Redfield Arts

The Design

Detail of Hyde's apartment set

Redfield, also an accomplished designer (he has designed over 30 stage productions, various commercials, films and live events), began designing the sets and costumes for

Detail of Dr. Jekyll's Laboratory

Jekyll and Hyde almost immediately after work on the screenplay began. As the scenes were written and sharpened, he also began the preliminary storyboards to communicate and test some of the visual ideas that were forming.

While re-reading Stevenson's original story for visual clues and inspiration, Redfield came across one particular scholar's notion that in his story, Robert Louis Stevenson may have been actually describing his beloved Edinburgh, Scotland, and not London at all.

Spurred on by this concept and wanting to convey the claustrophobic and nightmare dreamscape that Stevenson had painted in his story, Redfield was determined that the London of this telling of the tale should be one of the imagination also. He then began to design an exterior world that couldn't be photographed anywhere in the real world, and thus turned to designing the miniatures that would be the city of London for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Casting began five months before the first day of filming. Casting directors Sharon Steele

Costumers Margo Harvey & Suzanne Grover

and Lisa Scott were responsible for guiding dozens of actors through the audition process. Elena Torrez (Claire Caine) was introduced to Redfield by fellow filmmaker Tom Brandau. After looking at a couple of short films that she appeared in, Redfield new he had the perfect actor for the part. Others, Carl Randolph (Utterson) and Kosha Engler (Miriam) surfaced at the auditions. As the actors were chosen and added to the cast list, it was up to the ace costumers Suzanne Grover and Margo Harvey to see to it that they were properly dressed.

Once the initial costume concepts and colors were set by Redfield in his drawings, Grover and Harvey had the task of translating these into wearable articles of clothing. The exquisite women's dresses built by Suzanne Grover, in particular, are perfectly and appropriately "nineteen hundred", down to the last button and sash.