CHOCOLATE SHOP FACADE

The Set Concept Sketch about the Chocolate Shop Interior

CHOCOLATERIE

The location of the chocolate shop was replaced by a grill bar called Bodega "La Mahala" in Bucharest.

(Location: Strada Covaci 8, București 030167, Romania)

sources:

Kevin Phipps, who has worked as an art director on some of the most stylistically distinct films of all time, crafted a world of shadow and muted color for the wolves to inhabit. “He is one of the best art directors in the business and this is his first job as production designer,” says executive producer Hawk Koch. “The sets he created on this film were simply spectacular.”

Phipps was able to use the visual richness of existing locations in Bucharest to the production’s advantage in many instances. He transformed a former heating plant into the Brookwood Absinthe Distillery, which serves as Gabriel’s lair 

and created the Dacian Club by modifying a derelict half-finished concrete structure: Ceaucescu’s (the former leader of Communist Romania) Biblioteca Nationala (the National Library). 

Dancy attests to the seamless integration of Phipps’s sets with the city itself. “The attention to detail is such that the sets fit in perfectly with the city as it really is.”

The filmmakers’ urgent need to provide a secure shooting environment for the wolves as well as for the cast and crew resulted in Phipps’s greatest challenge: the creation of several naturalistic forest sets, including a creek and a river, on MediaPro’s soundstages.

Phipps and his team rose to the challenge by using some 2000 cubic meters of soil, 50-60 real trees along with some polystyrene and fiberglass trees to reproduce a Romanian forest so authentic that it soon attracted its own mosquitoes, lizards as well as a resident owl. He recalls, “The first time we had a show-and-tell on that forest set, suddenly I looked up and there was an owl flying around in the canopy of our trees. Katja looked up and saw the owl and said ‘Kevin, you know that’s a really good sign that we’ll be really happy shooting on this set.’”

Once the creek and river sets were conceived, Phipps worked closely with SFX supervisor Allder on the mechanics, the water system, the pumping system, the filtration and the volume of water that would bring the sets to life.

The filmmaking team had already previsualized the world of the film using small scale models. “You can get down and get your lens into the model and really see how the set is going to shoot and what will be in each frame,” explains Phipps. “This approach was especially useful given the amount of running in the film. Everybody knew what they were getting – stunts, camera, lighting, even the actors.”

sources:

https://www.vladvieru.com/blood--chocolate---2005.html

http://www.kevinphipps.com/b-l-o-o-d--c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t/b-l-o-o-d--c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t/

http://blood-and-chocolate.katja-von-garnier.com/