In the Oscar-nominated movie “One Battle After Another,” Bob, a former left-wing militant played by Leonardo DiCaprio, has retreated to an isolated cabin in the woods with his teenage daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti.
When Bob questions Willa about the genders of some friends she plans to attend a dance with, she storms off to her bedroom, shouting, “It’s not that hard!”
Chris Cortner, a University of Virginia alumnus and set designer, helped build that bedroom. His work, along with that of production designer Florencia Martin and set decorator Anthony Carlino, is now nominated for an Academy Award for best production design.
“As opposed to building a set from scratch, we would find a house and manipulate it a little, so it matched the script beats a little bit more,” Cortner, who graduated in 2017 from 鶹ƽ School of Architecture, said. “With Bob and Willa’s house as an example, we added onto that so he has his bedroom and she has her bedroom.”
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Chris Cortner: So, I was in the Architecture School at UVA. I had a really deep interest in film as well, but I didn’t really tie it specifically to set design. I worked with Tom Bloom in the Department of Drama as his assistant for the second two years of my college experience. I discovered that I really, actually wanted to do set design for film industry, rather than actually focusing on architecture.
As a set designer, my job was to turn my bosses’ creative vision into a buildable reality. On “One Battle After Another,” that movie was a lot of making little sets that we add on to locations, so the actual work I was doing was more manipulative than it was creation. So, Willa and Bob’s house, most of the house already existed. We added this tiny little element, Willa’s room, on the exterior, and then did the same work on the interior.
The tunnel that Leo crawls through, we had to match the opening of the tunnel to a section that we could dig, both on the house side, and then on the location side. Sensei’s apartment we built in this old warehouse.
We essentially created six apartments that had been manipulated to become one. And it was the weirdest set. It wasn’t even that pretty or anything. It had such character to it, and it went through all these versions. And so, by the time it got to where it finally was, it really captured the attention of the director, of the stars.
After the actors’ and writers’ strike, things started to slow down a bit, and I saw the writing on the wall. I loved my college experience, so I decided to go to business school. I’ve loved it. It’s been the best six months of my life.
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As a set designer, Cortner turned the vision of his boss, the film’s production designer, into reality, creating 3D models that would be turned into 2D drawings for a laborer to build and fabricate.
Cortner has worked on film sets since he graduated from the University, though that wasn’t part of the original plan. When he enrolled at UVA, he thought he would become a residential architect, a childhood interest.
“As a kid, I had crazy high-level taste,” Cortner said. “I would go into Pottery Barn and beg my dad to take me to this specific appliance store in Boston, where I grew up, that sold really high-end appliances. I had an innate interest in it.”
During his second year, he enrolled in associate professor of drama Tom Bloom's Introduction to Set Design course. Bloom quickly asked Cortner if he would be an assistant on a production the drama department was staging. Cortner continued working for Bloom whenever possible and enrolled in some graduate-level courses. He loved it, but still believed he would be an architect. He even had a job offer from an architecture firm lined up for after Final Exercises.
