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It’s Oscar-y looking!
Crystals, swirls and circles make up the fiercely futuristic set design of the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, which will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and is set to air Sunday, March 27 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
And, despite the artful construction of the gleaming platform, crafted by scenic designer and creative director David Korins, 45, social media sharpshooters hastily fired off critical jokes and gibes about the Oscar stage’s otherworldly look.
“The Oscars this year is set in that one door in Poseidon’s Fury,” teased a Twitter kidder, referencing a wild walkthrough attraction at the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida. Other digital detractors complained that screenshots of the set were making them “dizzy.”
“Oscars 2022 set design. Wish I could sit in the audience, but I’m not a member of Starfleet,” penned another joker. The jeer echoed the confused sentiments of a separate tweeter who hilariously questioned, “What in the Star Trek is this?,” when People released exclusive photos of the set design Thursday.
The cyber shade notwithstanding, Korins — who’s previously adorned the Academy Awards stage in 2019, and has designed sets for the superstar likes of Kanye West, 44, and Lady Gaga, 35 — says his avant-garde Oscars scenery is meant to give audiences a peek at a post-pandemic paradise.
“We have made a portal that looks into the future,” Korins told Architectural Digest
after referring to the COVID crisis as an “indelible, insane, upside down, crazy experience.”
He went on to say that his ornate Oscars ornamentation “has to do with an incredibly deep and incredibly forward-thinking sort of future-forward view. In that future, we trade in the currency of elegance and electricity.”
The shimmering set boasts over 90,000 Swarovski crystals that will twinkle with the brilliance of 120,000 pixels of LED lights and 5,000 linear feet of LED tape.
“Every single piece of scenery on stage has a light inside of it,” explained Korins of the orb-shaped opus. “It kind of glows from within.”
The base of his ultramodern masterpiece will also extend from the front of the auditorium into the audience — a feature of the stage Korins hopes will create a “sense of community” between the night’s winners, presenters, performers and the crowd.
“You can see that we’ve pushed the stage out into the audience; literally, it’s the first time ever in the Dolby where we’ve decked over a large part of the audience,” said the artist. “We’ve created an actual community around the winner circle and around the performance space.”
“People use that term immersive and environmental all the time, but this is truly an opportunity where people will be engulfed in the community,” Korins added. “It will become undeniable when you see a winner receiving an award and their peers are going to be wrapping around them.”
And he’s hopeful his innovative handiwork will ultimately shine as a symbol of optimism.
“I’m trying with the design to actually make something that feels complex and yet spare and kind of glowing and hopeful,” he said.
“Let’s cast a big, huge beacon of hope on this powerful moment that we all get to experience, and let’s find that light, and then let’s supersize it.”
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