Interview with Godzilla: King of Monsters production designer Scott Chambliss

Scott Chambliss, the lead of the creature redesign team for Godzilla: King of Monsters, chatted with Hidden Remote about the monster creation.

In just a few short weeks the highly-anticipated sequel to 2014’s Godzilla will make its box office debut. Godzilla: King of Monsters will bring out the major league monsters of the Godzilla franchise including Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah.

This movie will also serve as the third entry in Legendary Pictures monster-verse. Scott Chambliss, a legend in his own right, having worked on films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Trek, chatted with us about his creative process in aiding with the monster redesign on this film.

Hidden Remote: I feel like the scale for Godzilla: King of Monsters is so much bigger than the first Godzilla due to the inclusion of these other legendary monsters. Was that daunting for you?

Scott Chambliss: No, that’s the reason I took it on. I mean, what a task, it was very exciting.

HR: I noticed you tend to take on more fantastical films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, and now Godzilla. What draws you to those as opposed to more grounded films?

SC: It’s funny because when I first started in the sci-fi genre, with J.J. Abrams on Star Trek (2009), that was the first science fiction movie I had ever done. I wasn’t a fan, specifically, of sci-fi growing up. I saw a bunch of the movies but I would never call myself a sci-fi guy. I had a cram session basically, to get fully-versed in what the science fiction film world has been over the years.

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The Star Trek job opened doors for me creatively because of the film’s success. Suddenly, Hollywood started seeing me specifically in that genre. It allowed me to develop something that became fascinating to me. When you look at my resume and see one after the other, it’s proof that once Hollywood puts you in a groove, it’s hard to get out of it.

One of the other things that drew me to Godzilla is, though it’s sci-fi, it’s on present-day planet Earth and you don’t have spaceships going around. It’s a task that was similar to updating Enterprise in that there was a classic thing — or monster, in this case, four that are going to be re-introduced to a new audience in a new visual language.

HR: What did the production design entail for you on Godzilla: King of Monsters?

SC: I was hired specifically to be the lead designer on the creature redesign team, which wasn’t something I had done before in any meaningful way. The process involved hiring creature redesign companies to work as collaborators. My role, as the lead, was to make sure that we clearly spelled out what our intentions were in the redesign and that we stayed true to the characters we wanted to portray on a visual level.

HR: So you actually got to dive into the research around these monsters and help bring a modern version of them to life, that’s awesome.

SC: It was fascinating because our collaborators in the monster creation were these incredibly talented folks who were inspirational on so many levels. My favorite part about the production designer gig is that I get to be inspired every day by the creative minds of the people I’m working with on so many different subjects.

HR: Were you guys inspired by specific former renditions of these monsters or is this an entirely brand new take?

SC: It’s kind of like what I did with J.J. on the Enterprise. We certainly used what was original and beloved as our anchor, but we took it to a place that is current. And that’s what we’ve done with the monsters as well. You won’t mistake them for monsters other than the old beloveds, but they don’t look funky anymore.

HR: Based on the clips I’ve seen, they look beautiful. The effort that went into creating them is so detailed. I can’t wait to see how that will look on the big screen.

SC: I’m so glad you used the word ‘beautiful’ because that was a huge part of the task we assigned ourselves. We want this movie to be gorgeous and the key elements are the monsters and the environments they’re in. It’s all about creating this grand operatic visual scale and style. The destruction that happens is an accent but the larger-scale scope we wanted to create is beauty and drama. It’s not just a big disaster film.

HR: I noticed the operatic feel. In one clip we see Godzilla and King Ghidorah face off and it’s almost theatrical in the way it’s framed.

SC: Yes and each of the monsters has a couple of new qualities that we’ve developed for them that, to me, are really exciting. They’re part of each one’s unique nature and it expresses in-depth what their elemental self is.

HR: I wasn’t sure how Mothra would look, whether it would be grotesque or not. In the trailer, she appears to be more ethereal, her wings are glowing and everything. What made you guys decide to go in that direction?

SC: Isn’t it great? That was Michael and his writing partner, Zach Shields. As they were doing the scripts they already knew Mothra was going to have a benevolent quality to her. She’s still a scary monster and gets into fights, and she can totally be terrifying, but that whole ethereal quality has to do with a certain radiance she translates from natural light.

HR: Are there any changes with Godzilla for this movie since the 2014 film?

SC: No, everybody was so happy with what had been done with Godzilla. The only tweaking was to play with the scale of it to our advantage. Michael Dougherty, our director, who has been a huge monster fan since he was a kid, had specific little details he wanted to bring to Godzilla that I think the heavy-duty fans will notice.

HR: And you’ve worked on television shows as well. Do you have a preference? 

SC: That’s really true, they’re super different machines. I haven’t been involved in any of the big epic shows like Game of Thrones. But what from what I can tell from my friends who are doing it, they are as ambitious as can be. Sometimes they have quite big budgets but they’re always under this time pressure that is based on the usual episodic TV. That defines what you’ll be able to manifest.

I think it would be an interesting challenge to take on one of the big ones at some point, just to get back my episodic chops. But I do like the ability to develop in detail, the worlds and designs in the big features I’ve been doing because there is a lot of satisfaction in that.

HR: Are there any specific genres or franchises you would really love to work on in the future?

SC: There is actually. There is this old movie director named Busby Berkeley, who did those crazy musicals. Busby Berkeley who lived a crazy life. There was a biography written about him that delves into his personality and the events of his life. It’s a rich subject and could be a vivid design project. Not to re-create that stuff but to tell, in visual terms, the story of how that guy’s mind worked.

If someone approached the story like that, instead of a traditional biography, I think that would be fascinating. I love those hyper-visual, psychological storytelling opportunities.

HR: Jumping back to Godzilla, if you could come up with a theme or sensation you wanted to evoke in the audience leaving the movie, what would it be?

SC: Excitement and wonder. I would love the movie to inspire a sense of wonder in people and for them to come away surprised, in a good way.

HR: Well I definitely I can’t wait to see it! Thank you so much for talking to me!

SC: My pleasure Madison, thanks for your time.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Godzilla: King of Monsters opens in theaters May 31.