“Working for Steven Soderbergh, none of the projects are the same,” affirmed production designer Howard Cummings who is part of a team (with art director Patrick M. Sullivan Jr. and set decorator Barbara Munch) on HBO’s Behind the Candelabra which last month earned a primetime Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Art Direction for a Miniseries or Movie category.
Cummings went from the feature film Side Effects to Behind the Candelabra, both directed by Soderbergh and underscoring the dramatic differences between the filmmaker’s projects. “As a production designer, I had to make every effort to be minimalistic visually,” said Cummings of Side Effects, which starred Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum. “The background was abstract with the focus being on people in the foreground. Furniture was positioned in front of windows, out of focus.
“By contrast,” continued Cummings, “for the Liberace movie [with Michael Douglas as the flamboyant pianist/entertainer], we were doing beauty shots of the interior—supporting the feeling of this kid [Liberace’s young lover portrayed by Matt Damon] being sucked into this lavish world.”
Cummings first teamed with Soderbergh on the feature film The Underneath, which was released in 1995. It wasn’t until recent years that they again got together with Soderbergh reaching out to the production designer for Behind the Candelabra. “The problem was we couldn’t do the Liberace film right away as we didn’t know about the financing—then HBO came into the picture and made the project doable.”
But the wait until the HBO breakthrough was lengthy—so much so that in the interim Cummings served as production designer on four Soderbergh features: Contagion, Haywire, Magic Mike, and Side Effects. And that collaborative relationship continues well after Behind The Candelabra garnered 15 Emmy nominations, including for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie, Outstanding Directing (Soderbergh), Cinematography (Soderbergh, aka Peter Andrews), Editing (Soderbergh under the moniker Mary Ann Bernard), Writing (Richard LaGravenese), and two Lead Actor noms (for Douglas and Damon).
At press time Cummings was serving as production designer on the Soderbergh-directed The Knick, a miniseries for Cinemax. “I’ve gone from the late 1970s’ excessiveness of Liberace to a period piece about a surgeon in 1900 in a hospital on the Lower East Side. Steven’s projects are so different from one another. But there is often a connection when you look at the main characters. Steven seems to have an interest in damaged people who are incredibly talented.”
As for the biggest challenge Behind the Candelabra posed to him as a production designer, Cummings related, “Liberace had a motto, ‘Too much of a good thing is wonderful.’ In character, Michael Douglas says this and my job was to try to sustain that level, to keep that spirit going through everything, reaching the level of the density of luxury Liberace maintained in his life. Barbara [Munch] as the set decorator did a fantastic job, creating the sense that every piece is layered—layer upon layer of luxury.”
Cummings said that the opportunity to work on Behind the Candelabra was “a divine gift for a production designer. And then to get recognition with an Emmy nomination is just icing on the cake.”
“The way Steven [Soderbergh] works is continuous,” shared Cummings. “He’s working on one movie but also prepping the next and doing additional shooting on the last one you did. There have been times when we’ve worked on three projects at once, in three different countries at one point. It’s a great ride.”
Having a firm handle on the project and one’s role in it is essential to working with Soderbergh, assessed Cummings. “It’s up to me to bring my best game to the table, to come to a project with a point of view that will help Steven achieve what he’s trying to get.”
Behind the Candelabra marks Cummings’ first career primetime Emmy nomination. He was part of a team that scored a daytime Emmy nom for an ABC Afterschool Special back in 1985.
Vikings
Mill+, the design and animation arm of The Mill, earned a primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Main Title Design on the basis of Vikings, the History channel series. The sequence was inspired by one of the folktales found in “The Sagas,” the tale of the “Nine Sisters.” The goddesses of the waves would pluck Viking explorers from their ships and pull them to a dark and watery grave. The Vikings’ relationship with death was built on honor, inevitability, sex, and the constant presence of gods.
In the main titles, the separation of a Viking from the living is followed as he slips into darkness and death among the ornaments of his life, with weaponry, gold and bone. His fading life force flickers throughout before he is consumed by one of the ‘Sisters.’ He is left a shell below the waves before we learn he is not alone but is one of many sinking below the waves while a surge of Viking raiders roam above. Finally, as the titles draw to a close, the raiders assault a darkened coastline.
Design director Rama Allen of Mill+ provided some backstory on the main title design assignment. “The initial brief from the client was to create a transportive connection for modern day audiences to the culture, hardships and beliefs of Viking culture,” he related. “The challenge here was to identify a common ground, a place that would create empathy for a suite of characters that belong to an ancient population that is caricatured in modern culture. We did an enormous amount of historical research, readings of ‘The Sagas,’ even visiting museums to see their art up close and personal to get to know what it meant to ‘be’ Viking. I created a concept of a lone Viking sinking away from the light as the spine of the piece, to create a sense of loss and cold and isolation. I surrounded him with artifacts of plunder, his flickering memories, a supernatural encounter and a coastline raid to weave a visual narrative that captured many of my fascinations with their culture.”
In production, Allen described the greatest challenges of the project as having to create “a sense of crushing and lonely scale in our ocean shots, particularly since we filmed our talent in a five-foot deep pool. Fortunately, the Mill has extraordinarily talented people that helped me achieve these shots in the postproduction process, but to say it was easy would be awfully close to lying. It’s amazing having access to such skill.”
As for how she and Mill+ got the Vikings gig, Allen recalled, “The opportunity came from my previous work on the True Blood titles. The show’s production company, Take 5, knew they were seeking something dark, emotional, sensual, violent and abstract and True Blood was one of their references so they contacted us directly. It was like a match made in heaven!”
Allen is one of four Emmy-nominated main title design team members on Vikings, the others being Mill+ art director Audrey Davis and The Mill’s Westley Sarokin as VFX supervisor/2D lead artist and Ryan McKenna as editor.
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This is the seventh installment in a 12-part series that will explore the field of Emmy nominees and winners spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, editing, production design, animation, VFX and design. The series will run right through the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony on Sept. 15 and the following week’s primetime Emmy Awards live telecast on Sept. 22.
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Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 1.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 2.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 3.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 4.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 5.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 6.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 8.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 9.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 10.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 11.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 12.
