A behind the scenes shot from the set of Puma "Lift".

James Chinlund, production designer for Darren Aronosfky's Requiem for a Dream and Spike Lee's 25th Hour among others, spoke to Boards about the technical and creative challenges of droga5, New York and Rupert Sanders' stunning new Puma spot "Lift".

Puma's clearly highly theatrical - what was your experience coming into this?

I have done some installation/site specific art work before and it was super fun to be back in that mode, lots of experimentation and on the fly problem solving. I've been a production designer for the last 12 years, I work in film, commercials and fashion. I've been working with Rupert for the last five years or so. I trained as a fine artist, mostly large scale light sculpture.

What was the inspiration for the concept, your set and the projections?

We felt like it was important that it feel at all times like these people were doing this themselves, in their own space. When you watched it that you felt like you were seeing a performance that was happening in real time. We thought of them as a team of young artists making a piece with almost no money, you should be able to feel the "edges". The projections weren't mapped perfectly, there were shadows and spill-off.

Where does the footage that comprises the projections come from? Who shot it and where?

We shot all of the footage over a couple of days a month before the shoot. Rupert Sanders and Chris Soos (DP on the shoot) shot it all on DV.

How long did it take to make the set?

We built the set in a week, installed it in a day and rehearsed on it for four days.

Can you explain to me how you created the set and the requirements for that?

I worked very closely with Todd Marks, the projection technician, to make sure we were building a set that would work for him as well as telling our story. There was a tremendous amount of compromise between achieving optimal projection environment and creating a space that felt real.

What was the biggest challenge in doing this?

Finding space within all of the beams to place the actors without spilling images onto them was super tough. There was almost no light free real estate in the space. See the beam traffic rendering (below).

A CAD render showing the beam traffic and early set design.

A watchful projection.

An early shot projects test images onto surfaces from all angles.