ABSTRACT BY BEATRICE SCHULTZ & REINHILD BLASCHKE & SILKE FISCHER

 

We — production designers Reinhild Blaschke, Silke Fischer and Beatrice Schultz — meet in conversation to trace a shared yet largely unspoken practice in German cinema and European co-productions since the early 2000s. Although we did not know each other, we were repeatedly invited by the same auteur filmmakers to build worlds that should not appear built at all: ordinary spaces meant to feel familiar, plausible, almost unnoticed — and yet precisely composed for fiction. 

Our dialogue unfolds around this tension. We speak of authenticity that is constructed, of composition that must conceal itself, of working from scarcity rather than abundance. Is the aesthetic of the unspectacular a consequence of low budgets, or a conscious stance? How do we design rooms in which images can emerge without spectacle? What roles do research, communication, collaboration with directing and cinematography, and the productive potential of chance play in this process? 

Through mutual questioning of our own work, we approach production design as a practice of subtle decisions — where the mundane becomes meaningful, and straw, at times, turns into gold.