It’s the Jet Set Life down in
The Set Department…
Have you got your ticket?
Have you got a ride to the airport?
Bags checked? Flight on time?
Welcome to Pan-American Airways
A Lifestyle Airline
Your guide to life, and your eye for style in the sky!
Let’s meet your flight crew…
Have a seat.You’ll be flying up and out of here soon.
We’d like to welcome you to
Set Department C.W.
A set is our ticket into a different time, a moment in a different age. It gets us the closest we will ever go to places and times that existed before our birth, and the places that will exist long after we are gone. This is another reason C.W. loves the mediums of film and music so much. Say we wanted to know what it was like to go back to the late 18 century? Watch Pride & Prejudice or listen to Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach. Want to know what falling over or what falling in love was like during the great depression? Turn on a Chaplin film, or Blues, or Jazz. What about mob life in New York, 1944? Turn on that Godfather Picture or put on a big band Sinatra record. Interested to know what complications or adventure may arise in the year 2049? How about the Blade Runner sequel? Or Daft Punk? We get it all from a screen, in the comfort of a theater, or in our own homes. Want to know what it could have been like at a sock hop in the 1950’s while interacting with your parents who are the exact same age as you? Flip on Chuck Berry or Back to the Future! In addition, we can feel how the birth of Rock n’ Roll felt by listening to Jerry Lee, or the beginning of Hip-Hop with N.W.A, or how Classical music came to be, in Amadeus. Music and film infuses an experience of what it would be like then and what it could be like when. The mediums help us span different times and places, while we remain in the only time and place where we can actually experience life. This fascinates C.W. and his Studios and we hope we can share that magic with you here in this moment today.
Read more below in your
in-flight magazine…
Designers, Artists, Prop Masters, Master Builders, and Architects are working around the clock to design just what C.W. has in mind. C.W. has a fascination with interior design and architecture, especially those looks and styles of different years in specific decades. His main view of this has been through film, print magazines, photography, and books. Below you’ll find the interior and external design from films and also shots and stills of INT./EXT. design that best conveys his love and interests. We’re going to focus mostly on C.W. favorites when it comes to design and also talk specific films that have sets or shots where he’d like to live forever. We’ll take you through art deco of the 1920 industrial age, to mid-century modern interiors of the 1950 and early 1960’s, and into 1980 and 90’s modern with cold clean edges, sleek decor and an absence of extra detailing. He’ll also throw some country and southwest design in as well to celebrate his air-mile wide country side, and take you into today… where modern chic may be the only thing worth talking about in the contemporary age.
We’ll start specifically with where the design was cool and clean. At a time in American history where it was loud, and messy, and the noise was introducing a decade of great turmoil, change, and birth to a new world. He enjoys the specificity and contrast in what we’ve put together for you and hopes you do as well. Welcome to The Set Department. We take you now to a time in U.S. History when a promising young politician by the name of John F. Kennedy just took office and the future looked as bright as the horizon did.
Watch yourself let go, as you climb on board, and we take you on a plane ride into…
the jet set life.
Look at you go!
Mid-Century Modern
(1950-1965)
Featured clean horizontal lines, bold geometric shapes and patterns, and emphasized space, chrome, gold, and wood. It seems retro now, but it was contemporary then! Films featured above & below: The Hours, Dr. No, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Catch Me if You Can, The Apartment, The Aviator, Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb & Mad(ison Avenue) Men.
Prominent Mid-Century Modern Designers
Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles & Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Isamu Noguchi & Hans Wegner.
How about a drink, a smoke, and a little on-flight programming to settle the nerves...
Let’s take off in another direction shall we?
Now for the competitor…
Trans-World Airlines
As we begin our descent into the next set, the captain has turned the fasten seat-belt sign on. Please return all tray tables and seats to their upright and stored positions. Flight attendants prepare for landing…
Now for more of the St, St, Studio…
1980-Present Modern
These sets of offices, apartments, and homes focus on simplistic and minimalist interiors. Furniture offers smooth lines inspired by architecture of the 1930’s. Color palettes include whites, black, grey, creams, or beiges, but sometimes add splashes of color for unique or subtle effect. Films below include American ones: American Psycho & American Gigolo. Other films include; David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, De Palma’s Body Double & Scarface, and Michael Mann’s Heat & Manhunter.
Art Deco
Inspired by French art and design from the 1920s, Art Deco (short for Arts Decoratifs) is characterized by sleek, metallic finishes like stainless steel, glass, and chrome. Unlike vintage style, which highlights floral patterns, rugs and linens, Art Deco features graphic prints such as zigzags, sunbursts, animal prints and geometric shapes. Furniture and wall art throughout an Art Deco-inspired home are defined by jagged, pointed edges. Pieces are also larger – generously sized chairs, armoires, dressers, and couches are all typical of the 1920s. Light fixtures are just as structured as the decor and furniture. They’re typically made of sleek, shiny materials like polished bronze, chrome or steel. Bold geometric patterns are frequently printed on wall sconces, ceiling mounts, and lamps. Other angular designs like chevron and zigzags adorn light fixtures. Great examples of Art Deco architecture can be found in the historic district in Miami Beach, Florida where this whimsical style is embraced by many small hotels built in the mid-1920s to early 1940s [Curtis 1982]. Films featured below include, Greta Garbo’s The Kiss, Metropolis, Bonfire of the Vanities & The Great Gatsby.
This way please…
Up the steps we go into
Art Deco.
Welcome to C.W.’s
Set De-part-ay!
Where “partay” is our middle name! And sets…. is our first! Are our first? Is our first …Just look at these sets and don’t worry about the grammar of it, alright?
Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film The Great Gastby is a set department dream.
If C.W. had a wish it would be these…
Behind the Sets & Scenes
As the Fireworks begin… the tour guide tells you~
"We now have a special surprise.”
“The host of the set depart-ay wants to say hello. You may know his name, he is the creator of this magical place.”
“I’d like you all to meet the creator of the Studio. ..
Mr. C.W. Stone himself!”
