Spider-Man: Homecoming: Merging Universes in Production Design

By Gill Pringle and Will Tentindo

Oliver Scholl creates the world that some of the biggest blockbusters exist in. As production designer for the newest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Scholl was set the unique challenge of creating a coming-of-age drama set in a world of superheroes. But keeping the web-slinging hero’s film grounded is a difficult challenge to overcome.

Born in Stuttgart, West Germany, Scholl’s career started as a film production designer for Roland Emmerich with the 1990 West German sci-fi thriller Moon 44. Moving to Hollywood with Emmerich, Scholl worked on Universal Soldier, Stargate and Independence Day. Ever since, he has built a reputation in Hollywood for sci-fi and action films. His portfolio includes The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Jumper, and DC’s Suicide Squad, but let’s not blame him for that.

During the making-of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Scholl took the time to speak to us about the world he was creating.

You’ve worked on films over the last few years that are more bombastic, over the top; is this more grounded than those?

We have a guy walking along walls, upside down, and we have a character called Vulture, with a giant wingsuit. I wouldn’t call that, in the normal sense, grounded.

Now let me take that back right away, because I do think that this is, in the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a very grounded experience. If you think of what we’ve experienced so far, what the audience has seen so far, we’re tying into Civil War. Spidey shows up in Civil War, and the audience really loved him… He’s seen the Avengers’ world, he wants to go there, but he’s not ready yet, he’s at a different point in his life from those characters. [This film] is for him to come of age, to figure out how he is going to deal with it. It’s pretty much as grounded as you get, but it’s still the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so that’s the fun of it.

What’s your challenge, because you said it’s grounded, but we as the audience still are accustomed to seeing everything spectacular?

It’s still spectacular, let’s say the range is bigger than normal. You’re starting in Queens, you’re not in glam Manhattan, with the beautiful Avengers tower – maybe you are partially – but that’s the world he’s living in. So, when that world breaks into his environment, the contrast is much bigger. When you suddenly have this guy show up in the suit it’s like, ‘Oh my god, how am I going to deal with this?’ He’s being told by Tony [Stark], ‘Okay, be nice kid and go and do your homework, and learn and grow up, and then at some point you might be able to join the Avengers’, but he’s like, ‘But I’m ready!’

My son is 17 years old, he’s a teenager, and it’s exactly that scenario! [Spider-Man] thinks he’s ready, the big guys think he’s not. He lives in Queens, across the river is Manhattan, the symbol for the big grown up world, is he ever going to get there?

So that will be the biggest difference, compared to the previous Spider-Man films, production wise?

This is its own thing, it’s really reimagining it, because it’s a homecoming. It’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, and he’s coming home into the Marvel-created universe, so the other movies were other people’s choices, and now you have Marvel and Sony working together, so it’s a different world. It’s very exciting to see what comes out of this whole thing, and what new routes you can take by opening the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Spidey to come back to, and use all the richness that is there, that is not limited to the original contract.

70 percent of the movie is shot on location, production wise for you, building sets on a sound stage is one scenario, using practical locations is entirely different, so where was the challenge for you, what were the sequences that really raised the bar?

The tools of filmmaking are the same across these productions, the difference is where you spend more time, and how much polish goes in afterwards, how much you can expand in post, how much visual effects work, and stuff like that comes into it.

Did you work with a colour scheme?

I find for these kind of movies, for the world we’re trying to portray, if I try to lay this rigid colour scheme on it, first of all, I can’t. I can’t repaint Queens, per se. You try to see what’s there and then you take things away. You tweak things a bit so it doesn’t become too poppy, so it stays real and becomes a continuous world. Yes, you try to, but it’s not in the context of Dick Tracy, where I see glowing yellows and golds and we’re going to repaint everything. No, that’s not this kind of movie. And then there’s obviously the tools that are there for later on, to create more of a colour shift and things like that.

A lot of this film was shot on location. Do you prefer that to a studio set and what were the challenges?

As a designer, I’d rather build it. Because if I build it I can get exactly what I want for the scene.

It’s all a challenge artistically. Because if you work with a location, the artistic challenge is tied into what the movie needs to look like, or what the story needs to tell at that point, or what helps to emphasise the action in the situation at that moment.

I always say when you’re on location, you need to find the location you can work with, and that’s a challenge for the location manager, who I’m probably driving wild. You want to find something that gives you the essence of what the location needs – what we need for the scene, a basic geometry, or intersection – but a character like Queens, it’s the right building sizes and rhythm, and then you can take that and build upon it and bring signage and build the world that you want to replicate. Rather than try to use a location that doesn’t offer you a starting point; I like to find something that seduces you into using it, rather than working against it, and then you end up spending a lot of money working in something that you would rather build on a stage or on set from scratch.

When I read the script for the first time, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is clear, this is going to be a set, this is going to be a location’, it’s never actually in the end. There’s this balancing act that leads to the final decision of location or stage set. Being the designer, I’d like a lot more stuff to be the stage set, because you can create exactly what you want. I’ve come to appreciate location work much more than I ever thought I would because of that, because of opportunities and lucky accidents.

We found one location in New York where we have a beautiful railroad overpass and all these other little storefronts, and it’s like, if you would build it on stage, it looks like a stage set, but it exists in New York, so it’s this ambiguousness of a movie like this.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is in cinemas July 6, 2017.