They built their very own Graceland in Australia, the decor inside changing slightly throughout the film as years pass. One room which posed a particular challenge was Elvis’s bedroom, as visitors are not permitted inside and there are no photographs of it. “It is at the family’s request that no one visits that bedroom. It was where he passed away and it was his inner sanctum,” Murphy says. The Presley family made an exception, however, for director Baz Luhrmann, who was allowed to see the room without taking any pictures. “He told us how he saw it, and Baz is very descriptive, very eloquent, and he also speaks in a way that you understand in design terms. He talked about the technology in the room from the ’70s and how there were intercoms and radios and stereo systems on his bedside table that had been built in, and TVs built into the ceiling, and the textures. He described all of that to us, and we went to work designing something from a verbal description,” Murphy says.
Babylon
Nominees: Production designer Florencia Martin and set decorator Anthony Carlino
Main filming locations: Historic mansions and homes across California, including Shea Castle, Castle Green, Hummingbird Ranch, Busby Berkley’s former Beaux Arts Mansion, the Wattles Mansion, and more; 1920s-era theaters, including The United Artists Theatre at the Ace Hotel Los Angeles, The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, and The Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, California; and Paramount studios
Overall production budget: $80 million
With a three-hour-and-nine-minute runtime, this tale of excess and debauchery in 1920s Hollywood is filled with gorgeous examples of architecture from that time period. During the silent film era, Los Angeles was just being developed, and there were none of the boxy modern glass houses of today. These early film industry pioneers “were building Tudor Revival and Gothic Revival and Spanish Revival because they were just trying to emulate the things that they thought were great and beautiful,” says Martin.