Nathan Crowley- IFTA Production Design Masterclass

IFTA was delighted to present a special Production Design Masterclass with Nathan Crowley, Oscar-Winning Production Designer of Wicked, Interstellar, Dunkirk, The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Greatest Showman.

This masterclass was moderated by Paki Smith, IFTA-Nominated Production Designer of Small Things Like These and Bodkin. It took place on Thursday, 10th September at the Light House Cinema, Dublin.

The discussion explored Nathan Crowley’s acclaimed career and approach to production design, from developing a filmmaker’s visual language and creating large-scale sets to collaborating across departments and building a career within the Art Department.

Discussing how he approaches a project, Crowley said the first challenge is building the film visually in his own mind before translating that to the wider team.

“If someone gives you a script, you have to spend the time, and you need to look at it, and you need to make an image pack. I think directors are looking for some visual guidance and some inspiration, and so that’s really our job, to try and visualise the screenplay.

“As the Art Department, we can see in three dimensions, and that’s a gift. You have to help them see that place and that environment and that world and build it.”.

Turning to his collaborations with Christopher Nolan, Nathan explained that their collaborations often began months before the wider production team came on board, giving them time to establish the film’s visual direction.

"He’d call me in, and we’d usually spend two or three months. It wouldn’t be full-time, but we’d spend two or three months just alone, and we’d do it in his house because there’s no production cost, there’s no real cost to it. Our footprint is tiny.

But we know when we have all those departments arrive, we have to have answers, correct answers. We have to tell people what to do. We’ve got to get them in the right direction."

Nathan went on to speak about his Oscar-Winning Production Design on Wicked A central part of Crowley’s approach to the project was a commitment to creating as much of its world practically as possible. One of the production’s most ambitious decisions was to grow millions of real tulips for the Munchkinland sequences. For him, the decision was about more than what appeared in the finished film.

“I want to film real tulips and people running through it, and I want the wind and the weather. The other thing is it gives the entire crew the ambition. It gives everyone motivation and ambition to do something better.

“We’re going to do circular bookcases, even though I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know how to do that,’ but we have to push the crew into believing, to do something better.

“Sure, you can do CG tulips, but then it’s not much fun, is it?”

Throughout the masterclass, Crowley also stressed the collaborative nature of production design and the importance of giving younger members of the Art Department space to contribute their own ideas.

“We don’t do it alone. You’ve got to get your team around you. The young people in the Art Department, they’re there because they wanted to do this.

They’ve got lots of ideas, so you’ve got to encourage them. You've got to encourage them to be adventurous. We've got to push this design.”

In addition to his Oscar win in 2025 for epic musical Wicked, Nathan has received acclaim for his award-winning collaborations with iconic filmmaker Christopher Nolan on films including Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, Tenet, The Prestige, Batman Begins and Insomnia. His credits as Production Designer also include The Greatest Showman (starring Hugh Jackman), Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Joel Schumacher’s Veronica Guerin, Wonka (starring Timothee Chalamet), and Damien Chazelle’s First Man (starring Ryan Gosling), and the pilot episode of HBO’s Westworld. Previously, he was Art Director on Braveheart and Mission: Impossible 2.

This masterclass is supported by Screen Ireland through the Screen Stakeholders Funding Scheme.