Interview: James Chinlund's Evolutionary "Apes" Vision. (Plus a Look Back at "The Fountain")
Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 7:00PM 
Production Design James ChinlundThough today's film culture is as as overun with franchises as the decaying cities of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are with unchecked vegetation, franchise movies do have a few beautiful unique pleasures all their own. Chief among those, we'd argue, is the sheer scale of imaginative spectacle they can provide when the right people are hired behind the scenes.
James Chinlund, the award winning production designer behind the fantastic world-building in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one of those people. Though his filmography was once mostly the domain of scrappy ambitious auteur indies, he's recently experienced a sort of super-size me effect. He credits Marvel's gamble in hiring him to design their biggest blockbuster The Avengers with reinvigorating his film career. This led directly to Dawn of the Apes, one of 2014's most acclaimed giant-sized hits. Though Chinlund undoubtedly has his share of film offers these days, he prefers the mix of small and large scale projects that his still-diverse career provides and opted out of superhero sequels from the time commitment.
Apes, Avengers, and The Fountain are after the jump...
