Hannah Beachler | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | University of Cincinnati,Wright State University |
| Occupation | Production designer |
| Website | www |
Hannah Beachler (/biːklər/) is an Americanproduction designer. The firstAfrican-American to win theAcademy Award for Best Production Design, she is known for herAfrofuturist design direction ofMarvel Studiosfilm seriesBlack Panther andBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever.[1] Beachler has been involved in numerous projects directed by Beyoncé, includingLemonade andBlack Is King.[2]
She also worked on the 2015Rocky filmCreed,[3][4] theMiles Davis biopicMiles Ahead,[5] andMoonlight.[6] She was nominated at thePrimetime Emmy Awards and won threeADG Awards, aCritics' Choice Movie Awards and aSaturn Awards.
Beachler, the daughter of an architect and interior decorator, grew up inCenterville, Ohio, being surrounded by design for a long time.[7] She graduated from theUniversity of Cincinnati, studying fashion design. She attendedWright State University inDayton, Ohio where she studied film.[3]
She first metRyan Coogler working on hisFruitvale Station, a film about theshooting of Oscar Grant. It had a limited budget and required Beachler's creativity to come up with low-cost ideas; she used her ownBay Area Rapid Transit card that is seen in the visor of a car Grant is driving.[8]Fruitvale Station won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Film and the Audience Award for Best Film at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.[9]
ForCreed, Beachler watched the first four Rocky films for inspiration. She was responsible for designing Front Street Gym that appears prominently in the film. She visited a number of gyms across the United States, but particularly inPhiladelphia where the film series is based, in order to get a good idea of what the set should look like. She designed the entire gym including the professionally-sized boxing ring, and her plans ensured that cameras could get a 360-degree view of everything.[3] In her efforts, she was able to transform a hall withinTemple University, into the realistic gym that was seen in the film.[10]
For the outdoor scenes inMiles Ahead, Beachler searched through numerous photograph archives to accurately capture the scenes inNew York City from the 1950s to the 1970s, but ultimately took inspiration from somesilent film shot from a car window, that was posted onYouTube decades later.[5] She used no stage shots in the entire film; the set of Davis' home was a disused church inCincinnati that was gutted and renovated to resemble a multi-layer house including a basement recording studio.[5]
As the production designer onMarvel Studios'sBlack Panther, Beachler oversaw a $30 million art budget and a crew of several hundred people.[9] Beachler is the first-ever female production designer of a Marvel film, and was the second person hired for it behind director Ryan Coogler.[1] To research the project, she first spent time inCape Town,South Africa, and then traveled the region with the rest of the crew to get a sense of the countryside and cultures represented there. Before beginning the process of working onBlack Panther with Coogler, Beachler did not believe she would have this "once in a lifetime opportunity," but to prove herself she worked hard and even ended up spending $12,000 of her own money to prove her capability.[10] "It’s all different, and they’re different countries..." Beachler explained: "you can’t represent everything, but I can certainly interpret the fact that there are so many different things within [its fictional country of]Wakanda and within that one culture."[1] For her work onBlack Panther, Beachler became the first African-American to be nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Production Design,[11] as well as the first to win the category.
Beachler was lead curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition,Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, which opened in 2021.[12] Working with commissioners such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Jenn Nkiru, she designed this space in hopes that it would embody, "Black imagination, excellence, and self-determination...".[13]
In 2023 she figures as the directior designer ofdocumentaryconcert filmRenaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
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