#the Byers set with all of its little pieces and parts has always been iconic

[share-the-damn-bed]

It makes me so sad to think about the Byers house in California sitting there, shot up, with all of their possessions dumped about and/or smashed.

…I hope they get it all back.

[morkhan]

Will Byers is Gay: The Evidence So Far

With the release of Stranger Things 3, there has been a lot of discussion kicked up about the character of Will Byers and his sexuality (or lack thereof). I've seen a lot of takes about what "it's not my fault you don't like girls" was intended to mean, many of which seem to take it in isolation, so I wanted to make a post putting it into what I think is its proper context; not an isolated incident, but the latest carriage in veritable train of queer themed language and imagery that has followed Will Byers since episode one of season one, and before that. You ready? Alright, let's go.

Season Zero: the Montauk Files

Before Stranger Things became Stranger Things, it was called Montauk. Like many would-be show makers, the Duffer Bros put together a "show bible" describing the premise, setting, tone, and characters of the show they intended to make. Like many shows, a lot of these ideas changed or were lost on their way to the screen, but it's always worth looking into their original concepts. Here is their description of Will Byers in the Montauk show bible:

Obviously, the major whammy there is in the first line "sexual identity issues." But there are some other interesting notes, like his "colorful clothes" that you might want to keep a lookout for on your next rewatch. Now, onto...

Season 1

The thing to pay attention to regarding Will in season 1 is in the language used to refer to him when he is not present (which he isn't for most of the season).

Episode 1: the subject of bullying comes up right away in the conversation between Joyce and Hopper. "The kids, they're mean. They laugh at him, laugh at his clothes, call him names." "What's wrong with his clothes?" "I don't know!" This harkens back to the Montauk show bible, but it's arguable, since it's never made clear what about his clothes draws ire.

She also mentions that he is "sensitive," "not like most," and that his dad said he was "queer" and called him a "fag." Hopper asks "is he?" to which she replies "He's missing is what he is!"

Episode 3: Troy says he's not missing, he's dead. "Probably killed by some other queer."

Episode 4: Troy, again "Will's in fairyland, flying around with all the other little fairies, all happy and gay."

Sensitive, queer, fag, fairy, and gay are all used to describe Will in season 1, but perhaps more notable is the fact that they aren't used to describe anyone else. If the show were truly period accurate, let's be real; the whole party would've been called queers on a pretty regular basis, because "queer" doubled as a generic insult back then. But in season 1, these words are only ever used in relation to Will, with one exception; in episode 6, Steve says to Will's brother, "I used to think you were queer." So it's not even an active accusation in that moment; it's used in the negative.

Hell, Troy walked up to Lucas mockingly proposing to Mike and proclaiming his love for him, and he still didn't call them queers. That language is reserved for Will.

Now granted, most of these are used as insults by characters who don't like Will, but still; as a writer, if you want your audience to remember something, repetition is an excellent way to embed it in their minds. There's a reason for the specificity of language surrounding Will, and a reason that language keeps coming up over and over and over again.

Season 2

Season 2 retires much of the homophobic language used to insult Will, replacing it with "Zombie Boy." The only homophobic language used in season 2 is the word "faggot," used by Billy's father to refer to Billy, who expresses a clear interest in women (and an arguable interest in one particular man, but that's the subject of another post).

Still, there is an arguable bit of queer theming in Will's conversation with Jonathan regarding the benefits of being a "freak" and how normal people never accomplish anything. Jonathan even invokes bisexual icon David Bowie to make Will feel better about his "freakishness."

The clearest piece of queer theming for Will in season 2 comes in episode 8, in this beautiful speech from Joyce to Possessed Will:

"When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons, do you remember that? It was 120 colors. And all your friends got you Star Wars toys, but all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship, but it wasn't from a movie. It was YOUR spaceship; a RAINBOW Ship, that's what you called it. And you, you must have used every color in the box. I took that with me to Melvald's, and I put it up. I told everyone who came in, 'My son drew this.' And you were so embarrassed, but I was so proud. I was so, so proud."

This is one of the most powerful memories of her son that Joyce has, an image so strong and distinct that she uses it to invoke his true identity against the monster that is slowly subsuming him. She notes very specifically that it's not something he copied, but something that came entirely from Will himself, an image that she felt represented him so perfectly that she took it with her to work and proudly touted it as his to everyone she knew. The Rainbow Ship is Joyce's picture of her son's very heart, and surely I don't need to explain to you how powerful a piece of queer imagery the rainbow is.

Some subtextual stuff; in episode 9, when the girl asks Will to dance, he stammers "I... I don't..." and only goes to dance with her when Mike literally pushes him towards her.

During the final montage, the scene cuts to different characters in time with appropriate lines from the song: "every move you make" cuts to Mike and El (as he is teaching her to dance), "every vow you break" cuts to Nancy dancing with Dustin (as she technically cheated on Steve with Jonathan), "I'll be watching you" cuts to Lucas dancing with Max (as she has playfully called him 'stalker' all season). What line cuts to Will? "Every smile you fake," specifically on the word fake, while Will dances with a girl wearing this expression:

That is not a real smile, that is not a comfortable boy, and that is not an accident; Noah Schnapp is one of the best actors in the entire show, and of the young boys, he is the one the Duffers trust most to do dramatic heavy lifting.

Do you want it to be a little more explicit? Okay, here is that scene in the script:

I mean, that pretty much speaks for itself. It's less explicit in the actual show, but it's still there, you know?

Season 3

And now, the biggest and most explicit thing to date; The Scene. I mean, you could discuss the obvious subtext in the simple fact that Will is the only male main character who has yet to find a girlfriend or express any interest in girls whatsoever, but that pales in comparison to The Scene.

The setup for The Scene is pretty simple; after declaring "a day free of girls" in order to get his friends to run the D&D campaign he's probably spent a significant amount of time creating, his friends have blown him off to continue bemoaning their girl troubles, so Will has decided to leave. Mike, realizing too late that he has genuinely upset his friend, chases after him to try and get him to come back.

A back-and-forth argument ensues, where Will accuses Mike of ruining the party and abandoning his friends in favor of girls, and Mike, in the heat of the moment, responds with "It's not my fault you don't like girls!" After which, everything stops. There is a full second of silence, and a close up on Noah Schnapp's face so you can take in his reaction.

There is a lot to unpack here. Now, acting is up to interpretation to a degree, but to me, that expression conveys two primary emotions; shock, and betrayal. That face says "how could you?" Because here's the thing; regardless of what Mike does or doesn't know about Will's sexuality, Mike knows for a fact that Will has been called a queer all his life by everyone from his school bullies to his own fucking dirtbag father. By invoking even the specter of that, Mike has crossed a fucking line, and he knows it. And we know he knows it, because he immediately backtracks and tries to mitigate the damage. But it's too late. The damage has been done.

I also think there is a tinge of fear in that image. Just a moment of soul raking panic that pretty much every closeted queer person knows intimately. It's very brief. But I think it's there, if you look.

This scene sends Will into an emotional tailspin that culminates in him tearing down the literal last bastion of his childhood in a fit of sorrow and rage. His innocence has been destroyed. He cannot regain what he has lost, and he can never go back to the way things were before. This is the emotional climax of his arc for season three. It's a powerful one-- shame it comes in the third of eight episodes, but that's neither here nor there.

And that's pretty much it for now. Any one of these things taken in isolation could be very easily dismissed, but here's the thing; they aren't isolated incidents. They are part of a clear and consistent pattern, one that goes all the way back to the show's inception, before even one minute of footage was filmed. And this pattern points to one very obvious conclusion; the Duffer Brothers have always intended, and continue to intend, for Will Byers to be gay.

Now, for the obvious question; why haven't they made it explicit yet?

The answer is as unfortunate as it is obvious; I don't know.

It's entirely possible that there is some external force that the Duffers have to answer to that is preventing them from actively pursuing this particular storyline. This happens all the time in Hollywood, and it could be anything from Netflix to Noah Schnapp's parents to Noah Schnapp himself just being uncomfortable with it. Many are the creators who dream Big Gay Dreams only to run into the horrors of our Forced Hetero Reality. If the Duffers ultimately submit to these pressures, I hope you won't be too hard on them. This shit is harder than you think to get to the screen sometimes.

But it's also possible that they just aren't ready for it yet. That they have been saving this for a future storyline, that they just want their characters (and the actors) to get a little older before they pursue this particular storyline explicitly, but they've been busily laying groundwork for it so that anyone paying attention will know it's coming.

I don't know. Only time will tell for sure.

For now, I can tell you this; I see a great deal of evidence that the Duffers still intend for Will to be gay, and precisely zero that they have changed their minds.

I hope that holds true.

[delhi-architect2]

Journal - Architect Boryana Ilieva Creates Mesmerizing Floor Plans From Iconic Film Sets

Paula Benson is Founder and Editor of Film and Furniture, a curated resource of iconic furniture seen in classic movies and TV shows that includes links to purchase the featured products.

Whether an arthouse classic or a mainstream blockbuster, film sets are laden with hidden narrative. Film set designers, production designers and set decorators spend months, sometimes years creating houses, scenes and rooms. Carefully chosen locations, furniture, decor, lighting and art all convey nuances about the protagonists personalities – subtleties which dialogue cannot always communicate.

We at Film and Furniture are fascinated by these details and we’ve made it our business to seek out others who feel the same. That’s how we came across the Instagram feed of Floor Plan Croissant – the clever artist who analyses the floor plans and decoration of intriguing film set interiors and renders them in lyrical watercolour paint.

It is Architect and Illustrator Boryana Ilieva who creates these “poetic surveys of space, light and matter in cinematic architecture” under the name Floor Plan Croissant. From Will Byers house in Stranger Things and Elio’s Italian summer villa from Call Me By Your Name, to the octagonal house in Mother! and the London house in Phantom Thread, we were intrigued to find out more. Boryana shares with us the motive and method behind this movie obsession including some behind-the-scenes work in progress.

Stranger Things (Will Byers’ House) film set floor plan and set decoration painted by Floor Plan Croissant. Available to buy as an art print (from $48) from Society6.

Film and Furniture: We have to ask, where did the name Floor Plan Croissant come from?

Floor Plan Croissant: I found out recently that croissant in Latin is a particular stage of the moon. But no, that’s not why I named the project so. The reason has to do with cooking—the morphology of tasty stuff growing in the oven.

Please tell us a little about your background – we are guessing you work in architecture or design?

In 2008 I co-founded an architectural studio in Sofia, Bulgaria, under the name of 11AM together with architect Panayot Savov. We develop small design projects, mostly condo interiors and single family houses. Panayot is a tutor in public buildings at The University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy (UACEG) in Sofia and he brings a solid theoretical backup to every film house explored in Floor Plan Croissant.

The house in Mother! Floor plan painted by Floor Plan Croissant. Available to buy as an art print (from $48) from Society6.

The workings and sketches of the Mother! floor plan (see above) in progress

When and why did you start painting floor plans of famous film sets from movies and TV?

I can’t live without cinema. I watch tons of films all the time but in 2015 the situation became unbearable. Any person can consume film their whole life without stress, unless that is, the person is a creative! When this is the case, films can start to become a burden at some point and that’s what happened to me. I needed to take the load out of me, to throw back. Being an architect, I have turned this emotion into the language of architecture.

What was the first film you painted?

Elena by Andrey Zvyagintsev. Amour by Michael Hanneke immediately followed.

The ground and first floor of the London house in Phantom Thread. Film set floor plan and set decoration details painted by Floor Plan Croissant. Art prints available (from $49) from Society6.

Your painting approach is full of character and sensitivity adding a real individuality to the works. Is there any reason you choose to paint these as loose but careful watercolors rather than say, graphic vector representations?

Watercolor – with its unpredictable flow – fascinates me. The “mini flood” created by this medium (never knowing what direction it might take) always surprises me. Also, when watercolor dries, it slowly forms round hairy splashes. I love how they add to the floorings, walls and furniture of the film house.

But who knows, one day I might jump to pencils, clay, or why not Lego? The hidden grid of the floor plan is what I am hunting, the medium I choose to represent it is second place.

https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/Phantom-Thread.mp4

Do you create these cinematic floor plans by watching the films and TV programs and methodically analyzing how the rooms all come together? Do you speak to the film set designer and production designers to ask for their designs or guidance?

Yes – by watching the films over and over for several days to fit pieces of a puzzle together. These days are absolutely my favorite part of the process: The silence of the blank paper, seconds before I play the film and start scratching with the pencil the living room for example. Then I head to another room, and another room and my thoughts run like that: Ahaa, these two rooms connect through that door!…Oh, this is the painting on the wall I saw in a while ago through the small corridor!… Little by little the secret boxes begin to fit and form a logical home seen from above.

Of course sometimes the boxes don’t fit and this is because production designers use their ‘magic’. I contacted Alexandra Schaller, production designer of Maggie’s Plan to ask how the children’s room fits Maggie’s blue apartment and that’s exactly what she said to me: “Magic!”. And she blinked.

I love to chat with the production designers, I always write to them if I am in trouble with figuring out the floor plan. So far all of them who I’ve contacted have been really kind, supportive and excited about the Floor Plan Croissant project.

La La Land (Mia’s apartment) floor plan painting by Floor Plan Croissant. Available to buy as an art print (from $48) from Society6.

The detail of the set decoration in your work is amazing – even the cushions sitting in Mia’s room in La La Land – are you as interested in the detail as the overview?

Thank you! I am interested in detail when I feel it matters for the film. In La La Land it is all about detail. Objects are constantly surrounding Mia and are telling a story themselves. In the beginning of the film her clothes, her home — the furniture and decoration in it — all shines in bright colors: yellow, red, green, blue.

Little by little, passing through the seasons, Mia moves into the grayish apartment of Sebastian, her sweaters pale, in the end of the story we find her in a calm stylish jazzy black and white. It would have been a crime not to pay attention to detail while painting Mia’s apartment.

https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/Blue-Velvet.mp4

  Another example with important detail in the protagonist’s home is K’s apartment in Blade Runner 2049. I noticed that the room and most of the furniture have their edges or vertexes geometrically trimmed—table, shelves, kitchen cabinets, bed—thus each of them forming a single capsule, just like K isolated himself from his fellow replicants.

Sometimes though, there are film houses where details are transparent to me. The overview is what attracts my attention. For example The Armitages House in film Get Out by Jordan Peele. I immediately zoned the floor plan in my head: Formal area and informal area. In the informal area they cooked meals (the kitchen) and cooked people’s brains (the office).

Film set floor plan of Personal Shopper painted by Floor Plan Croissant. Find prints for sale here.

A third example, my favorite, is an empty house – naked, only walls and holes for doors and windows – a victory of the pure architectural grid over the impermanent decoration. The example I am referring to is the ghost house in Personal Shopper by Olivier Assayas.

I also had doubts about how to illustrate the house in David Patrick Lowery’s A Ghost Story because it had the empty stage as I have described. It attracted me so much, but in the end I decided to paint the house with objects and detail because the furnished house is where the characters of Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara lived together – and their love was all that the film was about, wasn’t it?

Film set floor plan of Clouds of Sils Maria painted by Floor Plan Croissant. Find prints for sale here.

Did you have a dolls house as a child?

I wish I did. But no. Maybe that is the big Freudian truth behind the reason I started this project.

What’s your favorite film and why?

That is a difficult question to answer. I love films which tell stories about duality, doppelgängers, parallel selves, twins and mirrors. I love when directors leave it to my imagination to finish a story. I love to discover hidden gorgeous houses in films – houses which nobody else has noticed. And all of the above are summoned in Deadpool. Kidding! It’s Clouds of Sils Maria by Olivier Assayas.

You can follow Floor Plan Croissant’s wonderful work on Instagram, buy her art prints of floor plans including Mother, Phantom Thread, La La Land and many others in her store at Society6 or follow her process on Patreon.

This article was originally published on Film and Furniture.

The post Architect Boryana Ilieva Creates Mesmerizing Floor Plans From Iconic Film Sets appeared first on Journal.

from Journal https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/stories/mesmerizing-floor-plans-film-sets/ Originally published on ARCHITIZER RSS Feed: https://architizer.com/blog