, but perhaps by fantasy a little bit more and also by nonsensical things.
Breaking down "White Wine and Fried Chicken":
Hot Chip - White Wine and Fried Chicken
With 'White Wine and Fried Chicken,' I was thinking about a song sung from somebody else's perspective or a different vocalist. I was imagining a D'Angelo or a Prince or someone, and I know the track doesn't really sound like that, but that was really what I was imagining. Sometimes making music, you can have another musician's type of song enter your head and you can write in their style.
I was trying to be evocative with the phrase, 'white wine and fried chicken,' of some kind of special meal that you might have with somebody else that has an inherent comfort about it, but is slightly ridiculous sounding at the same time. I couldn't really explain it better than that. It was just a fantasy song with that as a starting point, while the rest of the words were a little bit more heartfelt, not from a fantasy point-of-view. They were more talking about losing yourself in love with someone and losing time and feeling free of any restrictions.
I quite like the slightly lonely and depressing feel of a meal that consist of fried chicken and perhaps some cheap white wine. I've never had those two things together. I'm a vegetarian since writing that song — so no more fried chicken for me.
Breaking down "Huarache Lights":
Sometimes it's hard for me to remember precisely why I said something, but I think what I was doing was talking about Hot Chip and where it stands in the musical climate, and asking people to replace us with something better if they can.
You can read it in different ways. It could be an arrogant comment, but it was meant more to say whether or not machines can replace humanity in music. I guess I'm questioning that and saying that it's not really possible to do that, and that you need to retain some kind of human quality in soul in music. But also, it's talking about the idea of being replaced by the younger makers of music coming through and it's sort of saying that we are a great band, but then as soon as you say that, the vocalist, i.e. myself, is saying, 'Well, hold on a minute. Maybe someone else better should come along.'
Hot Chip's sixth studio album, "Why Make Sense?," is out now on Domino.
Deaf West Theatre has a hit on its hands with 'Spring Awakening'
“Spring Awakening” is a 2006 Tony Award-winning musical that’s based on the 19th Century play by Frank Wedekind. It features modern music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and Steve Sater.
In October, 2014, the coming-of-age story had an acclaimed revival in Los Angeles — with a twist: It was performed by a cast that largely can’t hear. And now that production by Deaf West Theatre is moving to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Arts, with the same director and much of the same cast.
The Frame contributor Collin Friesen spoke with Deaf West company members last fall about their staging of “Spring Awakening.”
How does the company pull it off? For starters, there are two extra subwoofers under the seats so the deaf actors can feel really the beat of the music. Some deaf actors have other actors, also on stage, sing and speak for them. But thanks to some clever use of microphones, you stop noticing about a minute in. Some lines are projected on the walls of the theater and all the actors sign as they go.
Austin McKenzie, 21, plays Melchior, the young male lead. McKenzie can hear, but he learned sign language while working at a summer camp. Still, singing, dancing, acting and signing — it’s a lot for your first professional production. Although he figures if he can make this work, the next role should be a snap.
Maybe the mechanics will be easier, I won’t have to worry about what my hands are doing all the time. In college, all of my teachers were so tedious on my hand usage, so it’s nice now I can finally use my hands.
The female lead is Sara Mae Frank, who plays Wendla. Deaf since birth, she moved to L.A. just for the play. Speaking through an interpreter, she says her hearing colleagues have picked things up fast, which in turn helps her.
Sometimes I take my reaction off them, see their facial expression, their movement. The lines are made to match up with choreography. I take some [reaction] off the light cues, but not that much. A lot of the cuing happens within the show. It’s all about trust.
Deaf West had to use Kickstarter to get this production up and running. Artistic Director DJ Kurs says many deaf theater companies around the country have shut their doors.
I think there’s a lack of funding in general. In the '90s, there were seven or eight sign language theaters. Now we’re the only ones who are producing professional sign language theater.
"Spring Awakening" has extended its run through June 14 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Arts in Beverly Hills.
This story has been updated.