The annual Art Directors Guild Awards celebrate not just the names with which cinephiles are well acquainted, the Jack Fisks and Catherine Martins, but the people who bring those designs to life on everything from blockbusters to game shows. And the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Honorees prove the huge breadth of the guild. This year, Lisa Frazza, Barbara Mesney, Dan Sweetman, and J. Dennis Washington will be honored for their contributions to their respective crafts.
IndieWire spoke to all four about what their jobs entail (an ever-shifting terrain as technology continues advancing) and about some memorable titles from their filmographies before they accept their laurels at the ADG Awards February 15.
Lisa Frazza, Scenic Artist
Frazza worked on hundreds of shows during her career at CBS, including “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy,” “The Price is Right,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Survivor,” “The Young and the Restless,” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
Before I retired [after 30 years as a scenic artist at CBS Studios], I painted and executed designs that the production designer actually designed. I followed the production designer’s wishes, and I custom-mixed colors that were needed, and I painted murals and 3-D pieces such as furniture and tables, desks. I excelled in marbleizing and faux wood grain. And I led crews who did the same thing, which was very rewarding for me.
Game Shows
[Years ago] on “Wheel of Fortune,” we used to do the murals, but now they do everything digitally. Things like, “You can win this trip to Hawaii.” And same thing with “The Price Is Right,” we’d do these mini murals 10 by 8 feet or whatever, and we’d paint the murals they’d show on camera. “Jeopardy,” we would do their floors. I think at the end they did special tiles.
Set pieces would come into the shop in pieces, and we’d have to touch them up because they’d get beat up in transit. So we had a stock of colors for each show, well marked, very well organized. So if you need “Price Is Right” green for the door, you’d go to the “Price Is Right” shelves and find the green for the door. And if you dont have enough.
“The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful”
When I started, we would do three rehearsals per scene. Then it went down to two rehearsals, then one rehearsal, and then they’d just wing it. If I wanted to go in and touch something up towards the end of my run, the producer would come over the loudspeaker and say, “It’s fine, Lisa”. But I had to run in during those rehearsals and touch up whatever I could that I saw on the monitor. So toward the end of my run, everything had to [start off] perfect.
In a corner of the stage [were] cans of paint and brushes. And if I knew a certain scene was coming up, I’d get a 1-gallon bucket and put in paper cups of each color I might need, grab a few little brushes and a wet rag, and I’d be ready to jump in if need be. There’s no time to go over to that corner of the stage. You have to be uber-prepared.
Jack Forestall, the production designer for “Bold and the Beautiful,” is going to present me with the award, and what’s so cool about that is he actually worked for me in 1983 back in Philadelphia. I worked for a shop that did the Philadelphia opera company sets, and Jack came to work there while he was going for his master’s at Temple University. Then he and his wife came out here, and the rest is history.
Barbara Mesney, Set Designer
Mesney’s extensive resume boasts 60 feature films, including “Argo,” “Hail, Caesar!,” “Gone Girl,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” and “Little Fockers,” while her TV credits range from “Bosch” to the Brandy “Cinderella” and “Grace & Frankie.”
Most of the time, people say, “Oh, really? You did something? What did you do?” People don’t understand that, unlike in theater, where you’re aware that there’s a set and it’s like a sculpture sitting up there on stage, in film and television, the objective is to not be noticed. To not have your work be seen. We’re always doing something; it could be the smallest thing or a monumental thing. It could be, you know, an entire set, or, you know, like I remember in the old days when I started before we had all these graphic software programs.
The set designers used to do the signs, too. We did all the sign work. So it’s very different now, with all that shifted away from us. But we would design the sets, and then we would design the signs. So sometimes it would just be putting up a little piece of wall or a sign or, you know, usually a director and a DP and, and the production designer go into a location and there are some modifications that have to happen for the action to occur there. And like I say, it could be anything like that up to a standing set or, you know, what Jack Fisk does out, and you know, like on the revenant or something where they’re creating whole worlds outside. It could be anything and then you know, so that’s why I tell people I’m I’m designing all this stuff So I call myself like an architect. Like a backstage architect, I’m doing the building drawings and I’m doing the models But it’s all stuff that people basically will never be aware of.
“Basic Instinct”
That was part of my San Francisco days. You know, I started in theater. And so I had been designing live theater for years. And I had done one other movie project prior to “Basic Instinct.” And then I had gone abroad. When I came back, I got this offer to do “Basic Instinct.” I literally [landed], and within nine hours, I was working on “Basic Instinct.” I know. It was great. That was Terry Marsh, he was the production designer.
This is a good story. “Basic Instinct,” the main character is bisexual, right? That’s the whole context. And so we wanted to rent this gay bar in San Francisco. It was a beautiful location because they had all the flags and it was already set up for this shot. And the owner of that bar was willing to rent it to the company, but only if he could see the script. So they gave him the script, and the end result of that was that [he] took offense to the fact that she was a killer. It put the gay community on high alert and they basically showed up at every location we went to shoot at. We were boycotted, and they always made a lot of noise, whistles and everything. But beyond that, some of the sets were sabotaged, people were taking paint balloons and throwing them at the sets the night before we’d be shooting.
My first movie, “Class Action,” also in San Francisco, was the total opposite. It went like clockwork, without a hitch, nothing went wrong. And [the crew] were all up from Hollywood, and they were saying to me, “Barbara, it’s not normally like this. Don’t think that the movie business is like this, because usually there’s some drama going on somewhere.” Sure enough, “Basic Instinct,” man. Literally every day was a crisis in the art department because something had to be fixed. Everybody, not just the art department. But we got through it, and it was a very fun project to have worked on and I met some great people.
That was one of the ones where I had to knock out the sets and then get onto the signage so that the scenic artists could paint these signs, because that was the way it was done in those days. I remember doing that Chinatown set, having to draw a sign with Chinese characters. We would do them in full scale so that they could be built. And trying to get this Chinese sign created by an actual Chinese sign maker in neon so that it’s accurate. It was constantly checking and making sure that you’re being accurate because everyone’s going to see this thing on a big screen.
“Twin Peaks”
I got to do all the dream sequences. That was really fun, and I just remember [David Lynch and I would] go back and forth and back and forth, and he was a real detail guy. He had a very specific vision. I remember the art director came in and the production designer, Ruth, said to me, “You and he are on the same wavelength, so this is great.”
They gave me all of the wacky stuff to design, basically all the stage sets for all these dream sequences, the one where he comes through the window and has to go through this old, beautiful villa where that weird thing is on the wall and the radio station and the desert.
Dan Sweetman, Storyboard Artist
Sweetman has worked extensively on storyboards for over 100 films, including two Best Picture winners, “Braveheart” and “Birdman,” as well as “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “The Prestige,” and “The Nutty Professor.”
Storyboards are a visual script, a tool to help the director, to guide the way through the story in general. We’re sort of guardians of the story. But what I do, you never see it on the screen. You see the thoughts and the ideas. There are so many pushes and pulls on the story that it could lose its way if one influence is too great. So, I always thought the storyboard artist helps the director visualize the thing, but he’d also keep an eye on if the story is still being true to what it was designed to be. By the time shooting starts, I’m done. When they get on the set the first day, they’re not wondering, “How are we going to shoot this?” It’s all there. So that’s the most valuable use of the skill
“Braveheart”
Braveheart was great. It was my first road show on location. So we went to England, Scotland, and Ireland. And I was still sort of new in the business. So this was like a big, big deal, big Hollywood experience. And so I was just trying to learn as much as I could.
It was unusual for me because, like I said, usually, I’m off the picture when it starts shooting. Right. But there was enough work that I was just ahead of the shooting schedule. I was drawing stuff like three weeks ahead of filming. And I remember David Tomlin, the legendary English first AD guy, he’s going page by page. And they got through what I call the gags. The fighting maneuvers and stuff, which I kind of stayed away from because the stunt coordinator is going to come up with it. But I did do the one of the dagger in the eye. And Tomlin goes, “All right, who thought of this?” And it wasn’t as much who thought of it as how are we going to do this? It was a lot of fun memories.
“Birdman”
I did sort of thumbnail because Alejandro Iñárritu could visualize it, but he needed help. He goes, “Oh, the whole movie’s one shot.” I go, “What?” “Yeah, we’re going to do a one-shot movie. That’s why you’re here, because we need to find transition points.” And we need to map out what to decide howto sell it as a continued shot. He was very much with the DP kind of mapping it all out. Basically, I was just taking notes and then presenting him the work. So I wasn’t as much of an idea participant as a helpful wrist.
J. Dennis Washington, Production Designer
Now retired, Washington spent 56 years in the film industry, beginning as an assistant art director on “The Exorcist II” and even serving as the second unit director on three projects. Some of his favorite projects include “Stand by Me,” “The Fugitive,” and “13 Days.”
Years ago, somebody said that what I do is everything that’s out of focus. It’s a little better than that, I think! It’s creating the visual environment in the scenes. And the collaboration is important with the DP and with the production designer.
“Prizzi’s Honor”
I started [with John Huston] on “Victory” back in 1980 in Budapest. With Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine in a prisoner-of-war camp. That was my first introduction to John. Totally intimidated. But I learned a lot from John. How do I make something true to the reality of the film, but at the same time make it interesting without without showing off? With John, he would he would let you find the best. There was a day on “Prizzi’s Honor” where we were doing a bookie operation for the Mafia. And I had some pictures of old research of these places and this and that. And he says, “Have you ever been to one of these?” I did a lot of research, but I didn’t actually go to one. And he brought Jack Nicholson over. And he says, “Jack, why don’t you get Rocky?” One of our mafia consultants. “Why don’t you have Rocky take Dennis over to one of these bookie gambling places and just see what it is.” And we went to some little street where there were just little nothing houses, shacks. And we went into this one and it was the same inside that it was outside: nothing.
And there was a bunch of guys around, and we said, “I’d like to see the operation if that’s all right.” So I went in the back room and this whole operation in this little shack was one phone on a little table, not even a desk. That’s the whole operation. In my research, I wasn’t trying to go over the top, but I was trying to make something that had a little more weight to it. So I went back to John, and I explained what I saw over there, and he said, “Do what you were gonna do.” He just wanted to know the truth. He wants to go back to the roots of reality so that if we’re bending the rules, we know where we’re coming from and we’re not just making shit up.
“The Net”
Irwin Winkler was directing that, and he’s a big Hitchcock fan. There was one thing that I saw in Washington, D.C., a sculpture called The Awakening. It’s like an 80-foot-high reclining man, but he’s pulling himself out of the earth, so you see portions of him, his knees, his hands. So we had a scene at the beginning of the picture where this upstanding businessman goes to a park to have lunch, and you can tell he’s quiet, very methodical. And then he leans back and blows his brains out. I brought Erwin out there, and I said, “What if we bring him to the park bench here, and when he brings the gun up, we just crane up and reveal the statue behind him in the ground coming out?” I caught him contemplating it, and I said, “Hitchcock would have done it.” So that kind of cinched it, and it worked great. It was a nice opening to the film.
