Tina Kakadelis
The production designer of a film is responsible for filling out the sets. While a location scout and a director may find where the film is going to shoot, someone has to come in and make these empty places feel lived in and real. In the case of the Elizabeth Banks-led Skincare, that person is Liz Toonkel. She was partially responsible for transporting audiences back to 2013 where this twisty, beauty industry thriller takes place in the image-obsessed city of Los Angeles.
Toonkel recently spoke with Film Obsessive’s Tina Kakadelis to discuss how she got into the world of production design, how her skills as a magician influences her design work, and, most importantly, her skincare routine.
Film Obsessive: Hey, Liz! Thank you for chatting with me today. I wanted to start with how you got involved in production design.
Liz Toonkel: I kind of grew up always in the arts. I did a lot of performing as a kid. A lot of dance and musical theater. I would make a lot of home movies with my friend’s dad’s video camera. I was always really interested in being a filmmaker. I went to film school at NYU and while I was there, I made my own films, but I also realized that I was really passionate about creating the world of film.
I started working on peers’ projects, and when I got out of school, especially then, which was like quite a long time ago now, it really felt like there was no path to being a female director. People would kind of just look at you and be like, oh, okay, that’s not going to happen. So I was like, okay, well, until that might be a real possibility for me, let me really pursue this production design thing. I was still living in New York City then, so I got jobs in art departments as a P.A.. It was kind of interesting because when I graduated film school was when there was the writers strike in 2007 to 2008. I was mostly working on reality shows and stuff in New York because there was no narrative work really happening. I feel like the industry changed a lot, so it was a really odd moment to come into it.
From there, I decided that if I was going to really pursue being a production designer, that I should probably go back to school and learn more about it. I went to CalArts and continued to make my own work there. I got two degrees at one time in studio art and scenic design. I learned a lot about all the things that go into being a designer, which is actually a pretty complex job.
Since then, I’ve just been working my way up doing that. I think I was really fortunate in the fact that because I had gone to NYU, I had a lot of peers that then needed a designer. I had some inroads with some really cool, interesting people who made some exciting things.
I was on your website before this interview and I saw that you’re a magician as well. You have a whole one-woman magic show that’s doing incredibly well. How does your work as both a magician and as a production designer influence the other?
I was making a lot of my own films and then that sort of snowballed into me making a lot of my own solo performance work. When I started doing that, a lot of the things that I was kind of doing without even realizing it were sort of like trying to do magic. What I’ve found is that magic is basically like design and performance combined.
As I was making this solo performance, I was like, I kind of want to learn magic. I just want to pivot and be a magician and make a magic show. I think that learning magic has really improved both my performance practice and my design practice because it’s just another way of thinking that is really helpful. On every project I’ve done since, there’s something where I’ve used some sort of trick from my tool box.
My design skill set has really lent itself to my magic because all magicians are sort of using the same sleights and ideas, but it’s what you bring to it that makes a difference. I have designed my own props and new elements. That skill set has really helped me make my magic even more personal to me. I feel like I can communicate better through it with my design skills.
You mentioned that now that you’ve learned magic, it’s coming to all your projects. What trick did you bring to Skincare?
Oh, that’s a good question. This might take me a minute to find a good example. I feel like good design, being a production designer, is really just being a creative problem solver. The more ways you can kind look at things differently and be like, okay, there’s no wall here, but I can put up a piece of foam core and make it look like a wall. Things like that. I think my kind of magic mindset allows me to do that even more.
Skincare takes place in 2013 and, unfortunately, that was somehow ten years ago, which means it could be considered a period piece. Did you find the 2013 setting to be a little difficult or under a little more scrutiny than a period piece from the 1500s would be?
Yeah, it was more difficult than I thought at the outset. When you do something from the 1500s, you can find a lot in the library and there’s a lot of research there about what things looked like and what was happening. I think 2013 was a really interesting moment before everything was archived online. I think because I’ve been working a lot on pretty contemporary films, I’m used to being able to just pull a lot of images of what people’s homes look like now. When I started researching this, I went to the Glamour magazine archive and it stopped at a certain date with nothing from 2013. So I ordered a lot of magazines from the era from eBay of the early-aughts through like 2014 and I used that as my resource.
I also looked at a lot of reality television because there’s a lot of characters from Southern California that are sort of similar to characters in Skincare. It was more challenging than I expected, but I think it also speaks to the movie. The film is sort of talking about this moment in time when things, especially the beauty industry, were really shifting. It kind of felt in line with the piece that it was challenging to find online, you know?
Yeah, definitely. On your website, you also say that theme parks are a love of yours. And as a theme park employee…
Where do you work?
Disney World. I went to college down in Florida.
Did you do the Disney College Program?
That’s how I started. Then I transferred to the University of Central Florida and finished my degree down there and worked at Disney World on the weekends.
Oh my God, where did you work?
I started in Magic Kingdom. I worked at, I forget what it was called, but I worked in Adventureland, Frontierland, and Liberty Square in food and beverage. When they changed the Fastpass system from paper to digital, I was on that team. My last job was at the Festival of the Lion King show. I was one of the ushers.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yes, I’m a huge theme park fan. I mean, there’s lots of problems with theme parks.
LA kind of feels like a theme park and Skincare does a really good job of showing the glamorous side of LA, but then also parts of LA that are terrible. People don’t realize that both sides exist in Los Angeles. I was curious how you create that duality on the screen and how you show the fakeness of the city through the production design, because I think it relates to theme parks a lot in that way.
You know, my partner worked on this documentary that Abigail Disney made called The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales. I think that documentary does a really good job of showing that schism between the two. It’s really hard as somebody who loves going to theme parks understanding the ways that they’re really taking advantage of the people that work there and also the guests even more these days.
And the environment.
Oh, yeah. That was the third thing I was going to say. I could talk to you for hours about that. I think what I love about them is I love this feeling of being transported somewhere else. I find it really freeing and a beautiful experience. I think movies can do that too. That’s why I’m attracted to being a production designer. For Skincare, I think, like you were saying, I think we were really interested in that disconnect. I’ve lived in Los Angeles now for 14 years, and I feel like the way that it’s depicted on screen really doesn’t line up with what it’s actually like. Even when people come here to visit, they’re always just like, what is this place like? It’s so ugly and dirty and everything’s gray and brown. It’s just so different from how the media and our culture regard it.
I was really interested in Skincare and how to show this glamorous, aspirational world that Hope was part of and wanted to continue to be a part of and the reality of what it’s like here. I also think in Los Angeles and in Skincare, everybody is kind of striving for something and on this quest. I mean, not everybody, but many people come here looking for success, power, and fame. In the movie, it was important to show the audience the different steps of that process and how different their experiences of the city kind of are, but also that they’re all in the same city.
I did this movie, Emily the Criminal, that Austin Peters, Skincare director, had seen. Austin and I had already worked together on a couple small things, but then he saw that and he was like, I really want you to work on Skincare with me because I loved your work. He’s a lifelong Angelino, so I felt very proud that he thought I could represent his city. I think he was really struck by the way we show Los Angeles in Emily the Criminal because the goal was similar to Skincare, but different. Both movies show the real side of the city. With Skincare, there’s that aspect, but there’s also this heightened beauty, glamorous, Hollywood side.
Emily the Criminal is great. I saw that you’d worked on that and I was thrilled to get to talk to you.
Oh, yeah? That was a really special project.
I talked to Austin a couple months ago when the film was first coming out and I ended the interview asking him this question, so I want to ask you the same one. Did working on the movie change your skincare routine? He said absolutely.
Actually, it didn’t change mine at all because I’ve already been pretty into skincare. I’ve been kind of obsessed with taking care of my skin for…I don’t know how many years, but a long time now. I personally don’t really want to get fillers and Botox, but I still want to be youthful. So I’ve tried everything. I already was someone who went to see my facialist on the dot, every six weeks.
When this project came my way, I was like, I know exactly what this place looks like. I know what the steps are. I learned stuff about what my facialist is doing, but I think I already had a pretty hardcore routine.
Thank you so much. This is really great!
It’s really nice to meet you. Thanks for chatting with me!
