‘Banshees,’ ‘Empire of Light’ Production Designer Mark Tildesley on Creating Uniquely Cinematic Worlds

Celebrated, Emmy-winning production designer Mark Tildesley (London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony: Isle of Wonder; Netflix’s The Two Popes) boasts two major awards-contending designs in 2022. First up, his sparse, period authentic designs for Martin McDonagh’s award-winning film The Banshees of Inisherin firmly on the fictional island of Inisherin. There, he battled the elements of the windy Irish islands to restore and, in many cases, fully recreate buildings of the 1920s.

The island of Inishmore proved to be the first scouting location for the Banshees team of McDonagh, Tildesley, and cinematographer Ben Davis. The island’s severe landscape with high stone walls built to prevent erosion proved visually irresistible. It provided the ideal location to house Colin Farrell’s Pádraic and his sister, Siobhán (Kerry Condon). As Tildesley remarked, it felt appropriate to construct his house to seem as if it were rooted directly into the island’s bedrock.

Yet, searches for period-authentic buildings proved fruitless as many were either demolished or were in less than ideal locations.

“In the end, we found these extraordinary spots and just decided that we had to build them. In many ways, the interiors of those worlds are really simple. They’re long houses, you know, they people were just added bits to them,” Tildesley shared. “They’re quite small, and that’s part of their world. These people are locked in these little spaces. Siobhán is desperate to leave that space and find a bigger world as his Colm [Brendan Gleeson]. He’s also thinking he needs to broaden his horizons or not spend so much time with boring Pádraic talking about donkeys.”

Other constructed buildings included Colm’s home as well as major sets within Inisherin’s primary village. Tildesley and team built most sets in ideal locations that would take full advantage of the stunning Irish landscape. The bar that Colm and Pádraic frequent was actually set on a different island — Achill Island. There, the intensely strong winds and driving rain posed a challenge for the production team to erect seemingly thin walls that would withstand the elements.

Fortunately, you can’t see the dozens of concrete blocks hidden inside the walls to essentially weigh down the set.

“As soon as Martin and the actors turned up, it was absolutely stunning rainbows, sunshine, beautiful weather. Couldn’t find the rain when we wanted it, and we had a really pleasant few weeks,” Tildesley laughed. “He said, ‘What are you complaining about? What’s your problem? It’s beautiful.’ I told them they should have come three weeks ago when we were trying to hold everything down.”

Colm’s home, set on a picturesque bay, was an actual fisherman’s cottage. The ideal views seemed perfect for the artistic dreamer that is Colm. Look inside his house, and you’ll find relics placed around the room that subtly give us an idea of Colm’s history. Tildesley describes McDonagh as not one for extensive backstories, but knowing a broader perspective of a character’s life often infers much of the design work, making life easier for production and set designers.

One of the first items placed in the room was the gramophone paired with records of the period. That seemed to fit the production team’s idea of Colm as a great musician, lending the idea that Colm received and traded items with people across the world. With that background in mind, the team populated the space with Japanese masks, unusual statues, and other items not tethered to the Irish culture. Their design, however, did need to be reigned in somewhat as it started to encroach upon McDonagh’s edict that the film should push a variety of bright colors, avoiding a black and white feeling with the film.

“When we got to it, we’d gone a little bit far originally with Colm’s house. It was a bit dark. It was a bit foreboding, and it sort of told the story before you got there, something weird was going to happen. So we decided with Brendan Gleeson and Martin just to pare it back a little bit. We left a couple of the devil masks in and the Japanese mask and stuff just to give just a tiny sense of airiness, an unease or certainly to make you ask questions about him as a human being, where he’s from or where it’s going.”

Aside from Banshees of Inisherin behind him, Tildesley’s other 2022 designs flash forward to an English coastal movie palace in 1980 with Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light. For this gorgeous film, Tildesley needed to find a theater that would serve as its centerpiece. He needed to find or recreate a theater that would inspire passion for its central characters whose lives seem to revolve around their interactions within the Empire cinema.

Of course, classic movie houses no longer exist in the fully modernized seaside town of Brighton.

Fortunately, Tildesley and crew were pointed to the town of Margate in the southeast coast of the United Kingdom. There, they uncovered an old amusement park and art deco cinema called Dreamland. When they arrived, the derelict theater proved to be a great starting point from which Tildesley and his team could construct what would become the Empire cinema.

“It was a great starting point. What we ended up doing was taking on the exterior of that cinema and rebranding it,” Tildesley explained. “We had to build our own version of doors and the frontage and all the lights and calling it the Empire and bring it back to life, which was an amazing experience.”

The old Dreamland cinema also included an upstairs ballroom, prominently featured in the film as an escape location for Hilary (Olivia Colman) and Stephen (Micheal Ward). Formerly a Chinese restaurant, the ballroom needed to be restored to a specific era that would reflect the history of the film. Tildesley’s team built and installed new chandeliers and a dance floor, installed banquets, and restored mirrors on the wall. They restored to the space the sense of a grand ballroom that once housed glorious events that were now long gone.

To Tildesley, restoring the cinema and ballroom perfectly echoed the theme of Mendes’ film.

“I think this story, when you get into it, is a story about recovery. It’s about hope. It’s about people healing each other,” Tildesley remarked. “This old cinema that was crumbling really was a great gift for us.”

Given that the Dreamland cinema’s interiors were largely too far gone and asbestos-filled to restore, Tildesley and team constructed the theater’s interior in a nearby vacant lot. They filled the space with doors that matched the theater’s architecture and style as well as the concessions stand filled with brightly lit, authentically designed candy boxes, theater manager Ellis’ (Colin Firth) office, and the massive staircases leading up into the actual theaters. The team also built the projection room in a nearby airport with all locations within five minutes distance from each other.

That allowed Mendes to film his script in a linear manner, something he thought would be critical to the success of the film.

“We were literally five minutes from everywhere because Sam wanted to shoot in order so he could allow the actors to work through that mental illness and their relationship in proper order. We built we built everything in Margate literally. It was a brilliant honor to make a film this way.”

Hilary’s apartment set proved not only a key descriptor of her own crumbling personality, but it helped Mendes himself deal with images and events from his past that inferred the script. Within the constructed set, Tildesley found that Mendes would want to bring in small touches that reminded him of his own mother who, like Hilary in the film, struggled with mental illness.

Tildesley believed that designing a space to reflect deteriorating mental capacity would often make the space look messy. However, Mendes shared one example of his mother’s own erratic behavior that ended up in the finished product. She would often decide to paint things in wildly different colors, so furniture in Hilary’s flat would boast a perfect color and an alternately clashing color. Mendes’ mother also wrote phrases on the wall, so Tildesley gave him free rein to inscribe phrases specific to her life there in the room. Another Mendes-specific touch was the bottles of semi-filled milk turned upside down, milk slowly leaking out on the table and simultaneously trapped in the bottle.

“[Mendes] evolved that with us on a personal journey, which was really helpful because it is so difficult as a designer to try and be inside that mind. Often, you can’t do that necessarily with the actors because you just don’t have the access and time. They have to arrive and believe it, which is tricky sometimes.”

The Banshees of Inisherin is now streaming on HBO Max and other digital retailers. Empire of Light is now playing exclusively in theaters.