Mixing, Layering, and Making Worlds

FR: How granular do you get in your process? Are you mood-boarding? How are you saving your references?

NM: Essentially, everything you see on camera that is not an actor or their clothing is the art department. Everything from the room they’re standing in to the objects they’re holding: phones, drinks, books, food, cars. It’s very important to show the interiority of a character through the way they move around in the world.

My department functions essentially like a triangle, where the production designer oversees the overall design, then you have your art director, your set decorator, and your prop master, who are all heads of their own departments, but under the art department umbrella. I work closely with those three people and their crews. We’ve got our construction crew, carpenters, shoppers, scenics, set dressers, and our prop assistants.

From the moment I start pulling references, I want to make sure that everybody looks at them. It’s mood boards, shared Google Drives, Dropbox, and things like that. I make a book of references for each set or each character, depending on the film. The point is to get everybody on the same page. I also like to do an art department movie night, obviously pre-COVID, where we choose a movie that is a strong reference for the film and hang out.

FR: You’re working in all of these different colorways and modes. Betty and The Incredible Jessica James are so expressive. Their worlds are bright even when they’re grungy, but you’re also making more distilled spaces with Couples Therapy or The Sound of Silence and the black-and-white world of Passing. How do you approach each color palette as you’re layering, texturing, and building the worlds?

NM: In an ideal world, the color palette conversation would happen immediately with the director. Again, it depends on the script and the characters. For The Incredible Jessica James, it was Brooklyn but heightened. It’s like Jessica Williams but more. I’m always into some full-on pattern mixing and layering. When we decided that we were going with the super bright, super heightened palette, we just went all the way there.

The Sound of Silence is about a quiet, lonesome, maybe even lonely main character. The question is, what has he been collecting his whole life? What is his palette? How is it different from other palettes in the film? His home was very analog, very brown, but not lacking in texture. His foil in the film is this very corporate office, very fancy, very glass.

Shooting in black and white for Passing was a different way of looking at the world. When my decorator sent me photos of furniture, I had her only send me photos in black and white. I wanted to see the textures and the way an object interacts with other objects. So, if something’s super smooth or super rough, that’s going to show up. I didn’t want to get distracted by the color. Although iPhone black and white is not the same as the way the film was graded, it still helped me see. We chose bright carpets and textiles. When you walk into the space, you’re like, Whoa, too much. But in black and white, it’s amazing.

And then Betty is more naturalistic. We’re trying to get the vibe of what the women’s spaces are in reality. Maybe a little bit heightened, but we’re not trying to make it super “for TV” either.

FR: Betty is impressive. It feels so familiar, especially as a young femme of color. There is a deep late-millennial, early–Gen Z vibe that feels like you’re plopped into their world. It feels very distinct from the glossier shows featuring people of a similar age.

NM: All of that is super thought out. It was important to me that Janay’s hair products be different than Camille’s hair products, for example, and that people’s spaces feel realistic. With Indigo’s apartment, she does have art up on the walls, but it’s local Brooklyn women-of-color artists, designers, and painters. She doesn’t have original art on the wall; she has a print because she’s in her twenties and lives in Bushwick. When we go to her mom’s super fancy apartment in SoHo, we see actual pieces that we rented from artists. We did a lot of work to find artists we felt represented who this Black professional woman would have in her house. It is really fun to be able to have the money to support artists and bring their work into the show.

FR: That makes me think about the various scales of the operation. You’re attuned to the conceptual workings of the characters’ worlds, but your mind is on the logistical and financial considerations as well.

NM: Yes, and I don’t think there’s any scale where you escape that. Unfortunately, in the art department you never have enough money. You are thinking about the bigger picture of the budget. Budget concerns are serious concerns for the art department, but also everything is possible. I’ve done a ton of little movies, and everything is possible—it’s just harder. With the bigger jobs, you have more room for clearances or custom building, finding the perfect chair and being able to pay for it. But it’s not necessary to create a perfect film, you know?

FR: Do you feel the muscles you’ve gained on smaller sets have translated to the larger operations?

NM: Absolutely. I feel like those muscles are indie muscles. You always need them in some way. Even if you have fifty carpenters at your disposal, it’s important to remember the many ways in which filmmaking can work and not just be beholden to one way. It’s not just Hollywood and industry. It’s not just having huge crews. There are ways of making interesting work that people forget, and they become less creative. Then something amazing like Moonlight [2016] gets made, and they question how it’s even possible.

FR: Who are some of your North Stars in terms of production design, or just design and aesthetics more broadly?

NM: I am drawn to a lot of painters and photographers. In terms of film and aesthetics, this is such a hard question! I love Claire Denis. My favorite film is 35 Shots of Rum [2008], full stop! It’s so naturalistic, and in a lot of ways it just feels right. I love Kevin Jerome Everson’s experimental work. He’s been doing it for a long time and he’s so prolific. His work is incredible—talk about witnessing and distilling something into a film in a way that is so visually compelling. I don’t have specific production designers as much as movies I’m drawn to and the ideas behind them.

[Talking to her baby, Amaru] So you want to be part of the interview now?

People act like the diversity is coming or it’s here already, but there’s a lot more work to do both in front of the camera but also behind it.

FR: I have a question about Baby Amaru, who I love seeing photos of, by the way! Has having a child altered your orientation to the production space?

NM: It’s complicated. When I was first pregnant, I designed Topside, which premiered at Venice last year. It was a mother-daughter story about people who live in the subway tunnels in New York City, specifically the Freedom Tunnel. It was a really dark, sad film. I’m into dark dramas, but being pregnant while designing that film changed the way I looked at it and changed my connection to the actors and main characters.

The other big thing is figuring out how to work with a baby and figuring out how that negotiation works. The good thing about filmmaking is that you work really hard when you’re in production—maybe you’re working fifteen hours a day for months—but then you can take some time off to do something else, like raise your baby.

I interviewed for Passing about a year before it was supposed to go into production. I was connected to it far earlier and have been obsessed with the book, by Nella Larsen, for years. I have family members who have passed, and my grandma still talks about these cousins who came to Thanksgiving for a few years and then just disappeared. That’s real in our shared history. I was extremely pregnant when we shot the film, because production kept getting pushed and pushed. The last day of production was four days before my due date, so I was nine months pregnant. I almost was reconsidering, but I was obsessed with the book and with director Rebecca Hall. I felt so connected and considered if I wasn’t pregnant I would have 100% done this movie, so I did.

FR: I hear you. I’m struck by how much New York is a character in so much of the work you do. How do you approach working with the city’s different scapes, from the wide outdoor environments to the very contained spaces?

NM: I love New York. My partner and I moved to Mexico City for a little while, then moved to the Bay Area, and then we came back. With New York City, it’s just all there—1920s New York is still here. The lives of these skateboard girls exist alongside the lives of people who are living in the subway tunnels and the couples in therapy.

In fact, with Passing I was shocked by how much of old New York still exists. The fire hydrants look the same now as they did in 1900. Lots of subway stations, lampposts, and architectural features are the same, so it all just continues to be layered. It’s very interesting the way architecture can represent and show segregation. Even when you’re in a space that has no actors in it, the story is still there.

FR: You’ve worked as a producer and trained as a filmmaker. Do you think you’re going to dip your feet back in other storytelling roles?

NM: My partner [Sam Ellison] and I made a documentary, Chèche Lavi [2019], along with Abraham Ávila and Rachel Cantave. Being a producer on that film was a game changer in how I understand filmmaking. I appreciated that, but I really love and am committed to production designing.