My favorite movie design moments
Documentary or drama, I’m a sucker for watching people be creative. Here are a few of my favorites:
Drama
- Don Draper pitching the Carousel – the ultimate example of story beating tech specs.
- Inventing the hula hoop from The Hudsucker Proxy – especially the naming at 2:40.
- Once studio session – The way the mixing guy gets gradually interested, the sheer sense of exhaustion at the end of the night, the way they all head out into the sun in the morning. The build of the scene is awesome. The linked scene is just part of it; the scene starts at 56:00 in the full movie.
- Dodge Dart: How to change cars forever ad – I love the way they celebrate sketching and prototyping. Tons of other versions with different examples too.
- Homer Simpson designs a car – in one fell swoop The Simpsons lampoons both expert-driven design and focus group techniques. The shot of Homer in the wind tunnel always gets me.
Documentary
- Making The Incredibles (some clips; the DVD has the best stuff) – My all-time favorite. About 90 minutes of in-depth stories and explanation about the process of making the film, with a ton of similarities to great product design. I watch this at least once a year. My notes.
- The Mystery of Picasso – Picasso painting on an illuminated sheet of glass, so you see the strokes build and change into something completely different than he started with. The paintings at 1:00:00 and 1:04:30 are mind-blowing.
- Comedian – Jerry Seinfeld tries to follow up his outlandishly-successful sitcom career by getting back on small comedy stages and writing a new standup act. Inspiring to see the courage and introspection that goes into it. My notes.
- Sketches of Frank Gehry – Gehry’s experimental way of developing buildings combines art and science in a unique way. My notes.
- A Day in the Life of John Lassetter – Lassetter seems like a wonderful leader (2017 update: not always) and his optimism is infectious. My notes.
- Art and Copy – I find advertising has a lot of parallels to concept design, and this film collects the thoughts and processes of several different advertising luminaries. My notes.
- The Pixar Story – The way they build collaboration among roles in a team is unparalleled. My notes.
- Tough Room – Ok, this is just audio (from NPR) but The Onion’s headline pitch session is amazing. I love how they judge stories by the headlines alone.
- Six Days to Air – How each South Park episode is made in a week. The forced constraints have created a lot of innovation in process and technologies.
- Get Back – The extended version of The Beatles’ Let it Be sessions is worth watching in its 9-hour entirety to see how the famous band actually operated. I love how they mostly sound like a bad Beatles cover band, forgetting words and hitting the wrong notes, until you realize they’re coming up with the iconic songs on the fly. My highlight is watching Paul noodle his way to the composition of Get Back over 4 amazing minutes.