Overcoming Production Design Obstacles in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”

Get ready to be transported to the Wild West with the Coen Brothers’ new Netflix western anthology, featuring six short, provocative vignettes that explore the struggles of living out West. With a theme that the Coen Brothers are very familiar with – death – this project is one of their most ambitious to date. But how do you create six unique, realistic sets for the same western film? Production designer Jess Gonchor has the answers.

As westerns are such a unique form, they require a very acute sense of detail to really immerse the viewer. Pulling it off takes a load of planning – and a very thorough production designer. Gonchor, who has worked on quite a few of the Coen Brother’s films, approaches his job as an art form. No Film School recently spoke with him about his work on Buster Scruggs and his experience working with the most prolific directing duo in the industry today.

Gonchor has long been the Coens go-to production designer, so he’s got a feel for how the duo operates during pre-production and on set. He believes that sticking to the original plan is always the best approach. “If you’re going to shoot a western and you have a specific thing in mind, yes, it could change a little bit, but you know it’s a western. You know it’s in a town. You know there’s ten buildings. You know somebody’s going to walk out of the bar, somebody’s going to get shot. They don’t all of a sudden try to make it into something else after we’re far down the line. I think that’s what makes them really unique.”

Designing six different sets for one film is a monumental task. So what’s the best way to consolidate all of your ideas? Usually, Gonchor uses a series of giant bulletin boards that organize his sketches and mock-ups, but for a set design as detailed as a western town, he had to go 3D. This included using 3D modeling, building foam core models, and even designing entire miniature sets to get a 360° view of the set before they set out to build the full-sized one.

As you can see, the design of the set can influence the look and feel of the entire film, and it’s hard to compete with Jess Gonchor’s ability to do so for the Coen Brothers. You can see his latest work come to life in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, currently on Netflix.