Adri’s twentythird question: Birrie Le Roux, ‘The Bird’ Production Designer, tells us about her experience on ‘The Bird Can’t Fly’…
I found that designing the set easier than dressing it and making each house reflect the character for which it was designed. Deciding what the houses should look like was very simple because it is just a shell, and because the story is not lived in a specific part of the world. This provided me with so many options, I could do anything. I could use any materials I wanted to, that was convenient, that would fit the budget and that would stand the wild conditions of the sand dunes. Furnishing the houses was a complicated task, because every item, and detail placed in each house had to create a life and reality suited to the character. The town was like a place where no one else has been before. None of us could say, ‘This is what it should be’, it had to grow from all of us, from myself and my team. When we first started, we walked in the dunes until we found the right spot to develop this little village, until we found spot where it became believable in our minds. I’ve never worked in the dunes before and found building in the dunes really tough. All you want to do is take the sand away to put it back when you’re done, but it’s not possible. It took some giving, taking and adjusting, and then all of a sudden we were done, and ready for action. Having everybody on set now almost feels like an invasion because we had just finished, everything was perfect then they come and everything systematically rearranged itself. We’ve had some hectic weather during this shoot, wind, rain, sun and cold, but I think all these elements are part of this town’s true spirit. I especially love what the wind has done. We cleared the sand as much we could, put everything in place, move the sand back again, but after a while, the wind shifted the sand and made beautiful natural patterns around the buildings. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished here and believe this will be a beautiful movie.