PRODUCTION DESIGNER NAOMI SHOHAN (Part 2)
Creating a City within a City

A crucial piece of Shohan’s design for the underground lab was the Merlin Circle with its seven domains—Space Time, Motion, Matter, Elements, Transformation, Mind and, most importantly, in the center, Gold/Love—which Balthazar conjures up from the cobblestoned floor of the lab. Shohan and her team did considerable research, even consulting a genuine Wiccan to figure out the symbols.

“One of the coolest sets in the movie is the Arcana Cabana,” says director Jon Turteltaub, “which is a store of antiquities, obscurities, oddities and all the things that Balthazar’s collected over his millennia of existence. In our heads, it was sort of like the Staples of sorcery, so that when a guy needs a special ring, some special dust and the eye of a newt, he goes to the Arcana Cabana.”

“The iron architecture of late 19th and early 20th century is some of the most beautiful in New York,” says Shohan. “I thought that it was the kind of space you would want for the Arcana Cabana.”

The glorious interior of the Arcana Cabana features staunch cast-iron beams, an old elevator, a skylight faded with the patina of age and no fewer than half a million assorted objects of escalating weirdness, including old books, tribal masks, lamps, a prosthetic leg, disembodied dolls’ heads, shrunken heads, musical instruments, hat and shoe boxes, medicine bottles, skeletons, a unicorn skull, musical instruments, statues, old magician posters, paintings, clocks, old framed photos and even a sorcerer’s hat which looks just like something once worn by a famous mouse. A Merlin Circle greets customers of the Arcana Cabana on the floor just before the main entrance, a sign that more mysteries lie within.

Shohan designed the penthouse lair of Toby Kebbell’s character, illusionist/Morganian/egoist Drake Stone, with proper inspiration. “We were shooting in Chinatown, in the freezing cold next to boxes of smelly fish,” she recalls, “when in walked Toby in costume, hair and makeup as Drake Stone for Jerry Bruckheimer and Jon Turteltaub’s approval. It was just the most delightful vision. Toby plays a wonderful buffoon, taking his narcissism to the extreme. We came up with an over-the-top expression of glorious male pomposity.”

Drake Stone’s domicile sports creamy walls, overly lavish furniture, a huge fireplace with a bust of Drake Stone himself, mounted samurai armor, grandiose paintings (with Drake Stone as the centerpiece), posters of past shows starring the illusionist and expensive chandeliers. In Stone’s study, there are artifacts of illusionists past, including Harry Houdini’s famous water chamber, as well as a full-size guillotine and iron maiden, dummy heads and various Drake Stone consumer products—activity books, breakfast cereal boxes, skateboards, a video game.

Shohan also utilized some non-studio structures in New York for her brilliant sets. She transformed the Great Hall of the majestic 1919 Cunard Building into Calcutta, circa 1847. Her dusty 19th-century Indian marketplace was replete with greenery, thatched market stalls selling baskets, spices, fabrics, fruit, birds, with bamboo scaffolding and colorful saris drying on clotheslines. Filmmakers added a monkey, goats and a magnificent, purebred 17-year-old Brahma bull named Bandit, plus nearly 200 extras for the scene.

The Encantus, the magical book of spells which Balthazar Blake gives to his apprentice, Dave Stutler, is a masterpiece of both design and execution, and a wonderful example of the meticulous artistry of behind-the-scenes movie talent. “In my view, it’s a book not only of spells, but an entire history of humankind’s attempt to dictate natural phenomenon,” says Shohan. “The idea was to cover a smattering of many cultures and do it chronologically.”

Each of the 1500 pages were hand-aged and hand-painted to ensure authenticity. The main version weighed in at 75 pounds—not the kind of book you want to drop on your foot—but a 10-pound duplicate was created for scenes in which the book is closed, as well as a waterproofed floating version for the “Fantasia” sequence.