When beginning the pre-production process for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, production designer Tamara Deverell began her research by visiting museums to create the look of 1850s Edinburgh.
“One of the first opportunities I had to spend time with Guillermo was when we were scouting. One of the first things we did was go to a museum,” Deverell said in a conversation hosted by Variety in partnership with Netflix. “We went to Ontarians, where the real Evelyn Table is, because we needed to create our own version of the table. We looked at the equipment and tools used by scientists and doctors of the time.”
In creating the Victorian scenery of Edinburgh, costume designer Kate Hawley worked with Deverell to achieve a color scheme that reflected the mental state of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who was expelled from the Royal College of Surgeons. The world of Edinburgh is cold and bitter, with hints of color appearing throughout the costumes of characters such as Lady Elizabeth Harlander (Mia Goth).
“Edinburgh is the color of wet cobblestones and wonderful stone buildings,” Mr Deverell said. “That was our color palette. When we chose the Gosford House location, we had a marble and cream color palette, all beautiful period tones.”
“Color kind of plays a different role. Whenever I was working with Guillermo, the background was part of the world environment,” Hawley said. “All of those colors ended up being the colors of the background extras. We have a different color language. We also have beautiful tones of melancholy and mood. That influenced the way we created the colors.”
Color played a big role in creating the look of the Creature (Jacob Elordi), the monster Victor created to resist odds and overcome death. Prosthetics designer Mike Hill utilized the appearance of various body parts and decomposing corpses from the Crimean War and worked with del Toro to expand the creature’s appearance to be accurate to the era.
“Everything is vintage and period,” Hill said. “One of the things we tried to accomplish was to make this creature feel like something out of the 1800s, so he’s not a modern creature design.”
In addition to the streets of Edinburgh, the film also features the Danish Navy ship Horizont, whose crew discovers an injured Victor Frankenstein at the beginning of the film. Rather than relying on green screens, del Toro and his team handcrafted a working ship that became encased in ice en route to the North Pole. Deverell worked with historians and shipyards to create a ship that looks authentic but can move as if it were at sea.
“Building the ship was an adventure, and we looked at what Guillermo wanted to do in the movie, including the actions and requirements to make the ship actually work,” Deverell said. “We built it on a giant gimbal that actually moves. When a creature pushes on it, it becomes a giant artificial gimbal inside the ship. We had a wonderful guy named Matthew Betts who was an Arctic historian and a shipbuilder who gave us advice. He brought me information that allowed us to build iron plates on ships, because that’s what they had for ice. We were devising ways to make ice.”
207 years later, Frankenstein has established itself as a literary classic, and its film adaptation opens the door for a new generation to discover the words of Mary Shelley. After reading the book as a child, del Toro hopes the message behind the story will resonate with audiences watching the movie for the first time.
“The fact that this book was written by a teenager, and the fact that it’s as poignant as a book written by a teenager, is what makes it timeless,” del Toro revealed. “You ask all the questions in the time you need to ask them. My hope is that people discover Mary Shelley instead of saying, ‘Oh, the movie is that book.’ This is one of those books that will enrich your life.”
