The quaint little town of Ennui-sur-Blasé is yet another whimsical invention of Wes Anderson’s. Yet the fictional town of „The French Dispatch“ owes much of its life to the models and miniatures that populate the scenes and mimic the story’s Russian-doll structure, all courtesy of Anderson’s long-standing collaborators, production designer Adam Stockhausen and model maker Simon Weisse.
Joined by Simon’s team, they share the tools and secrets of a unique trade with Berlinale Talents: sketches, photographs and animatics all play a crucial part in the daily labour of a model maker and are here unveiled to help us understand how a film of monumental ambition relies on the minute assemblage of pieces of plywood. After all, in film, a house can be the size of a hand, and the life of fictitious French village depends on a well-prepared workbench.