Creating the world of The Moth was no small feat. The film moves between the sweeping marble quarries of Vermont, a cinema in New York City, a long-abandoned attic, and an optometrist’s office in Jersey City. Finding a visual through line that could bridge these contrasting locations—and preserve the story elements each one held—fell to Production Designer Theo Webb.
Webb has quickly made a name for himself in New York’s emerging film scene as a rare “maximalist” in production design. Few designers can take the modest budgets typical of short films and transform them into environments that feel lived-in, textured, and distinctly cinematic. What follows is an excerpt from an interview with Theo about his work on the film. It has been edited for clarity.
The TV Room
The TV room felt like the core of the film, narratively and in terms of the production design. After reading the script the first time I was excited by the challenge of figuring it out, because it would lead to other answers for the rest of the film. Once we figured that out and how stylized we wanted it to be, we were able to extrapolate from there.
Juan used the word “microwave” early on, and that was a guiding phrase for me, in making a space that kind of felt like a microwave with the TV as its light.
We needed a smaller space to capture that claustrophobic feeling that the Moth is reckoning with. His world is caving in on itself. I came up with the idea of putting a wall right in the middle of the room and creating this big tiled backsplash in front of the TV. I wanted to bounce the TV light in as many different directions throughout the room, using reflections to make it feel that much more claustrophobic and microwave-esque.
The other challenge with the space was the window in the bedroom, which let in this super bright light. We knew it wouldn't work, because it would totally counteract the TV light. I spent weeks trying to figure out what to put over that window, whether it was a curtain or stained glass. Finally, I found a still from “The Spirit of the Beehive” that had this putrid yellow glass. I loved the look of it and wanted to try to replicate it. Then, we came up with this idea of having this newspapered glass collage on the window, which pointed to a certain level of degradation and let in this crazy colored light, casting the room in this sort of bizarre color.
Building the TV Room
I spent a good six weeks sourcing for the film in upstate New York. I went to a bunch of junk shops and antique stores. We amassed a pretty big haul that we then drove up to Vermont for a set building weekend.
A friend Nick Windolf and I built the wall and tiled it over two days. Cece Wheeler made the beautiful window and Ryan Mikel helped paint, wallpaper and just add layers to everywhere we could. On the last set build day we got the massive TV up there and turned it on, which was a really, really great moment. The whole design came to life with that TV light, slicing through all the glass bottles and off the tile.
Then once we got back up there for the shoot, we had Juan come into the space and Gus came in and worked his magic with the practical lights, which was amazing.
Design Philosophy
I love engaging in long discussions about the philosophy for the film and its general abstract design. And I really enjoy searching for every individual prop, whether it's one of the hundreds of glass bottles that were in the space or the specific tiles. Its important to me to be involved in every single layer of the production design. I don't view it as a burden. I view that as a vital part of my creative process.
The moment that makes it all worth doing and why I keep working, is when you have the actor come into the space for the first time wearing their full costume and makeup and hair. I was very fortunate to work with a great costume designer in Willa and Jane did such an incredible job with the makeup. Seeing Santiago walking into the space in those wings and crazy hair and those amazing contacts, that to me is what keeps me coming back.
The Field
I was thinking a lot about Terrence Malik’s “Days of Heaven” and its amazing Jack Fisk production design, in capturing this bucolic ideal. I know Juan and I also talked about making it into an Edenic paradise.
We liked this idea of the Moths having an active hand in creating the camp set and transporting everything there one by one. Everything in that camp location was stashed, as you see in the film, beneath the TV room. Most of the things that they brought out had some practicality to them, like a chair or shelves or books. But, I really loved adding in some slightly magical things, like a couple of these kerosene lamps, which connect to this theme of fire and light, adding to this kind of mysticism to the set. The mirror that we brought out there, of course, not entirely practical, created some really wonderful moments out there with reflections and bounced light. It was a balance of a practical camp set up and then also just elevated moments of beauty, which I think pointed to where the characters were at that moment in the film.
I'm definitely a maximalist in terms of my production design. That’s why the camp set stands out to me. It was a real challenge to make a big impression on the screen with fewer things that I'm used to using and having a more bare bones set make a visual impression and also work narratively.
Building the Field
It was a completely barren field, which we created from scratch. Over the course of the next couple of days, my team and I, just through the process of building the set as the characters did themselves, created that world. We stomped on all the grass and made the clearing, imagining the process of them building this set.
We shot the fully built version first, so we had to create it as the characters would have, and then we deconstructed it as they were then taking the elements themselves. We were sort of living in their process a little bit through doing that.
The other big element of that set was the fire pit and then the fire that goes there. I of course wanted the fire to be as big as possible, just both in terms of its importance in the scene and in the film itself. We spent a couple hours collecting wood and created this big pyre that somehow remained upright for most of that portion of the shoot. I just really enjoyed having any excuse to make a big fire.