Mateusz Odrobny

An alley off Whyte, as a Tokyo slum. Part of production designer Myron Hyrak’s magic for the movie of the week For The Love Of A Child.

Later this month, a production designer from Hollywood will be exploring the streets of Edmonton to determine if our city has the look, the right look. If it does, wheels could be set in motion to bring yet another major motion picture production to town later this year. In light of this, and in keeping with See’s Art Issue theme, I decided to find out exactly what a production designer does, and why the decision makers in L.A. might care so much about what one thinks.

Luckily, I was able to convince Myron Hyrak, an immensely talented production designer of our own, to join me at Spinelli’s Café for cappuccinos and some insight into his profession.  I say lucky, because Myron’s headed the art department for dozens of projects over the years for the likes of NBC, Paramount and Disney. And also because he’s the kind of guy you want to have a cappuccino with. Introspective and outspoken, he comes across a bit like an ex-surfer who’s learned a few things from the waves.

“Everything that’s behind the actors that’s kind of out of focus, that’s what we do. We look after the set decoration, designing and building the sets, the color palette of the show, building the props. We work with special effects, hair, makeup, wardrobe, assisting stunts with what they do.    

Stunts?

“If somebody has to go through a plate glass window, between you and me, if it were left up to the stunt department they’d have a springboard on one side and a trampoline on the other and that’s what you’d see. That’s all they care about. And that’s all they should care about. My job’s to make it look right.”

He explains how the art department supports the performance, the actor and the character development with the set.

“We start talking more about the characters and what kind of a person lives in that bedroom, living room, whatever. And we try to support that. Even if the camera doesn’t see it, the actor will see it, the crew will see it, it helps the performance if he has that stuff there. If he’s the hardened ex-cop you want the collector baseball with the signature, which he got from his dad. But he doesn’t go to ball games because he’s on a case.”

Thanks to Myron, I once walked through a post-war Tokyo slum in an alley off Whyte Avenue, built for the Lifetime movie For the Love of a Child. I ask him about that.

“The brick was all wrong so we hid most of that. We put up facades and hung a lot of laundry and just gave it that visual density that you want in an environment like that. We had ambient puffs of smoke coming out of the corners and little puffs of steam, lots of extras showing post-war poverty. We pre-built all that stuff, did all the graphics, and set it up in just two days. We shot it and then we backed up the 40 yard dumpster and just heaved it all away.”

How does he deal emotionally with building all of these beautiful things and then taking an axe to it?
“I worked with this carpenter when I was a painter, and I spent a week working on a set for something. And then they cancelled the set. I had just finished it and I really poured myself into this thing. I wanted to make it look great. And this guy who was so cynical, he said you get paid anyway, what do you care if it goes in the dumpster before they shoot it or after. Or if they don’t shoot it at all. I kind of thought about it for a long time. And you know, for me it matters, it does sting a bit. But that’s what we build it for. We don’t build it to look at later or to give to a playground so kids can play on a dangerous piece of scenery. You know, we build a spaceship and people say “why not give it to a school?” Well, because it’s not built for that. It’s succeeded once it gets shot.”

It reminds me of the Tibetan monks who build mandalas, one grain of sand at a time, and then throw them in a river.

“That’s what life is, though”, he says. “Making a good movie is like making a good salad. It’s the same thing. You’re working with wood and furniture, or lettuce and tomatoes. It all comes from the same place. Good cooking, good movies, poetry, it’s all the same. And hopefully someone enjoys it before it goes into the dumpster.”

I know that the guy flying in from L.A. this month will be considering whether our city can pass for a certain midwestern American city. I ask Myron what he thinks.

“The interesting thing about Edmonton is that it shoots really well for a range of places. We’ve shot it for Denver lots of times, we’ve shot Whyte Avenue for New England and upstate New York, Syracuse and those kind of towns. It has a lot of looks. We can do New Jersey and some of the grittier eastern towns like Baltimore and Scranton, Pennsylvania. We can do that here because it has that more industrial look than Calgary or Vancouver.”

With maybe a little bit of post-war Tokyo on the side.