Wes Anderson Divulges How He Put Together Desert Town In ‘Asteroid City’

Video screenshot via Kodak

Wes Anderson can make anyplace on Earth look like Mars, as proven in his latest film, Asteroid City.

In a video released by Kodak (via Laughing Squid), the renowned director breaks down how he created the barren, titular American desert town. As it turns out, filming didn’t take place in America but in Chinchón, Spain. Asteroid City centers around a dry and arid fictional town, which doesn’t have many visitors except for when it hosts its annual Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention.

While the initial idea was to find the perfect location (it had to be “very, very flat and open,” says Anderson) and fill it with fake rocks, the production crew determined it was best to stage it themselves as it “needed to have a certain mystery.”

“Ultimately, the more time we spent looking at images of different places, the more I started to feel like I wanted a bit of each [location],” the filmmaker recounts.

According to Anderson, one of the best parts about manufacturing the set themselves was that “we could work with a very small group.”

“Once it was built, we could be a tiny group in… what seemed like an abandoned town. We could golf cart ourselves to the set every day and back home… just the way I like to work,” he details. “Which is the actors come to the set, ready to shoot [and] already in costume. And there’s no trailers and there’s no trucks anywhere that you can see them.”

He also expresses delight in being able to work in a setting similar to that of a “student film.”

“We were [like] a student film on an enormous giant set, in the middle of Spain,” adds Anderson.

You can watch the making-of video, captured on Kodak 35mm film, below.

[via Laughing Squid and Kodak, video and cover image via Kodak]