Decorating Pages

This week I speak with one of the industries most influential Production Design teams: Production Designer Arthur Max and Set Decorator Elli Griff. I was absolutely thrilled to speak to them about their project “Napoleon” directed by Ridley Scott. To create the epic scale of the movie, Production Designer Arthur Max, a three-time Oscar® nominee (“Gladiator”, “American Gangster” and “The Martian”) who has collaborated with Scott on 15 films since 1997’s “G. I. Jane”, has seen the business of production design change immensely over the decades. “We have always built giant sets, but now, we use the spaces in different ways,” he explains. “When we made “Gladiator”, CGI was in its nascence. We were limited as to what we could achieve. Now, the scope of our ambitions has grown with it. But we're still in the school of thought that it's best to have a physical set to build off of, not just a complete CGI universe.” Set Decorator Elli Griff joined Max on “Gladiator” in Morocco, followed by “Black Hawk Down” and then