Films › Production design
Crimson Peak
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, 2015
Thomas Sanders built Allerdale Hall as a practical multi-storey set with a hole in the roof so real snow and leaves fell into the entrance hall. Red clay bleeding through the floors is a physical effect built into the construction. Costume and set colour are coordinated so the protagonist is visually consumed by the house. It is a gothic melodrama in which the building carries the exposition. Dan Laustsen's cinematography lights the hall mainly through practical sources and the hole in the roof, letting real atmosphere, dust and weather catch in the beams rather than adding haze digitally in post. Costume designer Kate Hawley coordinated colour shifts in the protagonist's wardrobe to track her absorption into the house across the film's timeline. It is worth studying how in-camera weather effects change blocking, since actors had to work around genuine cold and falling debris. The building's slow physical decay, tracked scene by scene through the falling clay and crumbling plaster, was planned on the construction schedule itself rather than left to art department dressing during shooting.
What to watch for
Watch the house interiors for practical weather inside a built set and how it changes the light.
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