NATHAN CROWLEY - Production Designer

Team Deakins

James Ellis Deakins

Tv & Film, Filmlighting, Deakins, Movies, Filmmaking, Production, Film, Cinematography, Film Interviews

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

SEASON 2 - EPISODE 134 - Nathan Crowley - Production Designer

In this episode of the Team Deakins Podcast, we speak with production designer Nathan Crowley (WICKED, DUNKIRK, INTERSTELLAR). After growing up in England, Nathan’s dreams of selling secondhand sports cars in LA were cut short after a run in with set designer and fellow countryman Joe Hodges at a bar outside Paramount, and we learn how Nathan dove headfirst into the art department after assisting Joe on HOOK. Nathan later shares how he made the jump to heading the department himself, and we discuss his approach to production design throughout the episode. We uncover the reasoning behind the aesthetic choices of DUNKIRK, and Nathan shares how he accounted for the practicalities of filmmaking during a globetrotting location scout to help realize the vision of INTERSTELLAR. In the back half of the episode, we discuss Nathan’s recent work on WICKED, and he shares what attracted him to the film and what scared him about designing one of the most well-known worlds in the American imagination, and he reveals how Donna Langley, the head of the studio, helped convince production to plant millions of tulips for the film. Plus, Nathan shares a key lesson he learned while working with director Michael Mann about following his instincts.

This episode is sponsored by Aputure

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi and welcome to season two of the Team Deacons podcast, a collection of informal conversations
0:10.1	between Roger and James Deacons and a guest. We never know where the conversation will take
0:16.0	us, so listen in and see where it goes.
0:28.3	This episode is sponsored by Aperture, a premier manufacturer of LED lighting with the industry's greatest variety of fixtures for your complete lighting needs.
0:33.3	Aperture recently announced the new storm family of lights,
0:42.9	with LED white light quality that matches natural daylight and classic tungsten bulbs,
0:46.9	plus extreme low-end dimming while maintaining color quality.
0:55.2	Discover more about the new storm lights and the complete aperture lighting ecosystem at Aperture.com.
1:00.8	Today we're speaking with a production designer.
1:03.9	His credit list is long and includes Wicked,
1:08.0	The Greatest Showman, Interstellar, and Public Enemies.
1:13.0	We're pleased to welcome Nathan Crowley. Nathan, thank you for doing this.
1:18.0	Hi, welcome. Pleasure. It's very nice to meet you both. We'd love to start with our question.
1:26.2	How did you get to where you are today? Where did you start out in life? Did you think you wanted to be a dentist first and then found this?
1:28.7	What was your favourite pub in Islington?
1:31.4	Oh, Roger's getting down to this specific.
1:33.2	Yeah, the island queen. Come on, they only want to.
1:35.1	Oh, there you go on the road.
1:36.9	Yeah, I grew up in Islington.
1:40.4	Well, we'll tell us about 12 and then we went to South London because my father was an architect,
1:46.6	and he wanted us to live in a glass house as all architects do, all more than this do.
1:51.7	So I had to leave Izzy's do, which was a great shame.
	...

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