PATRICK TATOPOULOS INTERVIEW
BATTLEFIELD EARTH: A UNIFIED VISION

For Battlefield Earth, Patrick Tatopoulos tackled multiple art design roles, serving as Production Designer, Creature Effects Designer and Costume Designer. Battlefield Earth marks one of the first times that a U.S. production has placed these three major roles in the hands of a single person. It was a tall order, but Tatopoulos is used to big assignments and he relished the opportunity to bring a unified vision to Battlefield Earth.

While preparing the set of a destroyed library in ruins a thousand years from now, Patrick took time to share some of his perspective on the design of Battlefield Earth.

battlefieldearth.com: Tell us how you feel about taking on all these design roles for the film.

PATRICK TATOPOULOS: For me as a designer, combining all these roles is something I've been looking to do for a very long time, for a few different reasons. One is that I've always believed that a designer should be broadly versatile -- able to design costumes, sets, creatures and makeup. If you go back to the Fellini era in Italy, you find the designers were doing all those things, and with distinctive artistry. By contrast, it's been virtually traditional in America for a long time that you specialize. If you do the costumes, the presumption is that you only know how to sew, not how to do the architectural work of production design as well. I don't believe this is necessarily the truth.

We are working from a book of breadth and complexity, and with a director of strong structural focus. My personal feeling is that the fewer people there are at the opening stages of development, the less confusion ensues. We were able to achieve a direct unified vision. I don't think the creative perspective is narrowed or constrained –– but my experience is that if there are fewer people at the beginning you get moving quickly, with greater clarity on a stronger straighter line. Then, of course, we work with a lot of extremely talented technicians and people to preserve cinematic simplicity and its intrinsic unity of design.

BE: The unified design vision then permeates the design of the whole film?

TATOPOULOS: Yes. To make it really work, everything has to blend together. On Independence Day the spacecraft and the alien were designed the same way –– they were working the same way. The spacecraft actually looked like the top of the head of the alien. I didn't think about it when I drew it, but it sort of worked out that way.

With the Psychlos and their world in Battlefield Earth, there are a lot of elements that you find in their costumes that are repeated in the set, and the dressing; implicit unities that work together because you are in a certain state of mind when you start designing. Everything begins with that and achieves –– and sustains –– a coherent, consistent flow and rhythmn. I think at the end it heightens the movie –– adding defining accents of style and composition. Everything seems to blend better.

BE: What's it like working with Roger Christian on Battlefield Earth?

TATOPOULOS: We became a very tight team from the very beginning. Even today, if I step away from the set for even half an hour sometimes, Roger is looking for me in about 5 minutes. Why? Because he addresses his questions to me. He knows his technicians are fabulous people and they do a great job, but he wants me to be involved at every level. We really worked out the look of the movie together as a team, and I can still sense and respond to that. That's been something very special between the two of us on this project, from the outset. Because very often, you know, you work for a director, develop a design, then move on to prep the next set while they're shooting the last one. And that leaves a certain freedom for the director to go the way he wants –– a necessary freedom, after all, since he's directing the movie, with a guiding vision of his own.

But with Roger I don't step away and let go, because he's just going to escort me back on set to make sure every element still functions within our aesthetic of the design. It's a pattern he's really followed from the very beginning, something I find both delightfully reassuring and comparably challenging, because, you know, you have to be on another set prepping for the next day, but on the shooting set as well to make sure that everything looks right. It's a little demanding sometimes, but still extremely pleasing for me to make sure that everything is what and as it should be.

---

In coming updates, Patrick talks to us about how his approach to design in Battlefield Earth works out into the specific colors, details, and symbols found throughout the alien society of the Psychlos and the primitive society of future man amongst the ruins of Earth's former greatness. Check back for these stories and more.