Available to tour this weekend - if you're in Los Angeles, that is, and attending the 2:10 showing at The Landmark - is a complete recreation of the set from Room.
Perhaps a bit eerie for some, the tour provides an inventive way to experience the attention to detail given to a set as crucial to its film's narrative as the characters that inhabited it. Production designer Ethan Tobman crafted the space for maximum visual accessability with removable wall and floor tiles to nestle the camera while keeping the seclusion and intimacy uncompromised for the actors. Also inside will be the smaller pieces created to lend texture to Ma and Jack's tiny world: artwork, toys, props, and set detail work.
Contemporary production design goes far too ignored with the Academy and the tendancy is to favor oppulent period or imaginative fantasy genres. If the goal is to believably create the world and environment of a film, we don't have to stretch to find awards-worthy work - Skyfall, Synecdoche, New York, the entire David Fincher filmography. The tour is a shrewd way to hopefully stir some conversation for Tobman and shake up the kind of work honored by the branch. What other modern examples are worth considering?