Austin Film Festival: Setting as a Character

Some shows are memorable for certain characters. Others have insane plot twists. Some stick with us because of the setting, exposing us to worlds with depths and intensities that live on beyond the viewing itself.

Three filmmakers gathered at the Austin Film Festival Friday to discuss the importance of this often-overlooked aspect of filmmaking. Noah Hawley (Fargo the series), Vera Blasi (Woman on Top), and Cary Fukunaga (True Detective, Sin Nombre) all have experience crafting real and complex worlds on screen.

Fukunaga admits to being a bit of an addict.

"Hi, my name’s Cary, and I have a problem with setting.” During pre-production for True Detective, he would often spend 12 hours a day scouting locations. Eventually, they gave him his own motorcycle so he could go on excursions by himself.

The result was outstanding. Southern Louisiana became as much of a character in the show as Rust or Marty. This wasn’t the original plan as the screenplay was set in the Ozarks. By moving it several hundred miles to the south, the Bayou State’s petrochemical industry loomed large over the proceedings. How could it not, with oil rigs and smoke stacks occupying the background of many of the show’s sweeping shots?

For Hawley, he knew well the location he would be exploring with his television adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ cult classic Fargo. The frigid environs of Minnesota saw Marge and company deal with violence and oddity in equal measure. The adaptation would be more of the same.

During auditions in Los Angeles, actresses would show up in parkas trying to show what cold looks like. This made Hawley laugh. During filming in freezing conditions, “You don’t have to act cold,” he said. "You put the characters in those locations, and it becomes real," noting that several scenes were filmed in subzero weather.

Blasi’s Woman on Top traverses the globe from San Francisco to her native Brazil and uses food to paint a picture. During the writing phase, she would cook every meal in the movie as she was writing it. This not only let her get the details about timing and ingredients right, but also infused the end result with an authenticity that’s hard to replicate.

What we see is not always what we get, however. Hawley bemoaned the state of current moviemaking that is dictated by tax breaks and other incentives. "Toronto for New York or Vancouver for anywhere,” is the way he put it. For Fargo, they had to go north of the border to Calgary during filming. While the snow looked the same, the crew had to be especially careful not to let any mountains creep into fictional flatland Minnesota.

Sometimes memorable locations are the result of happy accidents. For the unforgettable climax of True Detective, the stone grotto buried deep in the woods was the perfect place for the height of the action. In reality, it is an old antebellum fort that Fukunaga stumbled upon.

Fukunaga calls it a pantheon, and that type of location has been the site of ritualistic cult activity over the ages. He acknowledges that the audience doesn’t have to pick up on this for the scene to be effective, but this attention to detail is certainly a part of his process.

Other times it’s the little things that matter most. The home of Pearl and Lester Nygaard is plastered from wall to wall with upbeat slogans and syrupy aphorisms. Their relationship doesn’t mirror this needlepoint positivity at all, as Pearl states early on in the series that she “married the wrong Nygaard.” Ouch.

Hawley describes Lester as “a beaten-down guy who’s surrounded by obnoxious optimism.” Inside this seemingly cheery home, much darkness takes place throughout the series.

While a good location can’t make up for bad acting or subpar direction, it can make the work even better than the sum of its parts. Places have meaning, and movies that take advantage of this are the better for it.