Ranking the Oscar Nominees: Best Production Design

Beauty and the Beast and Darkest Hour
Production Design: Sarah Greenwood
Set Decoration: Katie Spencer

This duo has collaborated with one another for over 20 years, and to six previous Oscar nominations, including a few Joe Wright productions - Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina -, and once again here work with Wright on his latest, Darkest Hour, where their work focused on establishing a different sense of tone and atmosphere to previous depictions of the time period surrounding Churchill. They also worked together on Beauty and the Beast this year, recreating the animated version's various surroundings into live-action format.

Blade Runner 2049
Production Design: Dennis Gassner
Set Decoration: Alessandra Querzola

This is Gassner's 6th nomination, having had the notable achievement of having two nominations and one win in 1991 for Barton Fink and Bugsy. and also did the production design on Road to Perdition which one of the few aspects of the film I genuinely like. This is Querzola's first nomination, and her most high profile work as a set decorator, though she'd previously worked in the art department for big projects like Skyfall and Age of Ultron.

Dunkirk
Production Design: Nathan Crowley
Set Decoration: Gary Fettis

This is Crowley's fourth nomination, all the previous three having come from Christopher Nolan productions - The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Interstellar - though he's also done acclaimed work on the likes of Public Enemies and the television series of Westworld, and an art director on Braveheart. Fettis is no slouch either, having collaborated with Crowley on Interstellar and frequently working with Clint Eastwood, garnering an Oscar nom for Changeling.

The Shape of Water
Production Design: Paul Denham Austerberry
Set Decoration: Shane Vieau and Jeff Melvin

The first nomination for all three of these individuals, not for lack of a backcatalog of work - Austerberry has worked on the Resident Evil and Twilight saga, Vieau with del Toro on Crimson Peak and Suicide Squad, Melvin on Pompeii and Crimson Peak - but because this is the first time they've worked on something that's Oscar-friendly, for The Shape of Water which in any other year would most certainly not be Oscar-friendly.

Ranking the nominees -

5. Beauty and the Beast 

Not bad work at all, the designers certainly recreated the animated counterparts well enough, the Beast's palace is lavish, the town is very cozy-looking, pretty much everything is good. However, I will say that for the most part there didn't seem like there was much they could do beyond emulating the animated form in real-life, and while I thought it was very good work on the whole, I didn't think it was great.

4. Dunkirk 

While obviously there's not much in the way of real 'sets', the choices of locations to shoot at both on land and at sea are worth praising on their own. Otherwise this is really good minimalist work. I like how it's never show or detracts from the other exceptional technical elements, while setting up scenes perfectly, for example that opening shot on the streets of Dunkirk, to the rescue boats, to most memorably the ships the soldiers find themselves holed up within. The choices made here are never 'showy', but they add to the film in the right way.

3. Darkest Hour 

The overall dusty, dark aesthetic to many of the sets I thought actually worked extremely well (the underground meeting rooms, the Underground, the House of Commons). There's King George's extravagant palace rooms which while perhaps still a bit too stylised for its own good, is much improved over say, The King's Speech in this department (though certainly no The Crown). This is daring work that while it does not necessarily amplify the film at every turn, is a rather excellent part of it when it does work.

2. Blade Runner 2049 

Fantastic work and I have to say from an objective perspective this is probably the 'best' out of the nominees, though not my 'favourite'. The original Blade Runner had stunning production design in every room, landscape, building etc. and that spirit carries on here. Wallace's headquarters are perhaps the highlights, Deckard's Las Vegas hideout is to, and the mor minimalist sets like the underground cellar in San Diego are pretty great as well. The production design strikes the perfect balance between Villeneuve's characteristic visual minimalism and the grandeur of the Blade Runner universe, as all things beautiful and terrible are evoked in the most memorable way possible.

1. The Shape of Water 

Willing to concede that this is perhaps my most subjective pick out of all the technical categories. I absolutely loved every set in The Shape of Water. In terms of the minor aspects, the memorable science-fiction headquarters where the Asset is housed, to Strickland's painfully cheery 'All-American' household, Eliza and Giles' flats which each have such a distinctive character of their own despite being somewhat similar (I particularly love how the use of grey in Eliza's department is both beautiful and depressing). Then there's the downright amazing movie theater set and the musical sound stage, plus just a few other nice touches like the Russian kitchen. A lot of the film is technically quite 'grimy', intentionally so, yet beautiful in its own way from the perspective of Eliza. It is one of the most essential elements to the film's creation, and though it's a close one between these top two I'm going with my very personal preference.