The High Style Sets of Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals
Production designer Shane Valentino tells AD how he created the artful sets of the new romantic thriller.
Tom Ford is the rare creator with a spectacular presence on the red carpet and in the theater itself. The fashion designer, writer, and director received rave reviews for his 2009 film A Single Man and is already the talk of the award show circuit for his latest movie Nocturnal Animals, which won him a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival. Based on the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright, the movie, which Ford wrote and directed, follows art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), who reevaluates her past after receiving a manuscript from her ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal.)
Ford teamed up with production designer Shane Valentino (Beginners, Straight Outta Compton) to create Susan’s stylish Los Angeles life and the West Texas world of the Edward’s book. Ford initially reached out to Valentino after noticing that they shared an affection for a particular font. “We had this very similar sensibility and approach to the visual world and a lot of similar references,” says Valentino.
The director and designer worked together for months gathering inspiration and influences before the official pre-production began. For Valentino, the key to designing the movie was separating it into three distinct films. “There's the Susan Morrow story of Los Angeles, there's the actual story of the Nocturnal Animals manuscript, and then there are the flashbacks, the memories of Susan's relationship with Edward,” says Valentino. “It was easy to break it up into those three worlds and then articulate what those different films could look like.” Valentino took inspiration from classic cinema for the different worlds, referencing Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert for Susan’s L.A. scenes, Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas and David Lynch’s Lost Highway for the manuscript storyline, and John Cassavetes’s Minnie and Moskowitz for the flashbacks. “I always like to think about the script that I'm reading and how it refers to other films in the history of cinema,” he says.
The production relied on real locations, rather than built sets, to accommodate the tight budget. One of the most challenging sets to find was the spacious home Susan shares with her husband, Hutton (Armie Hammer). They needed a space that would show the couple’s status, and while there are plenty of high-end homes in the city, they often aren’t available for shooting. Fortunately, they found the perfect space in the Malibu home that architectural designer Scott Mitchell built for real estate mogul Kurt Rappaport. The house, which was featured in AD’s June 2014 issue, fit perfectly with Ford and Valentino’s vision of Susan’s cold, hard world.
Valentino dressed the house with dark furnishings—inspired by Ford’s own home—and an array of blue-chip pieces from L.A. artists such as Richard Misrach, Aaron Curry, and Mark Bradford. “We really wanted her world to feel heavily curated,” Valentino says. “Because she is a blue chip galleress, she would be very discerning about the objects that she was putting in that space.”
For the Texas scenes, they filmed in the Mojave desert, carefully concealing the area’s Joshua trees. “Tom really wanted the West Texas world in some areas to have these pops of color,” says Valentino. “We were trying to create this kind of strangeness to a lot of those places.”
Take a tour of the locations used to create the suspenseful worlds of Nocturnal Animals.
Author: Elizabeth Stamp
November 2016
Photography: Tom Ford
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