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Layers upon Layers: Set Decorator Peter Walpole

Built-in Spontaneity

Coming home from work, you instinctively throw your jacket onto your couch, leave the day’s worth of junk mail on the television, and throw your keys onto the kitchen counter. These are all automatic responses, done without any forethought, but it’s the kind of detail that Set Decorator Peter Walpole tries to capture, even when recreating the distant galaxy of Star Wars.

“If you look back at your own homes, you take for granted everything that you have in your house,” says Walpole. “But if you start to analyze it, you’ll find that it’s layers upon layers upon layers. You have settees in the corner, with cushions on them, and there might be coats on the cushions, or books, or newspapers. That, to me, is the essence. If you were to dress a mantelpiece over a fire, it’s not just a clock and two candlesticks. It would be a clock, two candlesticks, some postcards and a pen, maybe a book of stamps and somebody’s mobile phone. You’ve got to be able to look at everyday life and put it in that environment.”

Walpole is responsible for the design and arrangement of props within the sets that Production Designer Gavin Bocquet builds. In a sense, he’s an interior designer of the Star Wars galaxy, though he’s quick to point out the difference in his work.

“I have discussions with interior designers, and they say, ‘oh, we do the same kind of job,'” notes Walpole. “Well, no we don’t, because they’re doing something that everybody sees every day, whereas we do something that’s going to be seen through the eye of a camera.” Walpole envisions a set as it will appear through the camera lens, and has to make concessions in design to accommodate filmmaking processes, whether it’s supplying foreground and background props to provide a sense of depth, or lowering wall-hangings and fixtures so that they register on camera.

“There’s no point in hanging a light too high up if you can’t see it because it’s not going to be in the frame, so you’ve got to drop it down. It may be even dropped down a little bit lower than you would normally have it,” he says.

Walpole’s involvement with a given prop assignment begins early on, as soon as concept drawings of the environment arrive. “The set is then constructed and painted. At that stage we’re buying the props or renting them or manufacturing them. I have in my head the way that it should look. We then gather them all together, in readiness for the sets to be finished. We can have anything from maybe a week to half-a-day to dress them. I might be dressing two or three sets at once,” he says.

“I work closely with Ty Teiger, the Prop Master. I give him an idea of a dressing plan of how I’d like it. He will go in and block it out, and put all of the main pieces in. Then I’ll come in and finish it off.”

Though Walpole plans each set decoration, he does build in a level of spontaneity in his approach, to allow for new and fresh ideas. “I would plan maybe 60 percent of it,” he says, “I know that I’ve got a backbone structure. Then, I like the rest to be created, so it flows. I wouldn’t like to make a list and have everything there and just place it. It’s great to be able to have lots of things to draw upon. But to get to the stage, where the adrenaline starts to run, and all of a sudden it all starts to work — that’s what it’s like to dress a set. That’s the last 40 percent, adding those layers, having immediate ideas, which I guess is what directors do also. And then walking away thinking, ‘yeah, that’s right.’ If I walk away, and I’m happy, then it’s right.”

Such creativity is essential to his job. As Walpole describes it, he not only has to get inside the Director George Lucas’ head, but also inside the heads of the characters associated with each set.

“You’ve got to think of the background or where the characters are coming from,” describes Walpole. “If they’re a character who is born on Naboo, but lives on Coruscant, would there be any Naboo artifacts in the Coruscant apartment? As you would if somebody from Thailand went to live in America. Would they take their bits with them? It’s just a natural approach to doing the job.”

Domestic Interiors

The sets of Episode II are far more personal than those of Episode I, a distinction that Walpole appreciates. “In Episode I, we had a couple of what I would call ‘domestic interiors,’ like Anakin’s hovel or Palpatine’s apartment,” says Walpole. “Then, there was a lot of Podrace garages, pit hangars and the Theed hangar. In this one, for a set decorator, it’s fantastic because there are a lot more interior sets to do. The interior sets that we’re doing are personalized, whether it be Padmé’s, Palpatine’s or some of the old sets from A New Hope.”

As a love story, Episode II splits its time between spectacular otherworldly locales and far more intimate settings. It is these that Walpole enjoyed the most. “Padmé’s Coruscant apartment is my favorite, as it’s beautiful and not cluttered. It’s much harder to dress a set with fewer things than with many things. Shortly behind that one is Padmé’s Naboo retreat. You’re looking at a Senator and you’re trying to sort of instill that little bit of personal stuff in that.”

In addition to focusing on character, Walpole treats Star Wars films no different than “real world” films set in our galaxy. “I kind of compare it to other periods in history, although it’s not part of our history. There are different themes, different styles, and you know whatever planet you happen to be in.”

This approach, coupled with his practical methodology in building set decorations, gives the films a mix of differences and similarities. “I think if you look at The Phantom Menace and then compare it to the other three films, you’ll see differences. But the approach is still the same. We still use the inside of washing machines. We still look at everyday objects to see how we could adapt them and use them. That was the premise that George Lucas gave us at the very beginning, and that’s how the other three work. So, although there is 25 years difference, the backbone and the structure is still the same.”

As preparation, Walpole uses the original trilogy as research material, having watched the previous four films upwards of 50 times. “I enjoy watching them,” he says. “I’ve got kids who love to watch it.” Even with The Phantom Menace experience not long behind him, he finds watching Episode I illuminating. “Although it’s all fresh in your mind, you’ll occasionally experience — ‘oh, I’d forgotten that’s how we did that.'”

To accomplish his tasks, Walpole’s bag of tricks spans years of experience. “I guess the whole industry is made up of clever cheats and ideas,” he smiles. “It always comes down to cost and speed. If you’re talking about a marble set, then our painters paint the marble effect on paper, and that’s applied onto the structure of the set, and then glazed to have that marble look. You would never be able to construct, time-wise or cost-wise, a set like Padmé’s dining room and have it be completely marble. It’s all one big cheat, whether it’s marble paper, plaster columns instead of stone, fiberglass sculptures instead of bronze. The whole thing’s a bit of a cheat, but we don’t like to let on.”

At first, reports of the amount of bluescreen and digital backlot techniques used in the prequel trilogy concerned Walpole, but he found himself busy as ever. “I was a bit concerned that this might be all bluescreen and I’d just be putting a bowl of fruit or a bunch of flowers in a vase somewhere. But it’s been fantastic, and very different. When you’re dressing a bluescreen set, it’s something you’ve got to take into consideration. There’s no point in putting blue drapes in. But generally, it doesn’t worry me too much, having done Episode I, and also a lot of Young Indy which really educated me on that sort of thing. It’s another tool of the trade that you accept and you make allowances for.”

Bridging Aesthetics

Another challenge for Walpole is bridging the aesthetic sensibilities of the prequels with the originals. Attack of the Clones brings the audience once step closer to the events of A New Hope, and many familiar elements are starting to appear. Fans of the saga will definitely feel a sense of nostalgia as the new heroes spend time at the Lars homestead and garage. The sets were painstakingly recreated from reference photography of the original.

“The information we get from the Ranch has been carefully stored and collated. In this day and age, you can watch the film, then freeze-frame it, and print it off your own VCR if you wanted to. They have a great wealth of photo-reference, that you really have to examine to determine if something’s a light or something’s just a reflection.”

Besides looking forward (or is it backwards?) to the original saga, there are enough wholly new environments to keep Walpole busy. “If I can get my teeth into many different things — from the starfreighter to a bus to some beautiful apartment or a garage — I’m a happy man.”

One new environment is a somewhat seedy nightclub found in the depths of Coruscant. A locale with a character all its own, the nightclub is a place where transients and slumming elite can intermingle, carouse, drink and — as will be seen in the finished film — gamble.

“There’s going to be gaming going on in the background, whether it be a roulette table or some sort of gaming machine,” says Walpole. “We took some aircraft parts, put some screens in them, and tidied them up. We found a couple of old wrecked arcade games that were just a shell. We took those, turned them upside down, and they took on a completely different appearance. The bar itself has evolved. We used the famous plastic beakers and whatnot, and got different shaped aluminum tubes for drink dispensers. George came along at the end and liked everything, but wanted us to just change the center bar slightly. What he wanted was acrylic tubes with liquid in it, so it almost had a church organ effect. That worked really well. I wish I’d thought of it first, but hey, that’s probably why he’s directing.”

Another less-than-polished environment is the hold of an interstellar freighter, glimpsed briefly in the “Forbidden Love” trailer. The gloomy interior was another great opportunity for Walpole to infuse personality into a set. “You would have refugees on the floor, but at the same time, there’d be cargo strapped down by some sort of netting. People take a lot of things with them, so we’re making bags and stuff to carry and bits and pieces of personal belongings. There was kind of an eating area that worked really well, because we put some really weird things in there. A hand-operated plastic tumble dry washing machine type thing — they were turned around, painted and stuck to a wall.”

The four previous Star Wars films have all featured characters dining or preparing food, and Attack of the Clones is no different. Walpole determines the look of the dispensers and utensils. “We will also adapt and utilize catering equipment. Or somebody else found these great sort of slush machines for doings sodas. We will adapt that and use that. We’ve done the freighter hold, which had lots of cups and things. You start to run low on ideas, sometimes. There’s only so many sort of stainless steel stuff.”

But in the end, Walpole delivers, no matter the time or materials constraints. For Episode II, he had less prep time and more assignments than in Episode I, yet still met all the set dressing requirements. “You’ve got to be positive in your approach. If you have six months, that’s great. If you have four months, then you do the same job, but only harder. It’s a funny thing. I hate compromise, but I never look at the fact that you have less time to prepare as a compromise. You seem to work just as hard if you’ve got six months prep than if you’ve got five. It all still gets done. You never have enough time. If you have a year to prepare a film, you’ll still be pulling your hair out to get things done a week before. It’s a strange thing.”

Not that Walpole would have it any other way. “There must be millions of guys and girls out there who don’t really enjoy getting up and going to work. They do their five days a week, and have their weekends off, and their two weeks holiday. I love what I do, and I get a buzz out of it. I think I’m very, very lucky.”