There are probably a lot of people who go up to an NYU film professor’s lectern on the first day and tell them that they want to be a filmmaker. Inbal Weinberg is maybe one of the few who has gone up and said, “I want to be a production designer.”
In a time before places like Interior and Films or One Perfect Shot spotlighted how design and composition affect film audiences — to say nothing of Google Search’s ability to find examples of production design in the space of a few seconds — Weinberg knew in her bones that the visual worldbuilding organized by the production designer was how she could help tell stories. Looking back now on her career of over 20 years and collaborations with everyone from Derek Cianfrance and Maggie Gyllenhaal to Pedro Almodóvar and Luca Guadagnino, she’s done exactly what she set out to do.
Weinberg is the latest person to be the focus of Metrograph’s “Filmcraft” series, which showcases the films of outstanding below-the-line practitioners alongside inspirations from across their careers. Weinberg will be present for Q&As about her work on “The Lost Daughter” (March 14th) and “The Room Next Door” (March 16th); she will also introduce films that have influenced specific phases of her work: “Nights of Cabiria” (March 14), “All About My Mother,” (March 16), and “Rosetta” (March 16).
Counterintuitively, the films that actually drew Weinberg into a love of movies were not the ornate, period, or fantasy epics we often associate with production design. The most production design was not as compelling to her as the spare but complete and specific worlds of directors like Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, and the Brothers Dardenne.
About the Dardenne films specifically, Weinberg said that they give one of the best illusions possible in film of treating the world as it is. “There’s something about that kind of radical filmmaking language that takes away all the layers except for the actor, or the character,” Weinberg told IndieWire. “When you sort of discard the ‘art for art’s sake’ reason for production design, then actually everything that the character uses or is surrounded by has an immense meaning.”
This is not to say Weinberg doesn’t love injecting a little bit of art into the world of a film when it’s appropriate. Her earliest training was in fine arts, and she began to look at film as a medium in the artistic sense in college. “Nobody ever comes to film school [aiming for] a craft position. Usually, they think they’re going to be a director. So I think [my professors] were actually very pleased. It was a welcome change,” Weinberg said. “Designers come from a variety of backgrounds. A lot of people come from architecture or theater design. But for me, it was really, ‘I love movies. What can I do? How can I make films?’”
That question led Weinberg not just to production design, but to a much larger truth about filmmaking. At its best, it is even more collaborative than people realize. “I think department heads are usually viewed as, ‘OK, this is your universe. You are in charge of this. And that’s what we’re going to talk to you about,’” Weinberg said. “We’re not just the heads of this department. Think of us as your compadres on this journey to making the film. Like, we are your inner team. We’re here to fulfill your vision in many ways, and it’s not necessarily bound by what is officially our job. We can offer so many solutions to a variety of problems and elevate your film in a variety of ways.”
To be a production designer is to be a producer, to manage what is often the largest department and needs much of the budget of a film. Weinberg, of course, needs to decide what color to paint the walls and what posters to hang on them. But in making decisions about the visual world of the film and how it expresses character and tone, she’s also almost always making decisions that affect how the story is captured, too — in which country the film is shot, how much happens on a stage or at locations.
“My favorite production experiences that I’ve had, and I think also the most helpful, [is when filmmakers] make it a team. Decide who your inner circle is that is making this movie and talk to everybody about everything,” Weinberg said. “When you are in meetings where you have the AD, the DP, the production designer, the producers, the director, and everybody is trying to brainstorm, I’ve seen beautiful things happen from that.”
That kind of horizontal collaboration is a lot easier on indies, of course; bigger films tend to have more hierarchy. But it’s something that Weinberg would like to see a lot more of as she continues her career. “With the rise of authoritarian regimes everywhere in the world, I think a lot about our need for a pyramid structure. And I’m feeling like, ‘OK, if we practiced it a little less in the film industry, we [can] practice it less in life,” Weinberg said.
From her very first collaboration with Cianfrance, Weinberg has learned that there are many ways of making a film. “You have to adjust your expectations and your work style to not just the filmmaker but the kind of cinematic language that filmmaker decides to use,” Weinberg said. “That’s kind of the beauty of our work structure; we get to play with a lot of different canvases.”
“Filmcraft: Inbal Weinberg” plays March 14-16 at Metrograph in New York.
