Forrest Gump’s Production Designer Breaks Down Lt. Dan’s First Scene

I'm Rick Carter, I was a Production Designer

on Forest Gump and I'm gonna give you

a one scene break down of when

Bubba and Forest come to Vietnam.

[helicopter rotor]

My process I would guess is a collage artists.

I do little sketches; I do a lot of research.

For this particular movie, this was reflective

of my own life and times.

I'm basically Forest's age.

So I new about the era that we told the story of,

the Vietnam era, the Civil Rights era,

growing up in the 60's.

The first thing is that you're getting

a wide view of what you think is rice paddies

and the silhouette of the Hueys.

The Hueys are very iconic.

You immediately know that you're in Vietnam.

[helicopter rotor]

The first thing that I would say about this frame

is that it's an iconic image from Vietnam

because it basically gives you

the silhouette of the Huey.

And Dale Dye was the military advisor on this.

He's the one who helped us set up the camp

to be exactly the way it would be

in this kind of context.

All of this kind of prop-age that you see here,

or the equipment that they have here,

every aspect of this based upon

the way it would be in a real camp in Vietnam,

because Dale Dye had had that experience.

He'd also been the advisor on Platoon

and a number of movies that portrayed

the Vietnam War up to that point.

I think the main part that makes you feel

like you are in a place that could be Vietnam

is basically the horizon here,

of what you think is rice fields.

These are not really rice fields.

This is a delta that actually floods

so that it actually has this kind of look.

But the idea was to keep it very simple.

[Forest Gump] Now they told us that Vietnam

was gonna be very different from

the United States of America.

Except for all the beer cans and barbecue, it was.

The joke is, is that it looks like

it could be a barbecue in South Carlina,

because that's actually what it is.

Once we found where we could build Forest's house,

then we had to branch out from that area.

Fortunately, we were able to find places

even close to where the house was,

and then many others in that local area,

that we could stage as Vietnam.

So Forest and Bubba now landed and now we're in the camp,

and what's the first thing you see,

is the ultimate product placement in Vietnam,

Coca-Cola, Budwieser, Falstaff beer.

And we've got a very basic situation here

where we're setting up things that you can

identify with as an audience as little tableaus.

You know, the barbecue, the card game, the beer,

the hanging out, and these walkways

which basically take you throughout the scene,

because this part would all be flooded.

And then in the background, in addition to,

this was just like I think this is one of the outhouses

with the water that would filter down here,

is to actually then have these helicopters going through.

So there's a lot of activity in the frame,

but all of these, this one, and all of these

are actually put in later with computer graphics.

We had to actually bring in palm trees

to the battlefield and this set

so that there was more that would convey

that tropical feeling of being in Vietnam.

That's a big deal actually, because you've got to

bring in full scale palm trees

on either folk lifts or a crane,

and then dig around for the base to get them in there

and make sure that they're going to stand up.

One of the things that is very important

in scenes like this is to give a sense

that this isn't designed, it actually is a place

that you really would see people in an organic way.

I'm immediately drawn of course to the characters,

but also this sign here, it's something

that's said specifically later.

Forest says, I may not know a lot,

but I think we had some of America's best young men here.

Along with all the, just the set up of the camp

with the tents and you've got the radio here.

So everybody you know is a tableau

on one level or another, is actually relating to something.

Whether it's something they're eating, drinking,

playing, or in this case listening to music.

And remember, in this sequence you're hearing

music in the background.

So that radio is actually giving you

a source for that music that you're actually hearing.

This is all, as you've noticed so far,

from their point of view as they move forward.

So it's personal to us.

You're just moving into the scene

towards the first encounter with someone

who's going to be as important as

Lieutenant Dan is to Forest, and to us.

Just shrimp all the time, man.

You must be my FNGs.

The most important thing in this frame is this,

this toilet paper.

Now this is pretty important too,

cause that cigar sets up Lieutenant Dan's character,

but the toilet paper gives him urgency, I mean, literally.

And now the first thing out, he comes upon

these two guys and this is the introduction obviously

to Forest and Bubba.

But the things that are really the details here

are the cigar, the toilet paper, his dog tags,

and I think that's what makes that shot actually work.

The rest of it is, you know, you're in a camp.

There is one item of GI gear that can be

the difference between live grunt and a dead grunt, socks.

I'm very aware as a production designer

that the reason people go to movies is

who's in it, and what's it about.

And the background actually is the background.

And if you know that people are working hard

to create a background that takes you out of the movie.

So actually it's a magic trick to do something

that people don't notice because it feels like

it's the right thing to be there,

just happens to be the exact right place

for those scenes to take place.

Otherwise, it could look like this.

It could just be a blank wall,

but everything you see in the frame

is actually either going out somewhere

or putting something there.

Sometimes it's a small detail.

It can just be this guy reading the Hot Rod magazine

and having a beer.

You know, we do certain things.

We might bring in this palm tree.

We bring in this tropical foliage.

But really the idea is to give an overall feel

with the vehicles, the movement, the people,

that you are somewhere that you believe

you're supposed to be.

[Forest Gump] He was from a long, great

military tradition.

Somebody in his family had fought and died

in every single American war.

So this is the four-shot montage

to depict what Forest knows later about Lieutenant Dan.

The simple way to do that of course is,

number one to have the person who's dying

in each war look like Lieutenant Dan,

cause it's played by the same guy.

But he's also falling in the ground

in iconic locales that you actually could recognize

as being part of the war that the people

would actually know about through collective memory.

This would be Valley Forge.

Washington crosses the Delaware in the winter

and that's why it's snow.

There are just actually shot, as it turned out,

on a roof top with four different tableaus

where Gary could then fall into

and actually die the four times that he does

when he's representing his ancestors.

We move on to the next American war,

which is the American Civil War.

And Lieutenant Dan is a Northern fighter and he's dying.

There's a cannon down in here.

In this scene you've got World War I

and you've got the mud of the trenches

and the battlefields in France,

and you've got all these indications

that there's other people around who've died,

even though these are very, very quick hits.

This is a flame thrower.

There was a lot of interesting prop-age

that went in just to give you a little hit,

but none of it is actually designed

to look absolutely real.

In this frame, it gets closer and it's a bit,

in a sense, more personal dying on the beach at D-Day.

It's probably a stunt pad underneath this,

as I remember, so that he can fall,

but you don't want everything to shake like that.

It was a very simple set up, and it was actually,

I think, all of these were done at night.

It's a succession of images that are not

designed to be so heavy that it takes you out of the movie.

It's a part of Forest's memory to tell you this,

but it's actually something he could never visualize

other than this kind of very simple way,

like almost looking at a textbook of somebody telling

you that we fought four wars.

What did they look like?

You boys are hungry, we got steaks

burning right over here.

Two standing orders in this platoon:

one, take good care of your feet,

two, try not to do anything stupid.

Lieutenant Dan's gotten to where he needs to get,

and it's a place that's totally open,

the center of this camp.

All the privacy is broken down between everybody

and that's part of this whole scene,

which is these guys are all becoming friends.

We have the graffiti in the background.

I remember this flag here, as the Viet Cong flag.

So, Lieutenant Dan's point of view

would be that belongs in the outhouse.

Then we have actually a Southern flag back here.

In this type of case, because we have so much research

we can get photographs of what things looked like

and then make them look very real

to what they would have looked like,

particularly in this case.

So we do a lot of construction.

I don't personally do most of the drawings at all.

There's great people that know how to do that

and then the carpenters are fantastic

at being able to follow those and make it come alive.

And the painters bring it alive

to make it look like it's old

and it's got the graffiti and the touches.

It's really a step by step design process

from an idea to then sketching it up,

then drawing it up to something that could be built,

and then laying it out in a location

or a sound stage or perhaps in the digital realm if it's CG,

and that's essentially the components

that go into the production design.

So after we've left the camp, this is our first

major establishing shot.

We were following the river.

We're continuing on our path through Vietnam,

through Forest's life, and what we did

is of course we brought in the extras

and the cow, and the people are all here,

and all this is brought in to look like

it's part of the farming.

Everything from here on up, is actually digital.

So this is actually a village that was constructed

by ILM in the computer, as were the mountains,

to give you a type of topography that actually

looks like a part of Vietnam.

And overall, it's basically, now bring you out

from the position that we were in,

which was a very intimate entrance into camp,

and now when you get out into this shot,

you're in the real country of Vietnam.

Water is basically this metaphor for the reflection

that the entire story is.

Because it's a reflective story about a personal life

and a cultural history and the river,

or water, runs through it.

You see it at Forest's house, you see it in Washington, DC,

and throughout Vietnam and all the sequences.

There's kind of a sense of being by

and on the river of life to tell this story.

And so here it is in this particular shot right here.

So that's just a one scene break down for Forest Gump.

It's one small part of obviously a big canvas

that tells the story of Forest through

those life and times.

Every single shot is created with the idea

to tell a story and this is just one part of it.