A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, follows the rise of the iconic Bob Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet, as a young musician. The film captures his move to New York in 1961 up to his 1965 Newport Folk Festival and his transition to electric guitar.
Mangold has directed in this period before, as Ford v Ferrari was mostly set in the same era. He chose this window because of the amount of change happening within the culture and because it stamped the start of the post-war generation. “We have enough distance from this period to see it for what it is,” he says.
Mangold called on his go-to artisan production designer François Audouy, costume designer Arianne Phillips, hair department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh, and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael to build that world.
The landscape change over the decades created a challenge for Audouy, “I wanted to capture what it felt like to walk down Greenwich Village,” he says. In particular, MacDougal Street. Audouy designated Jersey City as the production home, with him recreating the city blocks, clubs, bars, and coffee shops.
Dylan’s story was divided into three main beats: 1961-62, 1963-64, and 1965. Those beats became the throughline across all departments.
Makeup department head Stacey Panepinto took a “less is more” approach to address the three different periods. Through research, Panepinto noticed how Dylan’s face had changed over the years. As for Dylan’s hair, MacIntosh had to work with Chalamet to figure out what would work best for the respective period. MacIntosh observed that Dylan’s hair never looked the same in his photos.
“I felt there was room to move because he doesn’t need to have the same hair in every single scene because it was its own beast.”
Phillips created 67 costume changes for Chalamet, with denim as the essential thread for Dylan’s wardrobe evolution. Phillips worked with Levi’s before and contacted them to help her identify the denim Dylan was seen wearing.
She also leaned into his black leather jacket look. “The denim, the boots, and the hair was really the thread, the throughline of what you see today with Bob,” says Phillips.
Papamichael wanted to emulate the street photography of that era, so he created texture charts and looked at the meaning of each scene. “We do that by a combination of creating the world, but also, more importantly, having the close-ups and the interactions between the characters.”
Leave a Comment