Katie Spencer is a an American set decorator who has worked on films like ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Atonement’. Read more about her including her net worth.
Who is Katie Spencer?
Katie Spencer is an American set director. She has been nominated for an Academy Award four times since she first started her career. She got an Oscar nomination for her set directing in Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, Sherlock Holmes and Anna Karenina. She has worked in many films and TV series with Sarah Greenwood. Her work in Sherlock Holmes was par excellence. Sherlock Holmes is a 2009 British-American neo-noir mystery period action film based on the character of the same name created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The story revolves around Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr Watson, who have managed to incarcerate Lord Blackwood, a dreaded serial killer who is later executed. However, Blackwood seems to have come back from the dead. The brilliantly executed movie ‘The Moonstone’ was another feather to her hat. The Moonstone is a made-for-television movie based on The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. The movie is about a cursed Hindu diamond, which is stolen by a British officer in 1799 and bequeathed to his niece (Keeley Hawes), vanishes. Last year, Katie Spencer worked on the film ‘Beauty and the Beast’ as a set decorator. It is an adaptation of the fairy tale ‘Beauty and the Beast’ about a monstrous-looking prince and a young woman who fall in love. Katie Spencer is nominated for two Oscar 2018 awards for Best Production Design for the films Darkest Hour and Beauty and the Beast. Oscar 2018 will be held on March 4th, 2018.
Net worth of the set decorator
The net worth of Katie Spencer is currently under wraps.
In conversation with Katie Spencer
In a candid interview, Katie Spencer explains the fine craft of set decorating. Set decorators are a part of the many backstage team members who although are not visible onscreen but their influence extends to every scene and every set of our favorite films. In the interview below, Spencer takes a closer look at the financial and artistic aspects of the movie production. Set decorators have to make sure to support the main story with their artistic decorations and yet be careful not to draw too much attention to the objects. In a brief biography about herself, Spencer first reveals that she went to drama school in London in the early eighties to study stage management and technicalities behind stage management. She later worked in theater for a few years and for some time at The Royal Court Theater. There she came across an advert in the UK ‘Stage’ magazine for trainee buyers at the BBC. She trained as a freelancer in the BBC and did a variety of buying jobs on different programs. She later transitioned from television to films and from buying to decorating gradually. When asked to explain the meaning of stage decoration, Spencer very interestingly replies, “It is what you make of it. To me the most important thing always is the script, whether it came from a book, or an original screenplay the development of the characters within their environment is paramount. It’s all about the different characters. People may live in exactly the same time 2012 and be roughly of the same age, but they will never live in the exact same environment. To me, it’s making the written script come alive with the background, enhancing and not overshadowing. Set decoration is making the environment and the characterization work from t he script.” As most of Spencer’s films are period productions, the interviewer wanted to know whether the audience gets to see the original artifacts or mostly replicas to which she replied, “It’s nice to use authentic furniture, dressing and small props as much as possible, because there is something very exact about them as they bring their own histories and stories. Also you’re going to see them – a pen or a wallet – on the big screen in the cinema at ten times its real size, and authenticity then is invaluable. However sometimes they just don’t exist or aren’t available anymore and that’s when they become expensive prop makes. Or you have to or would want to make the furniture and drapes anyway because you can’t get them in the color or fabric scheme that you need. It’s a mixture. However it is nice to use as many authentic pieces as possible, and then bring in what you have made to further enhance the visuals.” On further discussion with the set decorator, we came to know that there is extensive amount of research and skills required in setting the stage just right for a particular movie scene. She explained that the opening sequence in the film ‘Hanna’ shows an isolated environment, with vast spans of snowed forest in an abandoned winterland, going from the cold blue colors of the outside to warm golden amber yellows on the inside. On viewing the movie or the scene, rarely do we notice the beauty or the effort behind setting the scenes or stage so perfect. What we get engrossed in is the scene, the dialogues and actors but we do forget that it all syncs so well because of the well matched background. A similar scene would have not much effect if it were set in a plain snow covered jungle. A set decorator very essentially captures the essence of every scene in the movie. Kudos to skilled craftsmen like Spencer who do their job with such perfection that it just flows with the scene as if happening in reality.
