By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)

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Filmmakers take that “six great scenes” concept very literally. These setpiece scenes—so named because before the advent of location shooting, elaborate sets were built as backdrops to key scenes—are also often called the “trailer scenes” or the “money scenes” (as opposed to “money shots” – that’s a whole different post!). As incensed as I am personally about how trailers these days give every single bit of the movie away, I understand that this is essential movie advertising: those trailer scenes have to seduce the potential audience by giving a good sense of the experience the movie is promising to deliver.

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The Harry Potter books and films are so crammed full of visual imagery it would take a book to go into it all (there probably is one, in fact…) The books play with all the classic symbols of witches, wizards and magic: owls, cats, gnome, newts, feathers, wands, crystals, ghosts, shapeshifters, snakes, frogs, rats, brooms (I don’t really have to keep going, do I?). Look at The Wizard of Oz (just the brilliant contrast of the black and white world of Kansas and the Technicolor world of Oz says volumes). Look at what Barbara Kingsolver does in Prodigal Summer, where images of fecundity and the, well, prodigiousness of nature overflow off the pages, revealing characters and conflicts and themes. Look at what Robert Towne does with water in Chinatown—and also, try watching that movie sometime with Oedipus in mind… the very specific parallels will blow you away. Take a look at Groundhog Day, which constantly provides groundhog images, images of stopped or handless clocks (and that malevolent clock radio!), an ice image of the eye of God, anthropomorphic weather.

In film, every movie has a production designer: one artist (and these people are genius level, let me tell you) who is responsible, in consultation with the director and with the help of sometimes a whole army of production artists) for the entire look of the film – every color, costume, prop, set choice.

With a book, guess who’s the production designer?

I am. You are. The author is.

As a screenwriter, I was used to having producers tell me a scene had to be set someplace else because it would be too expensive to shoot. But as an author I have the incredible advantage of an unlimited production budget. Whatever settings, crowds, mechanical devices, alien attacks or natural disasters I choose to depict, my only budget constraint is in my imagination. The most powerful directors in Hollywood would kill for a fraction of that power. Theoretically, they can’t even begin to compete.

So I approach setting as a production designer. My Thriller Award-nominated Huntress series (Huntress Moon, Blood Moon, Cold Moon, Bitter Moon, Hunger Moon) follows a haunted FBI agent’s interstate manhunt for what he believes may be a female serial killer. I get to show off the staggering beauty of my home state of California, and I have a lot of fun with locations. I get a lot of raves about a key scene that takes place in a butterfly colony in a eucalyptus grove. Now, growing up in California as I have, I couldn’t very well set a thriller on the central California coast and not use the monarch grove, and the visuals are breathtaking – but the monarchs also make a great metaphor for my killer. In another key scene (in Blood Moon) the memorial gardens of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco add a ritual mysticism to the aftermath of a murder scene. And using my beloved Haight Ashbury as a continuing setting in Blood Moon and Cold Moongives those books the hint of magical forces that is a subtle part of the series.

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Via: Alexandra Sokoloff