Pan's Labyrinth

I think the most amazing part of the film Pan’s Labyrinth was the overall design. This includes set design, costume design, and props. The set designer (Carlos Gimenez), the costume designers, and the prop builders (Hector Gil and Patricia Cuevas) made a spectacular team at blending all of their elements together. But what I found interesting was that the director, , created a lot of the original sketches for the set, costumes, and props.

Every set in the movie is built, no real buildings are used. One scene where this is significant is when the landscape of the princess’s land from the fairy tale in the beginning was filmed. According to the director of the film, Del Toro, they wanted it to look like a fantasy story as much as possible, and escape from real life “boring” construction. Del Toro further explains that, “we wanted to create a world where the fantasy and reality were equally designed to mirror each other”. Another reason why both Ofelia’s real world and fantasy world were built sets and not real was so that the makers of the film could create parallels of the worlds. For example, the hall behind the chalked door in her room was similar to the dining hall of her stepfather’s. As Del Toro says, this is all to symbolize that Ofelia’s fantasy world helps her make sense and cope with the terrifying, grim real world she lives in.

According to the special features disc of Pan’s Labyrinth, both the faun and the monster in the dining hall were played by actor in costumes. The faun’s costume, as opposed to a one piece suit, like most costumes of that nature, was devised of several pieces to fit on the actor.

One example of how well made the props were was the magical root that Ofelia placed under her mothers bed for the health and well being of her and her child to be born. It was physically made by the prop creators. It seemed alive, as it was supposed to. This added to the film’s ability to capture the viewer’s mind into its world.