Below the Line: Designing 'Her' Some films shout their production design. Others keep it to a dull roar. "Her," the new Spike Jonze romance about a man falling for his operating system, has a design scheme that is distinct but subtle. That's the work of K. K. Barrett, who has helped create the many imaginative settings in Mr. Jonze's movies, from the interiors of John Malkovich's subconscious ("Being John Malkovich") to the vast exteriors of a child's imagination ("Where the Wild Things Are"). With "Her," Mr. Barrett wanted to build a futuristic world with wide spaces inhabited by a lonely man. "When you get to design the future, it's pretty exciting because you can do whatever you want," Mr. Barrett said, speaking by phone from Los Angeles. But the more he and Mr. Jonze worked out the look of the world of "Her" and how they would portray their lead character Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), the more they began to focus. We decided, let's make this little environment for him. Even though it's going to be grand beyond him, let's make sure his world is special and insular and not about technology. One way Mr. Barrett did this was by avoiding futuristic cars, or really any cars. The film takes place mostly away from street level, in a giant city that is an amalgamation of Los Angeles and Shanghai, merging the sprawl of one city with the pedestrian presence of another. The film was shot in both places incorporating elements of each metropolis. "In Shanghai in Pudong, they have these elevated walkways so you can go from building to building without ever having to cross an intersection," Mr. Barrett said. Already, that gave us a bit of a future slant, feeling like we're comfortable pedestrians within the urban grid. Interiors play a significant part, particularly Theodore's home and work spaces. The office, where his job is to compose personal letters on behalf of clients, is an airy, friendly, colorful environment. Mr. Barrett found a vacant site in Los Angeles and transformed it. "It was an empty set of white walls with a beautiful skylight," he said. It was a location I had to argue for because it was very expensive and we only spent a couple of days in there. Rather than repaint the walls, Mr. Barrett added pieces of transparent colored plexiglass that cast light on the room and changed its tone at different times of the day. We put gels on the windows so that all of the light that came in was this beautiful red glow. Mr. Barrett had the walls accented with drawings from the artist Geoff Mcfetridge, who also created the titles for "Where the Wild Things Are." For Theodore's apartment, Mr. Barrett found a vacant property in downtown Los Angeles. Because viewers would be spending a lot of time with one character in a potentially claustrophobic way, the filmmakers wanted his living space to feel open and welcoming. "It was a blank slate," Mr. Barrett said. What we came into was a great set of windows looking out into the city. And then went about carving up the space, giving it this warm and woodsy character as opposed to glass and steel which is the norm for high rises. They gave the wood floors something of a high-gloss polish to reflect more of the city. In these locations, Mr. Barrett decided on a less-is-more approach. "All of the spaces are rather minimalistic," he said. They serve to focus on him floating through these spaces. Among the biggest challenges was the design of the film's technology: the device Theodore uses to communicate with his operating system as well as his computer monitor. "With the device, we could have easily gone into the modern realm of a thin sheet of curved glass you could slip into your pocket, or a hologram," Mr. Barrett said. But we didn't want to do something that wasn't tangible and wasn't real right now. That was the first thing they worked on and Mr. Barrett said it took about six months to complete. Because they didn't want to call too much attention to futuristic notions and take away from the voice coming out of it, they decided to look to the past. We embraced a time when people had designed beautiful little address books and cigarette cases and lighters, things you could carry around in your hand and were very tactile. They also added a more vintage feel to the computer monitors, using wood frames or canvas mattes around the glass. "We did something more akin to framing a piece of artwork than the window to your entertainment," he said.