Free Guy. Ethan Tobman Interview

Free Guy. Ethan Tobman Interview

Production Designer Ethan Tobman in this exclusive Interview speaks about his work for the Free Guy Disney film.

Ethan Tobman was born in Montreal, Canada. Recent feature films include the Academy Award-winning Room, Beautiful Boy and The Report. Tobman received two nominations in 2018 from the Art Directors Guild for Kendrick Lamar’s All The Stars music video and Ariana Grande’s No Tears Left to Cry. Other notable music videos include longtime collaborations with Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Madonna, Eminem, OK Go.

Tobman started as a child actor in Montreal, but routinely got in trouble for hiding behind the sets with painters and carpenters, curious to figure out how they were built. Later, he attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and his short film Remote was selected for the Cannes International Film Festival when he was 19 years old. With more years to come after his ventures in the film industry he became a successful Production Designer in Hollywood.

- Hi, Ethan! What were Production Design goals for the Free Guy film?

- Sure! One of the challenges here was to create two different worlds in one that are immediately recognizable from the first frame. So we developed really specific rules. Inside the video game: everything from the production side to the costumes to the camera work is influenced by symmetry, non-stop sunlight, cleanliness, hyper saturated pastels, very, very clean frames, whereas in the real world, it’s gray upon gray upon gray, there’s obfuscated frames with dirty foreground elements. There’s messy set dressing, it’s confusing. It rains all the time. It’s gloomy.

- We read Production Notes about the Guy’s apartment. It was very interesting! How did you create Millie’s apartment?

- Specifically for Millie’s apartment, we wanted to counter a Guy’s apartment in the game with a real apartment that felt cluttered and filled with layers, multiple renovations. It probably used to be part of a larger house that’s now been cut up and turned into a condo. There’s brick, sheetrock, stained glass windows, there’s old wood, new wood and a parquet floor.

She hangs her bike up. She has a clothing rack spilling out of her closet. She has unpaid bills. Knickknacks that are covered in coffee and coffee cups that are covered in knickknacks. So she’s, you know, really a counterpoint to his lack of development. She’s a really rich, detailed, messy, inconsistent, humorous character!

- Thanks, Ethan!

Free Guy gets to the movies in the US on the 13th of August, 2021.

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Free Guy. Ethan Tobman Interview