If there’s a trade in the entertainment business that has literally been everywhere and done everything, it is Production Design. You probably know some of the greats. But Peter Lamont, Arthur Max, Rock Carter, Sir Ken Adams, and their colleagues do more than build sets…they build worlds. And there’s more to it than putting up walls and laying floors. There’s location scouting, building/buying and decorating, working with budgets, and scheduling everything in the prodcution to make magic just in time for the cameras to start rolling. Over the years you get good by listening, being an active contributor, and keeping lessons learned close to heart.
But every now and then, the job can also be about managing egos of certain creatives. If Bruce Lee’s mantra is about flowing like water then production designers need to, like a duck, allow water to roll off their backs. The best of the best know how to keep their cool, and their ability to deliver means they are on the first call sheet. So enter Derek R. Hill whose proficiency for all of the above and then some – on films by Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Antoine Fuqua and Kevin Costner to name but a few – has made him a living legend. Some of his more exciting and jaw-dropping efforts have been in films where location scouting played a huge role in the story, such as the Horizon series.
We had a super long and super fun conversation with Derek; when I tell you the man is full of stories, that is not an exaggeration. He didn’t originally set out on this journey (having received his degree in economics and management), so you can imagine his surprise when, years later, he found himself running the production for the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. While he credits his team throughout our session, Derek’s work and reputation extends far beyond the limits of the small or big screen. And regardless of the project, frequent collaborators and the biggest names in the industry look to him for input and guidance. Simply put, Hill is respected in the business. He calls himself the “common man” but his efforts are near Herculean. Hill juggles chainsaws and makes things look good. He’s even got Hugh Laurie’s cane framed in his media room if that tells you anything.
Derek has been the driving force behind the scenes of Community, House M.D., Tom Clancy’s: Jack Ryan, he’s crafted impeccable recreations of historic locations for Born on the Fourth of July and JFK. He’s also lead teams to produce large-scale set pieces in action flicks like Olympus Has Fallen. There’s almost too many films to name, and countless more considering his art director and set decorator credits. Beyond that, there have been completely different productions happening concurrently so, again, that duck analogy is quite fitting. One of Derek’s most exciting projects to date is the recent production, Mr. Irrelevant which was an American football story filmed in Australia of all places. But we’ll let Mr. Hill tell you about all that and more.
Dim the lights and get ready for a super fun chat with Derek about his career on this episode of The GoSeeTalk Podcast Experience!
