King Speech Production Design

Between our 2 days of production, while I was having a day-off, I had the opportunity of watching the movie The King's Speech, and decided to write an article about it.

I chose a particular scene to fill my argument:

Colin Firth makes his way down an opulent and very long room, its ceiling elaborately studded with gold mouldings, its panelled walls oppressively gilt-sprigged, garlanded, swagged and punctuated by Louis XIV-style cherubs. Firth is playing George VI on his way to make his first wartime broadcast and the room is in Buckingham Palace.

This room also has extraordinary walls, decorated in distressed browns and oranges like an exotic damaged fresco, if in autumnal colours.

The consulting room is a method set, the few props are all there for a reason: model aeroplanes to signal the warmth of his life with his sons; a photograph of himself playing Othello in an amateur production , some games he might have used to teach children with speech impediments, which Amy Merry researched at the Institute for the Deaf.

This scene, and in particularly this room, has been of the arguments that The King Speech could take forward to claim the production design oscar, which was handled to Eve Stewart for her phenomenal work. This goes along with the wall scene, which is another marvelous scene from a production design point of view.

This room scene gets forward the story with the King's disease, and to whomever haven't watched the movie and is only able to see that scene, can understand the real struggle of the king, with his speech.