Jim Bissell – Production Design

A talk with Jim Bissell, production designer on E.T., Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol, Good Night, and Good Luck. Indie filmmakers share the responsibility of production design between the director, producer and cameraman. Sometimes, these functions rest on one or two persons, depending on the crew. We show you how a production designer works. We focus on about 6 major designers in Hollywood, starting with Jim Bissell.

Jim Bissell

Jim was born in 1951 in Charleston, South Carolina. He started creating worlds at an early age, building Civil War dioramas for a local history museum. He graduated with a BFA in theater design from the University of North Carolina.

Carlo Rambaldi during production on E.T.

“I was an old an of 29 when I got the job to design E.T.: Extra Terrestrial (1982). I’d been working with Alex Haley and Norman Lear on a TV series called Palmerstown, U.S.A, for which I won an Emmy in art direction. Steven Spielberg saw the sets while he was looking for stage space for E.T., and I was added to the list of people to interview”

“Back then, art direction was an exclusive club and the idea was to keep the club small. That way everybody worked all the time. My only real talent was I was a relatively good photographer, I had a good eye – I still do. I could build models, I could draw, I could paint, and I worked through high school and college in construction, so I knew construction techniques and I was good with math so I could deal with organizing things and getting budgets together.”

E.T. opened up a lot of opportunities for Jim, within five years, he got to work with Schlesinger, Ridley Scott, and George Miller.

“The challenge of production design is that there are two equally important pipelines to develop from the get-go. One is aesthetic development, working with the director, DoP and producer and writer to explore staging, use of color, volume, key dramatic imagery, and the overall style of the film. Then there’s the very practical problem of ushering all the elements needed to create those images in front of the camera on a given date for a given amount of money.”

Jim Bissell, with George Clooney on The Monuments Men

“And those two are going on concurrently right brain, left brain, constantly. I find the two processes inform each other in ways that I really like. Limitations often dictate style and style is something that’s really interesting to me.”

“What’s important to me, though, is discovery. We create these situations that are outside of most people’s experience, yet still make them feel like they lived through it. I find it fascinating. I never get tired of it. I have tried to avoid being complacent. I continually look for the better image, the better approach to articulating the character’s situation, and I try to never resist change.”

Lifetime Honoree Jim Bissell (@Bissellmix) and George Clooney backstage at the #ADGawards pic.twitter.com/x2zvcZLDol

— Art Directors Guild (@ADG800) February 1, 2015

“I realize that you’ve got to keep taking chances, and looking for the best images because those are the ones that matter, the pay cheque doesn’t.”

[Excerpts from Production Design by Fionnuala Halligan, and photos from the Academy of Sciences, Oscars]