When you think of the Emerald City, you probably envision a yellow brick road, while the “We’re Off to See the Wizard” refrain plays in your head. You wouldn’t equate the capital city of Oz with the real capital city of Alberta.
That is, unless you are Todd Cherniawsky, supervising art director of the Disney production, Oz: The Great and Powerful, scheduled to come to theatres next month. The Hollywood art director, who grew up on an acreage outside of Ardrossan, spent about three weeks planning the Emerald City’s streetscape for the film, and helped with the designs, which took over two years along with four dozen artists.
“It’s not overt, but in a bizarre way, the set is like an elegant, romanticized version of Edmonton. A river like the North Saskatchewan even winds through the town. And the curving streets with … cul-de-sacs and parks are reminiscent of Glenora,” says Cherniawsky, whose art direction and production design work is featured in many films including Armageddon, Hulk, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, War of the Worlds and two Oscar-winners (in the field of art direction, among others): Avatar and Alice in Wonderland.
While people likely won’t recognize the subtle similarities between the two cities, Cherniawsky says no matter how surreal the world, he always tries to ground some aspect of his designs in fact. “Even if you have a ridiculous monster running around, the director might want the medicine right, the science right,” he says. So, it makes sense that he had a real city in his home province in mind when he designed the fictional one.
Right out of high school, Cherniawsky thought architecture would be in his future; he just didn’t envision that it would be in the form of designing a fictional city for a Hollywoodfilm. But after graduating from NAIT with an honours diploma in architecture in 1988, he wanted to combine his love for designing with his passion for art, so he completed a BFA in industrial design at the University of Alberta, where he was introduced to the use of art in film by several professors.