The art of Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie”

 

Again the planned week of blog posts has been changed due to being to busy at work to scan and write anything new or to extensive. I was saving this stuff for another time but am excited to be putting it up today regardless. Back in January of 07 I started work on a comedy called Tropic Thunder and met a new buddy named John Warnke, John is a set designer/art Director and has been enjoying a brilliant career. He’s a very funny man and he introduced me to an old 50’s movie called “From Hell it Came”.  It was a fun show to be on but a short one to say the least, I was done after a couple of months and John was on a little longer than me. It was now April and the phone rang,,, It was John W. calling to see if I would like to work on a Bryan Singer WWII movie. WOOOO HOOOOO,,, you betcha and we all met the next day at Lilly Kilvert’s (the Production Designer’s) flat in Hollywood. She was off to Germany the next day to start scouting and all the work John and I were to do would be from LA. A great meeting turned into a very fun but very short project. I think we got 4 maybe 5 weeks in and John W. was off to Europe to join Lilly and I was off to find something new. Our first day waiting to get in the office was a crazy one, standing on the sidewalk we found a long lady’s wig in the gutter,,, a few feet further a large/short lady’s dress and a few feet further giant lady’s high heel shoe’s,, I don’t think these were worn by a lady though!!! HAAA oh the fun of Hollywood! Anyways, some of my big movie goal’s in life were to work on a WWII movie, to work with the Coen Brothers, George Miller, Gillian Armstrong, Peter Weir, Brian Singer, and on a Western (a good one). and with this one I was able to make two checks off of my list. We worked in a little building called the digital Jungle which used to be Eden VFX’s old Building off of Santa Monica Blvd.. John W started on sets and my first project was to research what aircraft Hitler flew in during this time frame of the war. This was harder than I thought to find out and I spent a lot of time on the internet and at the bookstore trying to get all the details right. I found one book that had all the answers and some great photography as well,, sadly the photo’s were old, low res, and in very high contrast obscuring the Id #’s on the side of the plane’s I needed to see.,, Forced to read the whole book the #’s were buried deep in the text far from the pages were the pictures were. Proved to be time well spent because all the info gathered together made for a fun drawing. The Condor was the historical plane used at this time by Hitler, but for production a beautiful tri-motor was available and used in place of. after the plane was done John would give me photo’s sent from Lilly or rough blueprints to do perspective architecture drawings from. here is a sampling of what was drawn up in those those very fun but short weeks. Also a friend of mine named Patrick Lumb was the co production designer but he was exclusively doing his work overseas so we only talked thru others, HAA! Just saw the film for the first time a month or so back and it is clearly one of Singers finest films. The mood lighting, story and beautiful cinematography pulled together by Bryan’s visual style of story telling made this one a favorite film, even more so because I was lucky to be a part of it. The score by maestro John Ottman soars with eloquent themes and heavy tones and saturates every scene with a rich musical atmosphere. Put this one on your list to see if you haven’t already and turn up the surround sound, 

 

OH I can't make out those ID #'s on the plane!!!!

 

a beautiful model of the Condor by ipms, used for paint scheme reference

another view of this beauty

 

it looks simple but this was the hardest piece of art to put together

 

model kits and die cast models for scale, these came from Bob Alvis's War Eagle hobby shop In Quartz Hill Ca.

 

one of Lilly's locations to be transformed into a Nazi hallway

a rough to go with the photo

 

a high ranking soldiers office

 

a grand view of one of the larger offices

 

the last drawing I was working on and didn't finish!! The planes were Spitfires pictured here but loved that they used the P-40's in the final film

 

 

vehicle research from the tank yard out by Melody Ranch in Canyon Country

more

 

Singer and Cruise on location in the high desert of california

 

a great shot

the desert location again

Cruise by the Tri

 

the mens room for the officers club

 

 

 

some of the awesome costumes