The units of Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie film required such huge quantities of pink paint, they swallowed up one firm’s whole world provide, in response to manufacturing designer Sarah Greenwood.
Talking to Architectural Digest, Gerwig revealed that the staff constructed the film’s fluorescent Barbie Land units virtually fully from scratch on the Warner Bros Studios Leavesden – all the way in which all the way down to the sky, which was hand-painted quite than CGI rendered.
“We have been actually creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land,” she advised the journal. “All the things wanted to be tactile, as a result of toys are, above all, belongings you contact.”
To recreate the virtually monochromatic color palette of Barbie’s Dreamhouses, the set design staff needed to supply a bottomless provide of pink paint to cowl every little thing from lampposts to street indicators.
Particularly, the manufacturing used a extremely saturated shade by US producer Rosco to seize the hyperreality of Barbie Land.
“I wished the pinks to be very brilliant, and every little thing to be virtually an excessive amount of,” Gerwig advised Architectural Digest.
A lot paint was wanted, actually, that Greenwood says the film’s manufacturing induced a worldwide scarcity of that individual hue.
“The world ran out of pink,” she joked.
Rosco later advised the LA Occasions that the corporate’s provide chain had already been disrupted when the film started manufacturing in the beginning of 2022, because of the lingering aftereffects of the coronavirus pandemic and the winter storm that shocked Texas the earlier yr.
“There was this scarcity after which we gave them every little thing we may – I do not know they will declare credit score,” Rosco’s vp of worldwide advertising and marketing Lauren Proud advised the LA Occasions, earlier than conceding that “they did clear us out on paint”.
Since stills for the upcoming film have been first launched a yr in the past, the all-pink hyper-feminine “Barbiecore” aesthetic has infiltrated the design world, with Google searches skyrocketing and the time period accumulating greater than 349 million views on TikTok.
Earlier this yr, Barbie producer Mattel collaborated with Pin-Up journal to launch a monograph on the structure and interiors of Barbie’s Dreamhouse to mark its sixtieth anniversary.
“There have been so many books and whole PhDs on Barbie, however by no means actually on her many homes and her furnishings,” Pin-Up founder Felix Burrichter advised Dezeen.
“So we thought it might be a good suggestion to make one and deal with it as a critical topic, in the identical approach that Barbie has been handled as a critical topic over time.”
The picture is by Mattel.