Kalina Ivanov (‘The Boys in the Boat’ production designer) on the ‘freedom’ of working with director George Clooney [Exclusive Video Interview]
Kalina Ivanov admits that she knew next to nothing about the sport of rowing and had never been in one of the boats (known as shells) when she was hired as the production designer for the new George Clooney-directed historical sports drama “The Boys in the Boat.” “I didn’t even know what the word was for these particular shells in Bulgarian,” says the Bulgaria-born Ivanov. “I had to call a friend of mine and ask, because ‘boat’ is such a big word in Bulgaria. It means so many things.” But she learned quickly, studying up on the history of legendary craftsman George Pocock and his racing shell designs in the 1930s. Then there was the challenge of needing to design a film on location in England while trying to tell an American story, with that nation’s cumbersome restriction on street filming. “I was very surprised that we couldn’t shoot on the streets of London,” she stresses, “so we had to build a backlot to get what we needed.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
Literally everything we see in “The Boys in the Boat” is built, much of it duplicating existing photographs. The film is based on the bestselling book by Daniel James Brown about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the ’36 Summer Olympics in Berlin, under the shadow of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. It’s the inspirational story of the ultimate underdogs, and for Ivanov, it required months of construction – of boats, of a boathouse, of a street. Unfortunately, there was nothing that had been constructed by Pocock still in existence.
“The sad part is that in the 1970s when they stopped using wooden boats and went to fiber for speed, a lot of (the boats) ended up in bonfires, believe it or not,” Ivanov shares. “Or they got cut up and became coffee tables and things like that. And so tracking them weas not easy. That’s why it was so incredibly lucky for me, being on the East Coast, to find one in New Hampshire that I could go and meet in person.” She was also fortunate to find someone in England who was able to build two of the period shells by hand. “We couldn’t find anyone in America to build those two boats in a timeframe that we needed for a movie…We were also able to repaint other kinds of boats and make them look like (those) Pocock used.
This was Ivanov’s second collaboration with Clooney as director, the first being “The Tender Bar” in 2001. Clearly, they got on well. “He is one of the most delightful people to work with, and he gives a lot of freedom to his artists,” she praises. “After the first meeting, he gives you his perspective on what he’s trying to achieve. And for this particular project, he really wanted authenticity and really wanted to feel the (Great) Depression. It’s about the class struggle and it’s about this underdog team, and we really needed to get right the fact they were poor boys, not privileged Ivy League boys. George was very, very concerned that we not make a very glossy picture or gloss over the actual history of these characters.
“And after that, he leaves you alone to develop the look. We constantly communicated. George was actually making (another) movie in Australia at the time, so Zoom was our friend, but he’s very good about giving you notes after sending him a presentation. He always wants to know your perspective on it. He’s extremely open-minded. And he’s incredibly polite about it. I remember doing the house of (lead character) Joe Rantz (played in the movie by Callum Turner). I had based it on his real house, which was two-story. And I remember getting a note from him saying, ‘Have you thought about it being one story?’. And I thought ah, OK, let’s do a different thing.’ But he’s very, very generous and a total pleasure.”
“The Boys in the Boat” opens in theaters on Christmas Day.
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