PINOCCHIO STORY KANYE GENIUS SERIES

The villa’s sleek modernist take on classical Greek architecture with the dramatic outdoor stairway and compositional hierarchy designed by the accomplished architect Edward Tuttle was a perfect base for what we intended Miles’ character to have built. The fact then that the island estate would be a digital construction built on a landlocked villa was a happy outcome since we would be able to optimize the environment to suit our location brief. We were lucky enough to find a villa owned by a game couple in the hills of the Peloponnesian peninsula that was part of a hotel there, but separate enough to have its own singular personality. The unrealistic wish was to find an island estate filling the aesthetic requirements, the billionaire owner(s) of which would enthusiastically welcome the crew to shoot there. Miles’ Isle, my name for our fictional island estate in the Ionian Sea, had to be eye-catching in its silhouette when seen from afar-it also had to be a location that would provide the film with a sense of architectural splendor and luxury.

With the design and animation aid of the talented artist Kim Frederiksen, and many conceptual iterations of the look and action of the opening, we arrived at a fully fleshed out preview and design of the puzzle box that could then be broken down into its practical parts by propmaster Kris Peck and his team. The research had the Art Department exploring Fibonacci curves, periodic tables and the “Magic Eye” 3D optical illusion. Nevertheless, there was a great deal of design leeway in the actual execution of the games, and in the action of the box opening and game reveal. Rian’s direction for the puzzle box was fairly explicit: It was to be the size of 3-4 stacked medium pizza boxes, screens had to successively reveal the games, and the puzzle of each game was described.

PINOCCHIO STORY KANYE GENIUS SERIES

In alignment with the story’s multi-faceted, multi-layered narrative structure incorporating reconstructions, reincarnations and revelations, the sets and locations, even the props themselves had to have an equally progressive series of reveals, all to serve up character clues and deliver plausible suspects.Īn absorbing design challenge for this project was the creation of the invitation puzzle box that serves to introduce the cast of characters within the context of their separate COVID-reduced circumstances and to build anticipation for their eventual rendezvous at the island paradise of their fabulously wealthy friend and co-disruptor, Miles Bron-the one among them all who succeeded beyond all reason. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was magical to explore with Rian and his collaborators. Rian has written and directed a film story filled with intrigue and satire, character color and texture, direction and misdirection-a good mystery writer is like a magician focusing the audience’s fascinated attention on one hand while the other is quietly busy with the real work. And, while Benoit Blanc quickly dispenses with the early puzzles thrown his way, this mystery is what ultimately consumes the film’s hero. Oh, but there could be-particularly when what you see both is and isn’t what you get! In the hands of a brilliant writer like Rian Johnson, the mystery at the heart of Glass Onion is right in front of you if you can but see it, though it’s not the one you suspect. How could there be mystery to a glass onion?

And an appreciation for, to repurpose the Winston Churchill quote, the “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” By contrast, a glass onion may be densely layered, but it’s also transparent. By definition, it is meant to be “puzzled out.” Digging into a mystery in order to get to the bottom of factual truth beneath layers of duplicity, deception and even self-deception, however, requires the exceptionally observant skills of an accomplished student of human nature.

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