Imaginary Worlds - Office Space

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

Kasra Farahani has done concept art on a lot of big sci-fi fantasy films, and this year he took on his biggest job yet as the production designer for the Disney+ series Loki. Kasra’s sets became fan favorites, especially the way he depicted the sprawling intergalactic bureaucracy of the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. I talk with Kasra about how he got started in the industry, what design principles he learned working with Tim Burton’s go-to designer Bo Welch, why retro technology, especially from the 1970s, makes sense in sci-fi fantasy offices, and what those imaginary offices have to say about our workplaces in the real world. This episode is sponsored by Inked Gaming and BetterHelp. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you’re interested in advertising on Imaginary Worlds, you can contact them here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Typically, a concept artist will come in before the sets are designed or the costumes, and the concept artist will illustrate what the show or the movie is going to look like. But very often when I look at these books that are like the making of the movie or the show, I'm often amazed that the concept art actually doesn't look anything like the final product. And you never know what happened. There could have been budget issues or creative differences or maybe the concept art was just supposed to be a jumping off point. Except with Marvel. With Marvel the concept art

usually looks almost exactly like what ends up on screen. They seem to know what they want. Kasra Farahani has been one of Marvel's go-to concept artists for a while. Asraf Farahani has been one of Marvel's go-to concept artists for a while. He worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Thor. He's also worked on other big sci-fi fantasy films, like Spider-Man 3, Alice in Wonderland, and Star Trek Into Darkness. Over time, he moved up from a concept artist to an art director and eventually a production designer. And this year, he took on his art director and eventually a production designer. And this year, he took on his biggest job yet as a production designer, the Disney Plus series, Loki.

The timekeepers have built quite the circus. And I see the clowns are playing their parts to perfection. The production design on Loki got a lot of praise from fans and critics, and I was curious to talk with him about it because it's a great example of how to build a fantasy world based on places in the real world. And the production design actually made me think differently about the places in the real world that he used for creative inspiration. But first I was wondering, how do you even get started in a career like this? He says the hardest part was just breaking in. His parents had emigrated from Iran when he was a kid. I didn't have any connections. Despite growing up in LA, the business has changed a lot since

I've started. But certainly when I began, it was a very centralized business concentrated in Southern California. And to a great extent, people who worked in the business had connections to the generation of people who worked in the business before them. And there was a lot of nepotism and families working in generational lineages in the business. And my family immigrated to this country in the late 70s, and my parents, they don'tages in the business. And, you know, my family immigrated to this country in the late 70s, and my parents, you know, they don't work in the business. So I didn't have any of that. For a while, he bounced around between freelance design jobs.

And then I got a call from a friend who was a concept artist, is what they call them, a concept illustrator. They were looking for some help on a project that ended up being Corpse Bride, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. And the type of help they were looking for was they wanted an intern. So I was an intern on that movie, but it was still a foot in the door and an excellent way to get exposed to what a concept

artist was, what the art department did, what the different roles are, how you interface with script, how you interface with director, all that stuff was a kind of revelation to me. And he eventually found a mentor, Bo Welch. Bo Welch is one of the few production designers I've actually heard of, because Bo Welch worked on Men in Black and several Tim Burton movies, including Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands. And when I saw those movies, well before IMDb existed, I had to look up who the production designer was, because those sets were so memorable. And when I saw those movies, well before IMDb existed, I had to look up who the production designer was because those sets were so memorable. Kostra first met Bo Welch in 2009.

They did a string of projects together, including Men in Black 3 and the Netflix show, A Series of Unfortunate Events. I learned everything working with him. I mean, I worked, Beau is a dear friend and Beau has a singular view of design and he can collide humor with elegance in design very easily. He has proportional sense. I mean, so much of design is about proportions, how big something is relative to something else and how much of this versus how much of that, which proportions, how big something is relative to something else, and how much of this versus how much of that, which is, I mean, that's the most essential language of aesthetics, whether you're cooking pasta or making a painting or designing a building or

designing a set, it's all about proportions. And Bo's proportional sense is amazing. Well, it's interesting what you're saying about proportions, because I mean, that's, you know, I was thinking about Tim Burton. So obviously he's a good fit with Bo Welch because, I mean, Tim Burton also has this really playful sense of design and proportions. Absolutely. I mean, I think they have a complimentary aesthetic because they share a whimsy. because they share a whimsy.

Tim Burton's obviously has a macabre take on whimsy and Bo has a more kind of designing or elegant, beautiful take on it or whatever. And the two of them meld together so amazingly well. Well, you mentioned whimsy and humor. I mean, it's funny because I think those are words that people would not normally associate with set design or production design. Why do you think that's important as opposed to like what, like being too grand, too heavy handed, too humorless?

Well, I think that whimsy is really important because like if you look at the cartoons, Like if you look at the cartoons, there's an austerity to the visual complexity of the image. I'm sure you can find complex images in animation. But generally, if you think back to what you think of cartoons, it's about embracing the two dimensional look. Even Pixar films rely so heavily on two-dimensional image-making ideas, like layout artists. All those folks still have a big role in the way that things look. And I think that the reason why those images are so impactful is because they have a really rigorous sense of, I'm going to use a technical term, sequential design. So sequential design is basically creating a sequence or a hierarchy

within an image, you know, where to look first, you know. So you try to create this using different kind of triadic elements, like a small object, a medium object, a big object, a circular object, a square object, a triangular object, a white object, a gray object, a black object. Using these things, you create a really impactful and quick to read image that tells the viewer where to look first and where to look second. And I think that if you're doing this well,

there's a degree of simplification in the image that you have done. I think that if you're doing this well, there's a degree of simplification in the image that you have done. I think that that becomes associated with whimsical forms. Part of whimsy, I think an essential part of whimsy is simplification. And I think a part of elegance is also simplification. So I think there's a bridge there between those ideas. After the break, we'll learn how Cosper used whimsy and simplification to bring to life something that didn't sound very whimsical, the sprawling intergalactic bureaucracy of the timekeepers in Loki. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body.

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Now, in explaining how the production design on Loki fits into the show, Now, in explaining how the production design on Loki fits into the show, I do have to give away a few spoilers. The premise is that everybody's favorite god of mischief, brother of Thor, antagonist to the Avengers, ends up in the wrong timeline because of very complicated plot reasons that have to do with previous movies. Anyway, in the first episode, Loki is scooped up by an agency called the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. The main job of the TVA is to prune timelines, making sure that any variant versions of Loki or other important people in the galaxy don't stray from their destiny in life. The agent assigned to his case is Mobius, played by Owen Wilson. So you're part of the TVA's courageous and dedicated workforce? The agent assigned to his case is Mobius, played by Owen Wilson.

So you're part of the TVA's courageous and dedicated workforce. Yes. You were created by the Timekeepers. Yep. To protect the sacred timeline. Correct. Is that funny? The idea that your little club decides the fate of trillions of people across all of existence at the behest of three space lizards.

Yes, it's funny. It's absurd. But Loki soon learns the TVA is not a joke. And at one point he breaks away from them and finds himself on a planet where all the other versions of him from different timelines are hiding out. Only one of his doppelgangers is actually played by Tom Hiddleston. The rest are played by other actors, like Richard E. Grant. In my timeline, everything proceeded correctly my entire life until Thanos attacked our ship. So you didn't try to stab him? Certainly not. I take no offense, my friends, but blades are worthless in the face of a Loki's sorcery. This planet is also littered with discarded objects from other universes.

And that inspired Cosgrove to create one of his favorite sets in the show, the underground headquarters of the Lokis, which he decided would be an old-fashioned bowling alley. That was not in the script. It was just written as an underground temple, was pretty much all it said. So it was wide open for us to propose something. So the idea that I proposed was that this bowling alley had been deleted from time, and it had just been so compacted by other realities that you can see alien vines growing through it from another, you know, remnants of another reality that happened to be adjacent to it. And there's like a vignette of a freeway or a few chunks of a car and road signs on one other side.

And the goal of this place was to feel like a throne room, but that they had scavenged a mall Santa seat from a deleted mall somewhere. And so you look at the throne, it's got all these reindeer, Christmas affectations on it. So we got to build that, and it ended up being my favorite set. And a lot of people have written me kind emails suggesting that it may be a lot of people's favorite set. But from what I've seen online,

the biggest fan favorite set was the headquarters of the TVA. When I first met on the project, there was only two scripts of the six and there was a brief outline for the rest of it. One helpful bit of direction that was written from the show's creator and head writer Michael Waldron was that he imagined the world as Blade Runner meets Mad Men. So that was the starting point. And then meeting with the director Kate Herron, she and I hit it off right away and had a lot of the same references in mind in addition to that. Gilliam's Brazil, brutalist architecture. Now, even if you don't know the term brutalist architecture, you've probably seen the buildings. They're massive, blocky, concrete structures, usually built in the 50s or 60s for governments, universities, or parking

garages. For instance, the FBI headquarters in Washington, which is usually shown in an establishing shot on the X-Files, the Blacklist, or any other show or movie about the FBI headquarters in Washington, which is usually shown in an establishing shot on The X-Files, The Blacklist, or any other show or movie about the FBI. And when he said Brazil, he was referring to Terry Gilliam's classic 1985 film Brazil, which is a surreal dark comedy about a bureaucratic state that thinks it can justify anything so long as the paperwork is approved. That is your receipt for your husband. Thank you. And this is my receipt for your receipt. So there's definitely a lot of Terry Gilliam influence on the TVA. The other thing that we tried very hard to do on Loki that I think is

a kind of old fashioned as compared to the way films are made now, large blockbuster films are made now, is that we wanted to build a very tactile in camera world. And many of those sets were built 360 sets with complete ceilings where the lighting was. And I do believe that the tactile feeling of the place, the realness of it, is directly an effect of having those kind of more complete sets

as opposed to vignettes, one or two or three walls that are relying heavily on set extension. Typically, Marvel uses a lot of set extension, which is where you actually have a minimal set, a green screen, and the rest of the set is filled in with CGI. But Cosper says, if you CGI most of your sets, it's going to have a significant impact on the lighting that's possible within that set. I think the most important job of production design is helping with lighting design, actually. So if your ability to do dramatic lighting has been taken away because

the lighting is being prescribed by the needs of a visual effects set extension, then one of your very important tools to elicit an emotional response has been taken away from you. But one of his big sources for inspiration came from the real world, a place that many listeners in the U.S. will know all too well, the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles, where we have to wait in line, seemingly forever, to get our license renewed. The TVA is the, it's the DMV, if you will, you know, it's the like, this metastasized version of this post-war, well-funded, but kind of hapless,abyrinthine bureaucracy. I grew up in Southern California,

huge amount of the architecture that I, my primary school, my middle school, my high school, the post office, the literal DMV, all of these spaces were mid-century institutional architecture built on the heels of the victory in World War II, which led to a population boom in California. And so there's this huge influx of this modernist institutional architecture that's here. So that's like one big influence for him. And he crashed land that into brutalist architecture that was quite common in London, where Kate, our director, grew up.

was quite common in London where Kate, our director, grew up. And you start to get some of this weighty, grimy world contrasted with elegant, streamlined, simple silhouette architecture. I'd say an example of something that I was able to propose that resonated with the group and we ended up doing it is the processing chambers. So people may remember from the show, he enters the receiving room, which is this kind of circular room with a big orange desk. And then he's shoved into this series of very Gilliam-esque metal rooms, one where his clothes, his Asgardian clothes are burned off and one where he's the sign for everything

he's ever said in his life. Please sign to verify this is everything you've ever said. What? One where a scanner scans him to make sure he's not a robot. Please confirm to your knowledge that you are not a fully robotic being. We're born an organic creature and do in fact possess what many cultures would call a soul.

What? To my knowledge? Do a lot of people not know if they're robots? Thank you for your confirmation. Please move through. Those were not in script originally. It was a more visual effects intensive imagination of things. Not so clear, I think, in my opinion, and really expensive for how short the page count was. I proposed this idea of this Gilliam-esque kind of hamster run idea, which would hopefully get across right away to the audience the dehumanizing nature of the tva in that he's literally just

being dropped through trap doors to save time so uh the tva got us thinking a lot about the way that office spaces are portrayed generally in sci-fi like you mentioned brazil but there's also the adjustment bureau uh which was a movie based on a Philip K. Dick story. And they're kind of like the TVA in that they monitor time. But they all dress in these kind of mid-century outfits with, you know, like fedoras. Also in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they're the Vogons, which are like this species of bureaucrats. And they use really retro technology as well that's kind of integrated into hard sci-fi. And even The Good Place, you know, Michael the Demon, where he worked, was kind of like an old-fashioned office from hell.

So why do you think this works so well in these worlds, where you could have literally anything, but the characters are, you know, they've got like stacks of paper, and they're using pens and stamps. And if there's a computer, it's like this clunky first-generation computer. Or, you know, like on Loki, you've got a dot matrix printer. I think maybe it has something to do with relatability and offering something of a bridge to the audience. I mean, for us, you know, the way I sort of justified this in my mind is that like it's an institution. It's a big institution.

Institutions get huge infusions of funding at intervals. You might get a huge chunk of money in this decade and you might do a bunch of new buildings and you might buy a bunch of computers and furniture. And then you may not get funding again for four or five decades, three decades or something, you know. And certainly schools and colleges and places that I've spent time have this look about them

so that there's a cohesiveness to all the equipment. And yet it's all clearly not brand new either. So it's been a while. That's why the other period that he wanted to evoke was the 1970s, when a lot of buildings were made quickly with an infusion of cash. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program created a lot of new government agencies, and those agencies needed offices.

And this was the heyday of urban renewal. So the 1970s office was usually a grid of windows. And on the inside, they all seemed to have Herman Miller furniture, which was much more affordable back then. So on Loki, the TVA looks like a Herman Miller showroom from the 70s, with those muted colors, brown and orange. And then you kind of collide into that, And then you kind of collide into that, this idea of an organization that has the ability to kind of cherry picked the ones that were most usable or

interesting and then brought them back and integrated them into their own technological infrastructure so you have this you know super super sophisticated and elaborate versions of analog technology collided with alien technology or whatever, and none of it's explicit. But we know from the nature of what the TVA does that they're hopping around. And we know from, I think Kate's talked about this in some interviews, that the charges that they used to prune a timeline or delete a timeline are harvested from the same elemental kind of forces that make up Alioth, which you see the big kind of storm cloud monster in episode five yeah that actually makes sense because i mean if they're harvesting the magical

energy of this like giant storm cloud monster which is basically like a trash compactor eating everything that got deleted from other timelines why do you need you know a digital interface like iron man i mean all you need are metal rods or or you know like a digital interface like Iron Man? I mean, all you need are metal rods or, you know, like a hard plastic casing to harness that energy. I think that that's right. And I think it's obviously would be disingenuous not just to mention that obviously a lot of this is about world building and characterization and curating what the visual scope of this world is and what it looks like and feels like. Because while there's things that you're telling the audience explicitly in terms of events you're depicting and things people say, there's a lot you're telling them, maybe more so that

you're telling them about the world and how it feels implicitly by the images you create and by these rules that are never kind of explicitly acknowledged, but they can see that all this stuff sort of looks like it's part of the same world and all of it's this. And why is it mid-century modern and not, you know, Art Deco or, you know, whatever from the mid-19th century or something? It's like all those things have cultural associations that we are trying to harness. cultural associations that we are trying to harness.

I think the TVA and other fantasy offices that use retro technology are tapping into a design issue that's been hotly debated, skeuomorphism. Skeuomorphism is the term for when something digital looks like the thing it replaced in the real world. So on the iPhone, the phone icon is a white outline of an old-fashioned phone. On Zoom, the microphone button is a picture of an analog mic. A lot of designers hate skeuomorphism. They feel like we've moved beyond that technology. People don't need a reference point from the past anymore. But it's harder to figure out what would take its place. But with these offices and fantasy worlds, they're kind of doing the opposite.

It's like skeuomorphism in reverse. So putting something like a word processor in a fantasy office can evoke a certain kind of feeling, because in the real world, people who remember using that technology are either retired or on the verge of retiring. Those associations are nostalgic, but they're powerful because those associations have so much more influence over an audience member's emotional reception of something, I think,

than anything you can write or build or design. You know, if you can tap into that well of life experience, however, either through the script or the design or whatever, I think you stand a chance of making an impact. So I also read you said that the themes of Loki and the TVA are all about the battle of free will versus determinism. Yeah. How do you express that in the production design? Yeah. How do you express that in the production design? spectrum of one's life decisions and funneling them into a DMV like queue where you go this way or that way and you may not even have a choice between the two you may not be prescribed to you you know cubicles and repetitiveness infinite repetition of of the offices when you look

through the large arches and you do see the set extension which is basically taking that chrono monitoring set that we built and replicating it at infinitum to the horizon or when you're looking at the overlook and you see the expanse of the Mobius and Loki see the expanse of the TVA which is some combination of Brasilia and super city futurism from Metropolis or something like that. That's not real. It is. And unfortunately, so is all the paperwork.

Good tinder for your fire, though. Come on. This place is a nightmare. That's another department. Now that department I'll help you burn down. That's what I think is the strongest visual representation of that theme in our show. Another reason the design of the TVA fascinates me is because we're at a crossroads in history. During the pandemic, there have been a lot of articles about offices, whether we need to go

back to them. And if we don't, what do we do with all those buildings? Where I live in New York, that's a big question. And how come every time people try to reinvent what an office could be, we end up with cubicles again? I know that the cubicles are like, they got a bad rap and they went away. And I think that they're still coming back in some ways, because I think some people didn't like being in a bullpen, not having even a modicum of privacy that a cubicle offers you. I mean, I think it's unclear what work environments are going to be like and how much people's appetite to work at home, what the longevity of that is, because I think that could get old and people will want to try

to find some kind of a middle ground. And sci-fi is a great place to explore these questions of where we want to work and how we want to work with others. Because for the time being, Loki, the trickster god who loves chaos, unless he's the guy in charge, is now working for the TVA. And he's not going anywhere soon. Khosra just began production design on Loki season two. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Khosra Farhani.

By the way, classes are starting very soon for the fall semester of my course at NYU on creating your own podcast. The class is virtual, so you can take it anywhere. And you can sign up at the NYU School of Professional Studies website. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emolinski at Imagine World's pod. And on the show's Instagram page, I put a slideshow of Kosser's work. If you really like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or a shout out on social media.

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