Although Jamie and his siblings were never on set during production, friends who help look after the property witnessed the build-up and described it as if the filmmakers had “picked up the house, turned it upside down and shaken it”. But at the end of the shoot, everything fell back into place.
Production designer Kevin Thompson was part of that careful resurgence, as he searched for the best way to represent the central characters’ tastes as they manifest in their living space. Research is part of the process of any production designer and the opportunity to be at home, never mind shoot there, was an incomparable way to understand the two themes of the film. “The house hadn’t changed much in terms of architecture or wall coverings and things like that, so we were able to see the layers of things that Felicia had done in the house,” explains Thompson. “We were also able to go into the intimate aspect of the family photos, Felicia’s paintings on the walls, the subjects she painted, the things in the junk drawer, and there were still traces of them almost everywhere.”
