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The Cinematic Palette: Production Design With Dante Ferretti

What's it take to be a production designer for a major feature film? Dante Ferretti, production designer for Anthony Minghella's film Cold Mountain discussed the duties of a production designer in a seminar at the 2004 Palm Spring International Film Festival, moderated by festival executive Director Darryl McDonald. Besides being responsible for managing a whole crew of artists and craftsmen, the production designer is responsible for over-seeing the costume and set design. He must also be able create a visual interpretation of the text of the script. In addition to discussing the duties he performed during the pre-production phase of the film, Dante showed scenes from Cold Mountain and discussed each scene from the production designers point of view.

During the course of the seminar, Ferretti discussed how he and Minghella spent six months scouting locations and how they'd planned to shoot the film in North Carolina. When they looked at the budget, the financial plug was pulled because it would have been too costly to shoot in the USA. They went to Europe and ended up shooting in Translvania.

Dante brought a few of the drawings he created to visualize various scenes. These awesome 18 inch by 5 foot drawings, some of which are shown below, were displayed in the lobby of the Camelot Theatre in Palm Springs during the festival.

Cold Mountain Artistic director Dante Feretti

In addition to Cold Mountain, Dante's credits include Gangs of New York, Titus, Kundun, Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Casino, Adventures of Baron Munchhausen and countless others.