The New York Times just posted a slideshow of pictures detailing the conception, design and construction of the hotel seen in Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which begins hitting theaters this Friday, March 7.
The miniature was created for wide shots of the hotel. Anderson told the New York Times, “I’ve always loved miniatures in general… I just like the charm of them.”
He also nails the reason CG effects don’t necessarily create a “real” world atmosphere noting audiences tend to recognize what is artificial, whether in computer-generated effects or otherwise, “The particular brand of artificiality that I like to use is an old-fashioned one.”
Anderson collaborated with production designer Adam Stockhausen to create the look of the hotel, which they came up with “looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots. They also looked through hotel archives and studied the architecture of locales like the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.” The sketch you see in the images below was done by Carl Sprague.
For the background, artist Michael Lenz recreated the paintings of 19th-century landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich, which can be seen in a painting in the hotel’s lobby.
You can check out the full piece right here and I have included the rest of the pictures below.
