American New Wave 25: Laura Fox

Whether it’s the depleted Americana represented in the chesterfield brown bungalow that the title character from Hesher decides to make his temporary shelter, or the knowledge of what makes for a cubicle layout of an office space easily filmable in (500) Days of Summer, it takes an architecturally sound understanding, a strong know how for the aesthetic described on the pages of a script to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character’s dwellings into life size representations of the world he inhibits. Production Designer Laura Fox has now made a place for herself in what I could call the medium to high-end budgeted sized indie projects.

Fox’s most recent work will be seen via television’s Lonestar this fall, and in Dustin Lance Black’s What’s Wrong with Virginia due out sometime this festival season. When not working on film sets, Fox impressive resume includes some gnarly work on commercials and music videos – most recently being nominated for Best Art Direction in a Video MTV Music Video Awards for this video. Under her direction, we find frequent collaborators in Set Decorator Jennifer Lukehart and Art Directior Charles Varga. So the next time you notice romance flourishing between the aisles in film land, tell yourself it took someone to add physical barriers to the emotional ones.