Later this week Paramount Pictures releases A Quiet Place: Day One, the third in the franchise created by John Krasinski. Ahead of that release we’re going behind the scenes and diving in deep with two of the film’s key driving forces.
Today it’s the turn of production designer Simon Bowles, a veteran of the industry since starting out on Edgar Wright’s lo-fi 1995 feature debut A Fistful Of Fingers. For A Quiet Place: Day One, Bowles is returning to a city he knows inside out, having made three movies there previously.
“We wanted to shoot on a backlot [in this case, at Leavesden] so we could destroy everything properly!” Bowles laughs. “On location, we’d have been able to do small things, but I wanted to do something much bigger. I wanted to see the crater holes where meteorites had crashed diagonally through buildings. To see that massive scar through the structure and the consequences of the impact; that the meteorite has clipped a car, and that car has ended up inside a building, on its side, and then caught fire.”
Having recced the city with the film’s director, Michael Sarnoski, paying equal attention to what it both looked and sounded like, Bowles’ team built multiple versions of four New York City blocks, each two storeys high. “We see this city torn apart, spectacularly,” Bowles chuckles. “I wanted audiences to be like, ‘Oh my God!’ We show the city in all its glory, full of people and life, and then destroy it!”
For the cast, Bowles’ attention to authenticity was an invaluable support when it came to their performances. And, for audiences, all that detail will immerse them in the horrors of what experiencing an attack by these creatures would really be like, at ground level – and lower.
“In the subway sequence [in which Lupita Nyong’o’s Samira, her cat, Frodo, and Eric, played by Joseph Quinn, are chased into a flooded tunnel], the audience needs to feel the harshness of this environment,” Bowles says. “To empathise with the predicament they’re in.”
Thanks to Bowles, the sequence proved something of a predicament for the actors too, the production designer looking back to his acclaimed work on horror classic The Descent in 2005 – for which he constructed a vast network of underground tunnels – to deliver something even more effective.
“One of the things I discovered on The Descent was that rather than trying to raise water levels, it’s much easier to lower the scenery. It gives you that real sense of claustrophobia,” Bowles says, then smiles. “Another thing I learned was that the solution [in this kind of sequence] is to make it quite difficult for the actors, but very easy for the crew. If the actors are really having to duck down and endure it all, the set-piece becomes so much more realistic, and the audience can truly empathise with them!”
Based on a story by John Krasinski & Michael Sarnoski and characters by Bryan Woods & Scott Beck, A Quiet Place: Day One is written and directed by Michael Sarnoski. The film stars Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou.
The film comes to UK cinemas on June 27, 2024.
