Odyssey crafts team to be honoured at Middleburg
Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, production designer Ruth De Jong and editor Jennifer Lame will receive the Variety Creative Collaborators Award for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in Virginia on Oct. 16, Variety reported.
The honour recognises three long-term Nolan collaborators. Mirojnick leads costume, the clothing worn on screen. De Jong oversees production design, the sets and locations. Lame assembles the finished film in the edit.
The presentation is part of the Middleburg Film Festival, which runs Oct. 15-18 in Middleburg, Va. The festival opens with Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut, according to a separate Variety announcement.
The Odyssey was the first film shot entirely on Imax 70mm, a large-format film stock known for its high resolution and tall screen image. The production filmed over 91 days and used 2 million feet of Imax film, Variety reported.
Much of that time went into building the ancient world on location. A fifth-century castle in Italy, perched about 1,030 feet above sea level, became Ithaca, the home of Odysseus. The beaches of Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast served as the discovery site of the Trojan horse and the launch point for his voyage.
De Jong's team built multiple Trojan horses, each about 35 feet tall. The city of Troy itself covered more than 2.5 acres, or over 110,000 square feet. That set held more than 60 structures and accommodated 2,000 extras. Additional set builds were filmed in Los Angeles.
The cast includes Samantha Morton as Circe and Bill Irwin as the one-eyed giant Cyclops. The festival site lists more than 5,300 costumes for the film.
What makes this stand out is the mix of methods. Large location builds, thousands of costumes and extras, and full Imax 70mm photography point to a production built largely in camera rather than in post.
