i was honored to accept the position of Production Designer on the Kendrick Brother's fifth movie, War Room. (i'm back posting this post as confidentiality requires that we keep all details secretive until the movie launches) the Kendricks are some of the most loving people and it was truly a blessing working with them on this film.

i wanted to feature a few of the behind the scenes pics of the set dec// production design, beginning with Mrs. Clara's house. my amazing team and i had a lot of design challenges as we always do on Art Dept. & Mrs. Clara's prayer closet "War Room" was no exception. we had to build it out in a room about the size of a closet, complete with walls that could move easily to allow camera to fit in there. here's the build out right before sweet Kali Bailey was about to paint it and then used these amazing paint rollers to put an "old wallpaper" effect on the wall.

here's the final closet, styled and ready for camera.

the rest of Mrs. Clara's house was a full dress because the owner had the house on the market for about a year (we believed it was saved for us!) and it ended up being sold right when we wrapped shooting there. the dining room was tricky because the home owner requested that we wouldn't do anything permanent or damage the wall paper that was there. our solution, paint pieces of thick paper and roll a pattern over it and tack it to the wall. the aqua was selected because it complements dark skin tones beautifully. the collection of blue and white china came from local flea malls.

i felt like her kitchen would be bright and soulful much like the sun or a cheery yellow. One of my favorite pieces that i purchased at a local flea didn't make the film, but it was there all along and made me smile and likely offered support to Mrs. Clara as she was prepping for her role. I feel like my sets are characters and offer substructure for actors to really get into the part, so i spare no detail. i put it all out there in an effort to make it as real life as possible.

one of the more thoughtful scenes in mrs clara's house was her prayer wall. this was her reminder of answered prayers . instead of fabricating stories and finding stock photos, i reached out to everyone for authentic testimonies of victory. the result : the wall is full of real life, bonafied miracles... one of which is a doctors report which includes, in his handwriting, the confession of the miracle.