Filmmaking is teamwork and the final effect, also a visual one, is a result of an effort of many various specialists in different fields. Last year, this notion led the Organizers of PLUS CAMERIMAGE Festival to creation of an award to a production designer - a person who greatly affects the film image. The first award of this category in the history of the Festival went last year to John Myhre, production designer for such movies as Memoirs of a Geisha, X-Men, Ali, Chicago and the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dante Ferretti (Interview with the Vampire, Gangs of New York, Aviator, Casino, Kundun). As promised, the Festival Organizers will award authors of an outstanding production design at every edition of PLUS CAMERIMAGE 2007.

We have a pleasure to announce that during the upcoming edition of the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography PLUS CAMERIMAGE 2007 the Special Award to the Production Designer with Unique Visual Sensitivity will be granted to Lilly Kilvert, production designer forCity of Angels, The Crucible, The Last Samurai, Strange Days and Legends of the Fall to mention just a few.


Lilly Klivert

Award winning production designer Lilly Kilvert believes that her work should be “beautiful but shootable". As far as she is concerned, creating a good film set is about working with the cinematographer and director to make backgrounds that are seamless and distinctive, while allowing the kind of flexibility and accessibility filmmaking requires. "My job is to design for photography - to design for the camera", she says, "yet at the same time I have to communicate with people all the time. Production design deals with filming as much as with film. The process—teamwork—is as much my responsibility as the result, the picture itself".

"Every movie has its own challenges. I try to create a world that pulls you into the story. Periods film like The Crucible and The Last Samurai, require a total attention to the historical correctness. Research is crucial, however it is what the set feels like that counts in the end. In both films I had to create a believable sense of place—I had to manufacture a plausible reality. In contrast, in an action film like The Siege my goal was to heighten people’s perceptions in order for them to experience the power of New York City. When blowing a bus in the middle of a busy street in Brooklyn, I had to produce an impression of mayhem while at the same time make sure no one got hurt."

Kilvert’s approach to her work is hands-on and immediate. “To communicate and articulate is so important. Ask questions. Make sure the team knows what is going to happen each day. The art department serves the movie."

Kilvert’s twenty plus years in the business and her work on over twenty films has been rewarded with an Oscar nomination for her work on Legends of the Fall , another for her designs for The Last Samurai, both with director for Edward Zwick and a nomination for the Art Directors Guild award for her work on Nicolas Hytner’s The Crucible.

Selected filmography:

• The Pink Panther (2006)
• The Last Samurai (2003)
• Hart's War (2002)
• Heartbreakers (2001)
• The Story of Us (1999)
• The Siege (1998)
• City of Angels (1998)
• Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
• The Crucible (1996)
• The American President (1995)
• Strange Days (1995)
• Legends of the Fall (1994)

Drawing for Legends of the Fall