“Dr. Sleep.” “The Suicide Squad.” “Ms. Marvel.” If you’ve ever watched any of these movies or television shows, you’ve seen set designer Vincent Bates’ work.
Originally from South Carolina, Bates graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 2013 with an MFA in architecture. He didn’t always know he wanted to work in film, but after deciding that architecture might not be the profession for him, a friend turned him on to the world of set design.
Over a decade later, Bates has built a formidable resume and recently worked on “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” making him one of the 158 SCAD students and alumni who worked on films represented at the Academy Awards this year (“Guardians” scored a nomination for Best Visual Effects).
Bates took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with Rough Draft about his path to the movies and what exactly a set designer does. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Growing up, did you always know you wanted to work in movies? When did that start to become the career path for you?
Vincent Bates:I had no idea I wanted to work in movies. I knew I always loved movies as a child, watching them all the time and enamored by them. But I never thought of it being a viable profession. Where I’m from, Columbia, South Carolina, it’s like – how are movies even made, you know? [Laughs] Just a few phone calls and boom, there’s a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It became, for me, a viable career path while I was at SCAD. That’s where I was like, oh? You mean I can actually use what I’ve learned here and do this?
You got your degree in architecture, right?
Bates: Yes. I got a master’s in architecture from SCAD, and my undergrad was from South Carolina State University in mechanical engineering.
Knowing that, I assume you were thinking about going the architecture route. What was the turning point for you?
Bates: Initially, I wanted to be an engineer. Growing up, that was going to be it. I did that for a little bit, but then the 20008 housing bubble burst, and the recession that we went through essentially forced me back into school – well, not forced me. I found a safe haven in school. Luckily, SCAD had rolling admissions, which worked out well for me because I could enroll year round.
I enrolled there. I was like, maybe I want to go architecture – something a little more design focused. The set design thing hadn’t hit me yet. It just wasn’t there. [I was] just going for architecture, and then … I did an internship for an architecture firm, and I think that’s when I really discovered, I don’t want to do this as a profession [laughs]. But I have all this knowledge from doing it, so what do I do with it? Luckily, there was a friend of mine who I met at SCAD who had started working in film. She basically dropped the bomb on me, she was like – they love architects for set design. I was like, huh – who knew?
Do you remember what your first job was as a set designer, or in the art department?
Bates: My very, very first job in the art department was “Project Almanac.” I was a [production assistant]. Not a set designer yet, because everyone has to start at that PA level, so you at least learn how the machine works. I got my bump up to set design while I was on “Goosebumps” as a PA. So, halfway through the show, I was able to sell my skill set. They needed a set designer and I was cheap, because I was new and local [laughs]. It was like, you know? We’ll give you a shot. Alright, we’ll make you a set designer!
Could you talk a little bit generally about what a set designer does? I feel like people have a tendency to think a movie just kind of appears on screen.
Bates: I think it would be great just to mention that, because a lot of people don’t know what a set designer actually does. They think like, oh wow, you get to hang with movie stars, you just get to be out there wearing your beret and [say] this needs to look like this – no!
A lot of my job is spent 3D-modeling on the computer. That’s kind of the wild part. This is where myself, the art director and production designer, and even the director chimes in, the producers chime in – and it’s not just myself always, sometimes there’s multiple set designers on these shows, because they’re so large. What we’ll do is, the production designer might have a rough idea of what he or she wants. They may give us some sketches or pictures – we need something like this, maybe you can flesh it out. Or sometimes, they have absolutely no idea what they want, and that’s where I have to come in and be like, well we can do something like this? You know, question mark?
From there, it’s like a back and forth game – it’s like how much can we build practically, stay within budget. Once I finish modeling it and everyone looks at it, and either they love it or hate it, that’s when it enters the drawing phase. This is where you really break it down and create a set, a package of drawings for construction to actually build off of. Obviously, for a beginner set designer or anyone starting out, that’s the scariest part. Because it’s like, oh no – what if my drawings are terrible, and my set doesn’t get built and I bring a $30 million show to a halt because my set didn’t get built?
It also depends on the scale of the show. If the show is large enough where you can build things, I’m mostly at my computer modeling it, texturing it, lighting it, everyone getting a sense of what it could be once it’s finished. If it’s a smaller scale show, you’d be doing location augmentation, which is going out to a location, surveying it and seeing what we can build inside of that. That could be … adding walls, taking out walls, just making something completely within the already-built space.
I’m sure it is so scary the first time you send off your sketches. Like, here you go! Hope you like it!
Bates: Oh, yeah. I felt like I was gonna throw up in my mouth for my very first set … but it’s one of those [things] where pressure either busts pipes or makes diamonds. It’s like, well, this is it.
I know you worked on “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” which is nominated for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars this year. Could you talk a bit about that experience? Is there anything from that movie that you’re particularly proud of?
Bates: One of the sets I did, it was called the pilot’s bay. There’s a scene where there’s this woman … with multiple arms, and she’s standing in the middle of this spaceship with these lights that are all around it. It’s like this giant cockpit. That was one of my major sets. It was just wrapping my head around, okay – we have all these panels. How will this go together? We need to change it over for the big finale – how do we do this? It was just wrapping my head around that as a whole. Because it wasn’t just square walls, it was these walls [that] come together at these odd angles, and I need it all to close up, and I need this to be buildable, and of course we need this ASAP [laughs].
That was one of the times where I feel like I really grew as a set designer, because it was one of the most challenging things. Not to speak ill of any of the other shows, but it’s not like a location-based, real-life-right-now thing. Everything in that show pretty much had to be built. So it’s using your imagination and figuring out like, we have these materials, we have these limitations – how can we make this happen and make it look as good as it can be with what we have?
You’ve worked on some other Marvel projects, but you didn’t work on the first two installments of “Guardians.” When you’re coming into the third movie, are you really beholden to the old design, or do you feel like you have some freedom to make something new?
Bates: It sort of depends. In the case of this one, Nowhere, which was another set that I worked on – it was multiple set designers working on this one set, the town where Rocket gets shot in the opening – the area that he actually got [shot] in was the part of the set that I had to do. So, the thing is, sometimes you are beholden to what was in the previous [film]. We know that Nowhere had a previous design language that we had to follow, obviously. So in that regard we had to follow it. But new worlds and new things that we haven’t seen before, thankfully we had the go-ahead to play a little bit. Let’s see how this works out, let’s see how that works out.
Obviously, it’s the production designer that has final say within our department. And then from there it goes to the producers and to the director, and they have to also want or like it for it to get built. It’s one of those things where you do it and you send it up the flagpole and hope that it stays. And then there are other times where it comes back down and you gotta make that change.