{"id":268290,"date":"2025-11-03T06:11:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/268290\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T06:11:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:11:18","slug":"bugonias-production-designer-on-building-the-house-and-hiding-clues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/268290\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bugonia’s’ Production Designer on Building the House and Hiding Clues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story discusses major plot points and reveals the ending for \u201cBugonia<\/a>,\u201d currently playing in theaters.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cBugonia,\u201d Emma Stone<\/a> plays Michelle Fuller, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company who is kidnapped by Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy is a conspiracy theorist who believes Michelle is an alien hellbent on destroying Earth. After kidnapping her, Teddy and Don keep Michelle in a basement as they interrogate her, hoping to get her to confess. <\/p>\n

\n\tProduction designer James Price knew he had to create contrasting spaces: Michelle\u2019s corporate world, her ultra-modern home, and Teddy and Don\u2019s time-trapped house that felt old and rancid. At the same time, in creating those spaces, he knew he could hide all the clues that spoke to the characters and their respective storylines in plain sight.<\/p>\n

\t\tDon and Teddy\u2019s House\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film reunites Price with \u201cPoor Things\u201d director Yorgos Lanthimos<\/a>. Price knew when he read the script, he knew the house would need to be remote and isolated.<\/p>\n

\n\tTeddy\u2019s lives with his cousin Don. Through flashbacks, audiences learn he once lived in the house with his mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone) who is now hospitalized in a coma after using drugs produced by Michelle\u2019s pharmaceutical company.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice ended up building the house from the ground up, to create a world that was completely immersive. \u201cI wanted to create a living, breathing set, so it\u2019s no longer a set \u2014 it\u2019s a place,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice also knew he would need to build a basement since that\u2019s where Teddy and Don keep Michelle. \u201cI\u2019d spent enough time in the United States to realize that the landscape is not too different from the U.K. I said, \u2018I think we can do this in the U.K. We can build it here. We can tailor the house to fit our needs, and you can make the film the way you want.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice designed the house with cinematographer Robbie Ryan in mind. \u201cWe could wire and light it like a real house, so everything can be naturally lit,\u201d he realized.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice also gave the house a backstory. \u201cThere was a bit of money once, but it had fallen into bad repair. The family had been in it a long time.\u201d He continued, \u201cThe last refit was maybe the late 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe set the house in that time warp. In scenes that show Teddy\u2019s mom, the idea was to depict that she hadn\u2019t been around for some time and that Teddy has to look after his cousin. \u201cHe finds solace in this theory that there\u2019s an alien conspiracy. We looked at a lot of realtor houses and found reference from real life and eBay. We looked at photojournalism from the early part of the noughties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother influence came from a real-life experience. Says Price, \u201cI\u2019d been to a farmer\u2019s house in New Zealand, and their parents had died when they were teenage boys. Three brothers lived at this beautiful colonial house, and it was disgusting. There was shit everywhere. I knew I\u2019d taken photos, but I couldn\u2019t find any. But I had this vision of what the house should be for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice also collaborated with the film\u2019s costume designer Jennifer Johnson. During camera tests, the two started talking about clothes, patterns and aging. They discussed how Teddy would have a feeling of grime and unwashed textures. It was a process of finding how far to go to make it believable. \u201cThat house tells Teddy\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it came to the basement, the plan was to build it on a stage, but during scouting, someone suggested building the basement underneath the house. \u201cWe were lucky that the ground we dug on was clay, so we could excavate.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWithin the basement, there is a secret room that Michelle finds. It reveals \u201cthe inner sanctum of where this whole conspiracy has been borne out,\u201d Price explains. Teddy keeps his research \u2013 dismembered body parts, heads in jars and photo after photo of people he believed were aliens.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the script, it was written that there was a wardrobe in front of the door, and she sees a light and pushes it. But Price admitted, \u201cIt was a shit idea.\u201d He suggested that the secret room should be insulated and hidden behind the stairs. Price looked for more ideas and decided a chalk face had been carved out within the basement.<\/p>\n

\n\tWithin the secret room comes Michelle\u2019s discovery: Teddy is a serial killer with wall-to-wall research on aliens. \u201cMaybe there are heads vacuum-packed \u2014 the whole tinfoil conspiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Teddy\u2019s idea of what a spaceship looks like, Price decided he would have a 3D printer to create something fantastical yet believable.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\t\tMichelle\u2019s World\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMichelle\u2019s office<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tIs she an alien? Is she not an alien? That\u2019s the question audiences ask when watching \u201cBugonia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, the answer is right there in Price\u2019s production design. \u201cIt was tricky to navigate,\u201d he admitted. \u201cBut I wanted it to be obvious, if you\u2019re looking at it, that she\u2019s an alien. She lives in a spaceship, her office is a spaceship, in a kind of modernist sense of spaceship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn contrast, everything the character says is the opposite. \u201cShe\u2019s telling you, and she\u2019s so convincing, she\u2019s not an alien.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice leaned into Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d for inspiration on what a spaceship looks like, applying it to the office and the house. <\/p>\n

\n\tPrice says, \u201cNo one\u2019s going to believe it.\u201d He drew on his experience as a production designer from the TV adaptation of \u201cThe Ipcress File.\u201d In that, he gave away all the signs in his work. \u201cWhen you meet Master Dalby, he\u2019s the baddie, but you don\u2019t think he\u2019s the baddie. He\u2019s in a baddie\u2019s lair because he\u2019s got black floors, and everything about the set production and design tells you that guy\u2019s the baddie. But because everything he\u2019s saying is so patriotic and on point, you believe that he\u2019s not the baddie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPrice put the clues there. He chose a spaceship-like house for Michelle, and her office was minimalist. He said, \u201cThis dark carpet leads to this glass box office.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Spaceship<\/p>\n

\n\tAs it turns out, Teddy isn\u2019t quite as crazed as he seems. He was right all along, Michelle Fuller is indeed an alien. <\/p>\n

\n\tAside from the clues hidden in her house and office, Price now had to design and build the spaceship itself. Interestingly, the designs Teddy had imagined were remarkably close to what is eventually revealed in the film. Michelle is an Andromeda, an ancient species that has been watching over humanity since the dawn of time. Humans are a science project dating back to the origins of mankind.<\/p>\n

\n\t In the script, Price knew he wasn\u2019t going to design a traditional spaceship; this was a Yorgos Lanthimos world. The idea was that when the spaceship is revealed, audiences would see Michelle\u2019s throne room. Price explains, \u201cI always had this instinct that it should be organic. I had the idea that the throne room should be a sacred temple, like Stonehenge with some water.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tVisually, Price was inspired by the idea of birth and rebirth, a concept he kept returning to throughout the design process. His backstory for the spaceship included a sacred pool at its center. \u201cEverything about this thing comes from this water. I thought it should be a womb-shaped pool, and then everything around it is skeletal.\u201d Price continues, \u201cAll the buildings that evolve [from it] are based on human organs like the liver or kidneys. So there\u2019s a lot of human anatomy.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile reading the script, Price also came across the concept of a Dyson sphere, a structure that harnesses power from the sun. \u201cI thought, what if this thing is powered by the sun?\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBuilding the spaceship was Price\u2019s next challenge. \u201cWe had this 50-foot-high thing, and there\u2019s this liquid which is the same color as strawberry milkshake.\u201d While he doesn\u2019t disclose full details, Price says he had fun creating the set. He teases, \u201cThe throne room seats became like worn-down teeth. Everything was based on anatomy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story discusses major plot points and reveals the ending for \u201cBugonia,\u201d currently playing in theaters. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[71917,18449,88,75805],"class_list":["post-268290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bugonia","tag-emma-stone","tag-entertainment","tag-yorgos-lanthimos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}