MovieChat Forums > La migliore offerta (2014) Discussion > question about the sets

question about the sets

posted 9 years ago by ematerso
3 replies | jump to latest

My husband and I watched this last night and enjoyed it very much. I was most disoriented by the setting of the action. Since English was spoken by everybody and an "American" English, yet obviously the setting was not America or even England, so this was the most problematical to me.

My question though has to do with the secret room with all the beautiful portraits of the women, there were so many, probably upwards of 300+, so say Oldman had been a respected and very knowledgable auctioneer for 30 years that would mean he misrepresented about 10+ portraits a year. For a very respected auction house much vetting would have been done of individual works and also most paintings (or other things) come to an auction house with provenance. Occasionally there may be a slip up but this number?
And no one caught on? Also and maybe this is beyond the knowledge of anyone reading these message boards but maybe not to a real film buff. . . How was the effect of all these paintings in this room achieved? Could it have been CGI? Were they a combination of real paintings, copies or prints? Could a copy of each painting and its frame have been scanned in and just placed on a wall, sort of like doing a decorating lay out? I am really curious about this.

[–] RGMedia 9 years ago

The film was predominantly filmed in Italy. Claire's Villa was filmed on location at a place called Villa Mainardis, in Gorizzo, Italy. Since the real Villa is not located at the end of a busy street, or near a café, alot of CGI was used to composite the various environments and buildings together to create the city in which that Virgil lived. For many of those shots, they would use blue screen and then in post, either used matte paintings or CG buildings to bring it all together.

As for the Painting room, it was most likely filmed practically on a sound stage with replicated paintings hanging on the walls. It would be up to the director and set designers as to the method and level of detail of how they created the paintings seen in the room, or if they were able to use authentic paintings for the film, but a props department would be able to replicate authentic paintings and frames.

I do know a few directors that would have filmed the painting room scenes on green screen and then created CGI paintings and the room in post, but Giuseppe's style is very authentic and I think filming it practically was a great choice.

There are a few Behind the Scenes videos online that you can find where you can see some of the camerawork.

[–] Splasharina 9 years ago

As for the locale, my impression was simply "a Continental city." Hidden charms, crumbling beauty, Old World, etc. Exact place doesn't matter.

[–] kingpinmultimedia 9 years ago

In the first auction scene, the auctioneer's podium says "Oldman's" so he had his own auction house. At first I assumed it was in London, but the sale of Galileo's telescope was in Euros, not Pounds, so from that I would guess it was somewhere outside of the UK. I'm a bit confused, though, when you say "American" English was spoken by everyone. Billy was the only one who spoke with an American accent. All of the others were some type of English accent, though they did vary. The one exception was Claire, but I think it's only because the actress who played her is Dutch.

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