The Artisans Who Played Key Roles in Making Sure ‘The Odyssey’ Sailed Smoothly

Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, production designer Ruth De Jong and editor Jennifer Lame are part of the team that helped bring Christopher Nolan’s sprawling adaptation of “The Odyssey” to the big screen.

These talented trio will be honored with the Variety Creative Collaborators Award at the Middleburg Film Festival on Oct. 16.

It was a mammoth task and historic in both its filmmaking process and box office success. The film was the first to be shot entirely on Imax 70mm.

The film was shot over 91 days on 2 million feet of Imax film.

De Jong scouted locations around the world. She found a fifth-century castle in Italy, perched approximately 1,030 feet above sea level, which became Ithaca. She also designed multiple Trojan horses, each standing approximately 35 feet tall. The beaches of Essaouira, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, served as the discovery site of the Trojan horse and the boat launch for Odysseus’s journey back to Ithaca. Troy, by the numbers, was an incredible accomplishment — it covered more than 2.5 acres, or over 110,000 square feet, large enough to accommodate 2,000 extras and more than 60 structures.

It’s an achievement De Jong is proud of. “Designing ‘The Odyssey’ across six countries, managing each country’s art departments simultaneously, all the while traveling with carry-on only,” she says.

However, the film also shot scenes in Los Angeles.

“Shooting specific set builds in Los Angeles for ‘The Odyssey’ meant we had access to our brilliant longtime crews,” De Jong says. “Honestly, any time I am lucky enough to shoot in L.A., working with some of the best crew in the world, I have so much less to worry about and be concerned with as I know they will get it done. They are truly the best of the best.”

She adds, “With a massively ambitious movie like ‘The Odyssey’ — having to manage so many locations, so many sets all over the world — my stress levels absolutely drop knowing I have an L.A. crew on my side.”

Mirojnick had crews all over the world, moving with the production. “Every costume was the most difficult because we first had to deconstruct the mythology — the familiar images we have inherited — before we could create our own world,” the costume designer says. “Odysseus is the centering ground of the film, and his costume had to establish the visual language from which every other character could emerge. Once we understood who Odysseus was, every other costume had to belong to the same world while revealing a distinctly different relationship to power, identity and myth.”

With Nolan shooting so much in-camera, editor Lame found that some scenes came together with ease. Take Circe’s scene when she turns the men into pigs.

“That’s all [practical] special effects,” she says. Actress Samantha Morton, who played Circe, molded the men into pigs using animatronics and other effects.

“It’s all there, so we could just cut it like a drama scene,” Lame added in an interview for the book “Filming ‘The Odyssey’: Inside the Making of Christopher Nolan’s Modern Epic.”

In contrast, the Cyclops scene was a real puzzle, combining a shoot in a Greek cave, soundstage work in Los Angeles, puppetry and actor Bill Irwin’s performance as the one-eyed giant. That was a scene Lame had worked on since she arrived in Greece. Her skill helped create a sequence filled with horror and pathos and was key to building the characters of Odysseus and Eurylochus, and advancing the story.

The Middleburg Film Festival runs Oct. 15-18 in Middleburg, Va.