Les Miserables

Les Miserables is a film adaptation a musical it came out in 2013 and has been a big hit. The film has won many BAFTA’s including one in production design I wet into the cinema after watching behind the scenes videos about the production design so I could appreciate how it was made and the design process of creating the set’s. The set’s I have chosen to look at are the "lovely ladies" scene and the "barricade" scene as these scene’s connote different feelings and portrayed similar at times.

In the scene "lovely ladies" the set has a damp mouldy feeling as it is meant to be beside a dry dock with seaweed hanging from the walls and buildings made from what had been salvaged from ship wrecks in reality the majority of this was created by master carpenters to work with wood to create frames and by using moulded plastic to make the bricks this creates a realist approach that is believable to the viewers as well as to the actors on set. The seaweed on the walls is all real it had been shipped down to Pinewood Studios from Scotland I think this represents that the production designers strived for reality.

In the final scene of Les Miserables the barricades have been built made out of furniture that would commonly be found in the Parisian houses at the time the barricade creates a strong contrast with the flags that had been position along the barricade as it was wood against bright bolts of cloth. The barricade also runs alongside the “Elephant of the Bastille” which was a huge monument in Paris it also creates an interesting subject to look at and too show the era the events took place. It also is appropriated in the final scene as it is incorporated into the barricade, it is almost used as a tower defence compared to when it was shown earlier in the film when it denoted the elegance of Paris.

Overall I believe that this film is an amazing spectacle as it shows such diversity from both ends of the spectrum such as the focus is on different sorts of people by showing how the sets evolve around them it also shows how the person themselves are changing. I think that this film is one of the best films to look at so far this year as its depth into small detail is undeniably great.