Set Design on Hugo

When Martin Scorsese asked Dante Ferretti to be the Production Designer on Hugo he couldn't say no. They had been working on Shutter Island  when the opportunity to do Hugo came about. Scorsese and Ferretti have also worked on The Aviator,  as well as Gangs of New York just to name a few. With some sketches from the book to work with Dante went to the Gar de Lyon in Paris to get an idea of how he was going to create Paris in that time. Martin wanted to create a world with bits and pieces of clock everywhere so the attention to detail was paramount, they built the entire train station in England at Shepperton Studios.The entire set was made from scratch except for a few scenes where they were actually in Paris. Ferretti says in an interview that they had to build a station to fit the 1920's - 1930's era. With this being a 3-D movie having their own station made things a lot easier when filming; they couldn't shut down an entire station for as long as they needed and having their own gave them the freedom to what they needed. As you watch this movie you see just how much effort went into the set to make everything as perfect as it could be, you really feel as if they are in early 20th century Paris.

Having an already great idea on how the set was supposed to look like, the use of design principles are found throughout the film. One of the more impacting design principles used is line. When you think about a train station, you automatically think of the tracks and where it will fit among the people milling about the station, or at least I do. Looking at the picture above there are two parallel almost complete horizontal lines that create separation from the two main characters (Hugo and Isabelle). There are many other lines from the lamp posts, to the columns, and also to the bars that make up the window panes in the ceiling. Space was also something that was needed for this film, with it being in 3-D the way that the camera has to be moved needed a lot of space that wouldn't have been practical in a real world functioning station.

Continuity has been used right from the very beginning of the film in the idea that everything works like a clock with the affect of having Paris work the many gears that create a clock. These gears are seen in many places, not just when the characters are inside them. We also use pragnanz when looking at gears because we only see circles when so much more is going on with them.

The context for the train station is a historical one. It would be very difficult to use a modern train station and make it fit the time and the feel of the story. Like it was said before it would be very hard to close down an entire train station and film the movie.