Junkie Junket

A large part of our film opening will center around the main character arriving at an interview/press junket and showing his signs of addiction and conflict. To sell this scene, not only will it require good shots and lighting, but also good set design. After discussion, we have decided the character will be a famous actor doing an interview for an upcoming film and his signs of addiction come up and cause an awkward encounter with the interviewer. Although we at first thought of doing a late night show type interview, a smaller one on one interview would be much easier to film and design. The scene would mostly consist of two people sitting across from each other in a room. To get the most accurate depiction of an 80s interview, I researched several examples of 80s interviews to get an idea of how an interview would look from that time.

In this interview from 1987, Robert Downey Jr. sits down with ET after his rise to fame in movies like Less Than Zero and The Pickup Artist. The interview is set outside with the interviewer sitting directly across from Downey. This shows the possibility of using outdoor sets rather than an indoor one. The format of the interview also shows that we could use over the shoulder shots to show the dialogue between the interviewer and actor.

This interview with Jack Nicholson from 1982 takes a different approach and goes indoors rather than outdoors. The set design is extremely simple with just a beige curtain behind the interviewer and Nicholson. The whole design doesn't take up much space so we could use this technique in our production to film in almost any room. We could experiment with different curtain colors to illustrate certain moods and manipulate light in the set to also get this effect.

To pull this off, my group and I are thinking of ordering large curtains or bed sheets to act as the background of the set. The set will be in one of our garages so we cant leave any spaces where you would see the garage. We would also try and give the illusion of a large production with a camera crew and lighting figures. The only thing we are having a lot of trouble with is the search for good seats for the interview. Almost any armchair will work but would look much better if they are both the same. This could pose a large problem since chairs are very expensive, making buying a chair out of the question. To solve this problem we will probably ask our friends to borrow their chairs if none of us can get any chairs.