The best magazine
Artist and designer Douglas Rogers is an acclaimed theatrical set designer, but he’s best known as the Art Director for the classic Academy Award®-winning blockbuster film Shrek, for DreamWorks. Yet his work as a designer has been extremely diverse, encompassing both stage as well as screen, from the set designs for the upcoming Shakespeare Center production of Much Ado About Nothing this December, to the new Disney movie Tangled, on which he worked as Production Designer.
From his stage work to his film designs -- from a haunting glade or a cozy Beaver's den in Narnia, to a princess's tower, or a sunny California paradise among the vines -- Doug's work draws the viewer irresistibly into those worlds. He doesn't just invite us into another place or time, he makes that world so intricate, detailed and richly believable that (to quote Liz Lemon from "30 Rock"), we simply respond with, "I want to go to there."
He's also proof that a set designer can find success in several worlds at once. He is currently working as a Concept Designer for Disney Imagineering on a variety of ongoing projects, and his other past credits include Visual Development Set Designer for Disney's The Princess and the Frog, development and identity design for Bee Movie (his sixth film for DreamWorks), and other film credits including Flushed Away, A Shark’s Tale, and Puss in Boots. For several years, Rogers was the resident designer of the Shakespeare Festival of Los Angeles, and his Broadway credits include work as Associate Designer to Doug Schmidt on the most recent Broadway revival of the Tony Award®-winning Into the Woods, among many other works.
Doug was nice enough to speak with me last week about his work and approaches, as well as his exciting set designs for Much Ado About Nothing, which stars Helen Hunt, David Ogden Stiers, Stephen Root, and Tom Irwin, and runs December 1-19, 2010 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in downtown Culver City, California.
Angela Mitchell: Hi Douglas, thanks for taking the time to speak with me. Your work is really beautiful, and the amount of detail is consistently extraordinary. When did you know you wanted to be a set designer?
Douglas Rogers: I knew that I wanted to be a set designer... it was 1985 or 1986, and I was working at the Dallas Theater Center as an actor. I went to see The Tempest, a production that Eugene Lee had designed, and it was just the first time that I had ever really noticed a set like that.
In the past, sets had always been sort of background material to me. But Eugene's sets were environmental, and were truly almost another actor onstage. They supported the action, but also enhanced the plot. I really felt like there was something new and magical there that I hadn't been exposed to before.
Most of the sets that I'd seen before that had been realistic, whereas Eugene's sets are more than that. They unfold, and the audience discovers them even as they're discovering the play.
Taking Audiences into Narnia
Angela Mitchell: Was there any particular designer or artist who inspired you early in your career?
Douglas Rogers: There were two -- Eugene Lee was definitely number one. I followed him around in the theatre, but I was scared to death of the guy at the time. I’m very familiar with his work, but the really funny thing is, he and I have actually never met or had a discussion, even though my wife actually knew him and used to house-sit for him!
My other inspiration is Ming Cho Lee, with whom I studied in graduate school.
Angela Mitchell: Of your own work, what's your favorite work to date?
Douglas Rogers: My favorite show that I've ever done was at The Dallas Theatre Center -- a production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We were in the old Arts District theatre there, which was a big warehouse, and I had film shot and projected throughout the production.
I also thought it would be fun to move the audience around during the show. So we moved three or four hundred people around throughout the show, and it created an immersive experience for them. With this in mind, to take it farther, I thought, "what if the children got to go to Narnia, as well?" so I got them to go 'into the wardrobe' even as they entered the theatre itself. The audiences were mostly children, who absolutely loved the chance to be part of the story.
Building a 'Tangled' Tower
Angela Mitchell: I love that idea about entering the theatre through the wardrobe itself. I never would have left the theatre!
Douglas Rogers: It was a great experience. We had sold-out performances, and Lawson Taitte, the critic for The Dallas Morning News, said it was one of the ten best productions done for the theatre in the past several years at the time, a big compliment.
Angela Mitchell: The amount of detail in your work is really extraordinary. Do you have a particular fondness for certain colors, textures, or historical periods when it comes to designing?
Douglas Rogers: Definitely. I love Victorian things, I love the clutter of the stage, and I also love the Tudor period. I do a lot of animated pictures outside the theatre, and a lot of stuff for Disney, where I’m often called upon to mesh work in a variety of styles and periods.
For instance, I have a movie coming out shortly -- Tangled, on which I was the production designer, which enabled me to design castles, and Rapunzel's tower in particular, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
The nice thing about those projects is that I’m given the opportunity to create kind of a melding of different styles to create a fairy tale world, using everything from Tudor, Romanesque, and Gothic, to Renaissance. Not one pure style, in other words, but a somehow perfect melding.
Staging Shakespeare
Angela Mitchell: You're designing the set for the upcoming production of Much Ado About Nothing by The Shakespeare Center in L.A. How are the challenges of Shakespeare different from the Disney and film work?
Douglas Rogers: In Shakespeare, as with the animated work, you can borrow from different periods and meld them easily. But for playwrights like Eugene O'Neill, on the other hand, he's incredibly specific in his time periods, as are certain other specific playwrights.
You couldn't modernize the setting as easily, or see some of his plays being set in Manhattan in the late 1990's, for instance.
Angela Mitchell: How does your production design work for film influence your theatrical set design work?
Douglas Rogers: It makes me value a dollar in the theatre, because it's so much harder to get money for theatre than it is for film. It’s something I harp on a lot when talking with my designers, the fact that you have to value the budget, to be a good steward. There are so many better stewards of money in theatre than in film. Theatre stretches a dollar four times better than film does.
I worked with Doug Schmidt on Into the Woods on Broadway in the 2002 revival, for instance, and the Dodger Management Group – even though they're very commercial and successful – they're very careful with how they spend their money. I was very impressed with that care at that level, just as I have been impressed with the care taken by many regional theatres, as well. I’ve always kept that theatre ethic, even when doing a film.
Creative and Industry Inspirations
Angela Mitchell: What are some of your favorite works by other designers?
Douglas Rogers: I was highly impressed with Ming Cho Lee's stuff, particularly for the Public Theatre. Eugene Lee's sets for Wicked were brilliant. And there's a guy whose set actually made me cry -- it was Michael Yeargan, who did the sets for Madame Butterfly (Anita Yavich did the costumes for it), by The Houston Grand Opera.
And I was just stunned. It was so beautiful. It was in a proscenium stage – and I typically like thrust more than proscenium, but that proscenium? No one could have done a better job than that show. It was a beautiful proscenium stage production that I thought also had a very modern aesthetic.
I actually went back and saw the same production again in San Diego later on because I was so in love with it.
Creating a California Paradise for 'Much Ado'
Angela Mitchell: What was your inspiration for your designs for Much Ado About Nothing?
Douglas Rogers: My inspiration was California wineries, and more specifically, California wine crate labels, which they also used to put on grape crates and orange crates decades back. Years ago, back in the 1930s and 1940s, those labels were how a lot of people got their ideas of what California was -- from their fresh fruit, whether grapes or oranges – which would have these beautiful labels showing lush landscapes and rolling vineyards and fruit trees.
Angela Mitchell: So it was almost this fantasy of what people imagined California to be, at that time?
Douglas Rogers: Right. The labels were beautiful, and made it look like such a bountiful place, and to this day, it’s part of a specific idea of California. Nowadays, people even buy and collect those old labels, and they’re very valuable now. People trade them, and frame them now in their homes. I thought, for this production, that was what I wanted, this image of this bounteous California, playing on the Sylvanic idea that the rest of the country had.
And the thing about California wineries, the older ones had these Queen Anne-style buildings, then some had kind of a Mission Revival style, which came later, and now we've got this fake Tuscan theme that has cropped up (I like the fake Tuscan stuff, but that wasn't what I wanted to go for here). But the originals, they were put there by primarily Italian immigrants, followed by the Germans – there have always been vineyards here. The Spanards cultivated, but not at the level of the Italians, and to this day, you go to Napa and Southern California and see all those influences.
So I went to a bunch of vineyards, up near Santa Barbara, and I got a flavor then for a lot of them. My wife is a real wine connoisseur, so we went to places I never would have known to go to, and there's just a look that California wineries have. They don't look like anywhere else. So I used that for Much Ado About Nothing, and in that range of kind of the 1930s to 1940s – not so much in a historical context, as in a style context.
From Pencils to Pixels
Angela Mitchell: How much of your work is done by hand, and how much is done on computer?
Douglas Rogers: When I draft, I’m one of the few people who actually drafts by hand, and it's the only thing I do that's not on the computer. I don't like computer drafting or the look of it as a designer.
Angela Mitchell: That’s great to hear – I'm always telling people that they still need to learn how to draft, even in an age of computers.
Douglas Rogers: I’m very cutting-edge, but I like the hands-on aspect of drafting something out and using a pencil, too. Although the unfortunate thing with drafting by hand is that it's difficult to change things.
Angela Mitchell: What’s your usual process?
Douglas Rogers: When I do my illustrations, I draw them first, then scan them, then use Photoshop and paint them in on the computer. I do this using a Cintiq tablet that lets me paint directly onto the screen digitally, which was something I learned how to do by working on movies.
Before, if I had to paint or draw and it was wrong, it would mean a whole new drawing or painting that might take two days. Now this way, I can try several options from the rough sketch, and it will now typically take me just five hours to finish a full color illustration that way.
Angela Mitchell: Your design models are beautiful – do you often use models in designing your sets?
Douglas Rogers: I often use models both for stage and film. I either do 1/8-inch scale or 1/4-inch scale white models, or fully rendered models that are quite complex. Sometimes, I will build models in Maya to get a quick look in the computer.
Models, particularly with theater, let you figure design problems out before drafting and building.
It is much easier and cheaper to solve a problem at a quarter-inch scale, than onstage with a crew loading in a set.
Angela Mitchell: If you could advise today's young set designers on an approach or skill set that you feel is most essential, what would it be?
Douglas Rogers: Three things. One, they need to get to know how to do better research than just looking at other people's pictures on Google. I keep coming across people not knowing how to do basic research.
Two, they need to work on their drawing skills, and to be able to sketch their ideas on a piece of paper better than what I’m seeing out there right now.
As the third thing, I’d also tell them, “Experience what you can for real.” There's nothing like actually seeing something and experiencing it firsthand. It’s not always possible, but whenever it is, it’s so important to do. If you're going to do a Tudor set, for instance, then go to England if you can, and experience an actual Tudor building that you can see, walk around, and photograph.
You'll never understand where things are coming from as well as you will from the original experience.
Angela Mitchell: Do you take notes and pictures wherever you travel, with that in mind?
Douglas Rogers: I’m always taking pictures. And whenever I go on vacation, I take a collapsible ruler with me (I know others who do the same thing). Then I’ll shoot my vacation pictures, and I’ll also shoot reference pictures with the ruler in frame so that I always have a sense of scale.
If I don't have my ruler with me (although I usually do – I even have a paper one in my wallet, for emergencies!), I almost always have a hat. I know what size my hats are, so I’ll put my hat in the photo and that also lets me have a sense of scale.
Angela Mitchell: That’s a great idea, to really make note of those experiences or settings that might inspire you in the future.
Douglas Rogers: Oh, I’m always looking and photographing and measuring wherever I go. I was once chased through the Metropolitan Museum in New York for it! I was measuring the knights on the horses, and the guard started chasing me around the museum because he thought I was getting too close to them and was doing something weird. But I was just trying to get a reference!
Angela Mitchell: What would you most caution young designers NOT to do?
Douglas Rogers: What irritates me the most from young designers is when they’re just copying someone else's work instead of creating their own. It's easy to fall into if you see something successful, but it’s also something that it’s so important to guard against.
It's okay to be influenced by others to create something new, but I've had people come to me to ask me to look at their portfolios, and on more than one occasion they’ll actually have my work in their portfolios!
They may have changed a few colors, but it was my design, and it’s still visible. And that’s something that’s disappointing, and something I’ve found happens a lot. I see people borrowing a little too heavily because things are so readily available on the Internet.
It's fine if it's just a reference, but I caution people and want to tell them, “Find your own voice, and don’t be so heavily influenced by other designers that you wind up just copying their work.”
Angela Mitchell: What do you most want people to remember, when it comes to set design?
Douglas Rogers: I think people should always remember that the set on the stage is the art form, and the drawings, models, and all the other stuff -- while they're artistic, they are simply tools to get you to the final piece of art that is the set itself.
The set is the art form. Everything else is the tool to get you there. And always remember your audience and what they will see and experience. They're the ones who are paying to come to see that show, and you're either trying to entertain them or inform them, and hopefully it's a combination of both.
Angela Mitchell: Thank you very much for the terrific insights, Doug, and for taking the time to share your thoughts with our readers!
Douglas Rogers: You’re very welcome.
Source: ...