Jeff Melvin Wiki: 5 Facts To Know About 'Suicide Squad' Set Decorator

If you haven’t watched the movie “The Shape of Water”, you are really left behind. It’s is still the best fantasy drama film right now even if it was released last year. The plot follows the life of a muter custodian who works at a high-security government facility and befriends a humanoid-amphibian creature. The film was directed by one of the most popular in Hollywood, Guillermo del Toro. He worked with a crew of guys to make “The Shape of Water”. One of them was the set decorator. Jeff Melvin. Not much is known about Melvin as he is the kind of guy who loves being behind the scenes. Melvin was born in Canada and he grew up wishing he could work in film. He then studied and trained in set decoration. Melvin has worked with many renowned figures in the industry including production designer Paul Denham Austerberry. He worked on “The Shape of Water,” with another set decorator known as Shane Vieau. Other films that Melvin has worked on are “XXX: Return of Xander Cage”, “Suicide Squad”,”Total Recall,” and “Spotlight”, which have made him a good net worth. The set decorator was nominated for an Oscar 2018 award alongside his fellow set decorator Shane and the production designer Denham for the movie “The Shape of Water”.

The movie can be described as a fairy tale about a mute janitor falling in love with a strange creature. So she teams up with her co-worker and neighbor to save the creature but by doing so she steps on her superior toes and she is on the run with the creature as her supervisor tries to catch up with them and take the creature back. The film is a marvel and performer showcase. That alone helped the film achieve what no other film has achieved in 89 years, 15 nominations for Oscar 2018, one of them being the category of Jeff Melvin. What even made it more impressive was the fact that its budget was low and some people like Melvin were nominated for the first time. Many believe that the film will scoop most of the awards and Melvin will take one of them.

Melvin described his experience working for the film as the perfect opportunity. To him it was all about the audience seeing the happy hues of color and the case of fabulous fantasy. Melvin took the transcendent creativity and imagination of Guillermo del Toro, who is not only the director of the film but also storyteller and scriptwriter of the film, and made the set exactly as the director wanted. The set decorator, Jeff Melvin believed in the film as passionately as del Toro and together as a crew worked hard to make the whole film and show the world for it to realize that it could be a better place than it seemed as long as people were prepared to stand up with their beliefs.

If by chance you have watched the film, you most likely noticed the colors and you perhaps never felt that they influenced you. What you don’t know is that Melvin put those colors there to set the mood of the film. Jeff Melvin used a palette of greenish-blues and bluish-greens that magically lend each space a nocturnal and fluvial cool. You can also see the same tones, courtesy of Melvin, on the walls of the Ocean Aerospace Research Center, the place where the main character works.

Melvin didn’t create any defined color hierarchy as he had done in other movies such as “Suicide Squad,” “XXX: Return of Xander Cage,” “Spotlight,” and “Total Recall.” The blues don’t stand for good and the greens don’t stand for wicked. The set decorator made sure that every spacer shared a similar spectrum even though Del Toro opposed opacity and hoped the color neither had depth or mystery. Some of the examples Melvin brought out so well are the green pies and the Cadillac dealership.

The lab where the creature is kept is hidden away behind big security doors and it is built with an elaborate system of pipes and within, there is a polygonal pool. Melvin also places a steampunk, which in the film connects to the Baltimore sewers.

As the set decorator, Melvin was not limited to work at the laboratory alone. He was also the one who made Elisa’s home look like a 1950s home. Giles is the one who helps Elisa escape with the amphibian man and at the time he is struggling with life when other technologies are taking over and making his advertising job harder to find.

Before landing the Oscar nomination, he had landed a BAFTA and Critics’ Choice nominations. Currently, Melvin has the highest possibility if taking the awards.

According to Net Worth Post, Jeff Melvin has a net worth of $9 million. He has made his net worth from his profession as a set decorator.

Everybody is hopeful that the movie will scoop most awards on Oscar 2018. Melvin also stands a chance of taking the award home, but if he doesn’t, he will have gotten into the books as one of the best set decorators.