Mr. Burton asked the designer, Dante Ferretti, to recreate not Victorian London but horror-movie London. Mr. Ferretti, who began his career working with Fellini, first visited the relevant neighborhoods around Fleet Street, he said. “Then we did it a little bit more frightening, more dark, more interesting.”I wonder if the sets of Shutter Island will be even more frightening, more dark, and more interesting.
With set design sketches in the background, production designer Dante Ferretti recounts his successful career while in his Medfield office.
Hometown Weekly - July 10, 2008
A visit to Dante Ferretti's office is essentially a step into an art museum for a major motion picture. Lined along the walls of his Medfield office are dozens of sketches, each one outlining a movie set that he has conjured, most of them to be used in Martin Scorsese's Ashecliffe, all of them a -*test*-('")ament to the creativity of a two-time Academy Award-winning designer. Ferretti is currently housed in a West Street warehouse where telemarketers once sat as part of the Potpourri Company. While the building is quiet now, Ferretti explains that there was much hustle and bustle during the winter and spring months as his art department, as well as set designers, worked feverishly to make Dennis Lehane"s "Shutter Island" come to the life for Scorsese"s locally shot film. "It"s almost empty now, because we are near the end of (shooting) the movie," Ferretti relates. "But before it was very, very busy." Scorsese and his team chose the building in January as a means to easily transport equipment and set materials to the Medfield State Hospital shooting site, less than a mile away down Route 27. According to Ferretti, other communities, such as Worcester, were also in the running as potential sites. "I think this one is a very good choice," Ferretti says of his location. "It"s a very good town to work in and we have an empty hospital to work in, so there"s a lot you can do with that." He adds with a laugh, "It was a little cold in the beginning, though." As a boy growing up in Macerata, a city in central Italy, Ferretti fell in love with cinema at an early age. While his peers dreamt of becoming matinee stars in the form of actors, however, Ferretti was quite taken by the sets and costumes created by movie studios and dreamt of one day duplicating the type of worlds that he himself was taken to through the magic of film. "When I was 13 I decided to be a production designer," the now 65-year-old recounts. As a teen, Ferretti made it his goal to study both film and fine arts, as well as pursue classes in architecture. When he was 18, he got his first big break by working alongside legendary Italian director Federico Fellini. From there he worked under the tutelage of Pier Paolo Pasolini and honed his craft under the mindful eye, and cigarette-tinged words, of Franco Zeffirelli. "I was an assistant"s assistant, but I worked under the best directors in Italy, always big names," Ferretti says. "I was very lucky." After meeting other directors in his native country, Ferretti learned some tricks of the trade and began doing his own production design. It was also around this time period that he would meet a young, Italian-American director by the name of Martin Scorsese. "I met Marty when I was with Fellini during a movie, almost 30 years ago," remembers Ferretti. "We met because he came to see Fellini, but we spent some hours together." It can be said that this moment planted seeds of friendship between Ferretti and Scorsese that would blossom almost a decade later and thrive through the present day. Before the two began working together, though, Ferretti was busy building a resume of films and quickly building a reputation as one of the hardest-working production designers in the business. As a production designer, Ferretti is essentially responsible for everything the viewer sees on screen, save for he actors themselves. All background sets, prop pieces and forms of computer graphics to use are his responsibility. Additionally, he speaks with the costume department in order for the two groups to get on the same page for the movie. What sets Ferretti apart from many designers, however, is his commitment to research and attention to detail, yet Ferretti also utilizes an active imagination to put his own stamp on works. "I want to get it right and research and make sure everything is accurate," he says of his work approach. "But then I want to also do it my own way and put some of myself into the design." Ferretti also enjoys the on set company of his wife, Francesca LoSchiavo, who serves as set decorator. The couple has been working together for over 35 years now. "We are a team and we always work together," says Ferretti of LoSchiavo. Another team that appears to work very well together is that of Ferretti and Scorsese. The director has employed the production designer for seven of his last eight films. "The only one I didn"t work on was The Departed, because I was busy with another movie (Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia)," says Ferretti. "So Marty started his movie and we said, 'OK, don't worry, next one'." A similar fate befell Ferretti in 1988 when Scorsese contacted the designer to work on his film "Last Temptation of Christ". Ferretti regrettably had to pass on the work as he was tied up with "The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen" in Spain. Undeterred, though, the two once again made contact in 1993 for "The Age of Innocence", where they finally connected. Ashecliffe marks Ferretti"s 55th film as production designer, a storied career that dates back to 1969's Medea. In that time he has garnered two Academy Awards for Art Direction for his work on Scorsese's The Aviator and Tim Burton"s "Sweeney Todd". During his career he has seen his son Edoardo become a successful assistant director ("I"m very happy for him, he really likes what he does," Ferretti says) and has become a part of Martin Scorsese"s "family". "Martin Scorsese is, I think, one of the best directors in all of movies," Ferretti says. "He is a hero of mine. He gives people opportunities and he opened up the door for me."
Which seems quite appropriate to me (trapped in an illusion).