Production Design on "12 Years a Slave" After envisioning larger-than-life sets for Wes Anderson, the production designer Adam Stockhausen had to make the transition from whimsical to historical for "12 Years a Slave." The designer, who along with the set decorator Alice Baker, is up for an Oscar for the film, said that there are similarities between Mr. Anderson's more upbeat projects ("Moonrise Kingdom," the upcoming "Grand Budapest Hotel") and Steve McQueen's somber slave drama. "In both cases, you want things to be authentic and to be specific," Mr. Stockhausen said, speaking by phone from Studio Babelsburg in Potsdam, Germany, where he is working on a new project. In Wes's movies, we're always finding specifics all around us and incorporating them. Whereas in "12 Years a Slave," it was a historical journey of understanding and learning." But of course there are many differences between the two directors as well. With Mr. Anderson, shots are planned with choreographed camera moves. "On "12 Years a Slave," we were kind of trying to open the world up and let it be free-form," he said. We wanted to let an organic process take shape in the rehearsal. After mining old documents and photographs, he and his team aimed to create 360-degree working environments surrounding the actors. Mr. Stockhausen spoke about those environments and other challenges, like making New Orleans look like a Northeastern town. Saratoga Springs The film follows Solomon Northup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man who was kidnapped and sent into slavery. He lived and worked in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, but the film was shooting in New Orleans. "We were looking at old stereoscope images from Saratoga and the natural springs had these pavilion structures built over them," he said. We ended up replicating one of them almost straight out of the research. They set this scene in a park so they wouldn't have to find different ways to make New Orleans look like a Northeastern town. They chose to shoot only one major moment on the street for this reason. The Orleans Solomon was sent by ship to the South, and for that vessel, the Orleans, the team built a structure on dry land. The Orleans was put out to sea by visual effects. "Rather than being a sailing ship, we made it a coastal steamer," Mr. Stockhausen said. We thought sailing ships were more reminiscent of the Atlantic slave trade than this wholly different thing going on with the kidnapping of free men in the North. The steamer was modeled on one from 1831. "This style of steamship was new at the time," he said, "and kind of represented industry and big business." Ford Plantation Solomon is put to work at different plantations, and for the filmmakers it was important to maintain visual distinctions between them even if some of the architecture was similar. At the home of William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), Solomon is treated somewhat more humanely than he is at other plantations. "We went with a more beautiful, more lush kind of a house and we augmented it," Mr. Stockhausen said. Shooting at actual plantation sites, the filmmakers frequently found the great houses still standing but a lot of the "outbuildings," the smaller structures, are gone or crumbling. We would find the main house and then we would figure out the layout of the farm, where the slave quarters were and what other buildings we wanted to add and we ended up building all of those pieces in. At the Ford plantation that included a garden and an arbor where Ford would read scripture on Sundays. Epps Plantation For the plantation of Mr. Epps (Michael Fassbender), there were no rose gardens. Mr. Stockhausen opted instead for a pigsty in the back. "It's a much harder place," he said. The color is somewhat drained out. It's not as lush. The earth is dustier. The outbuildings have a rougher construction and more slaves are crammed into their quarters. Next to the pigsty is a whipping post, which the camera doesn't initially notice until it's finally used in one of the film's most brutal scenes. The entire plantation has this unpleasant and ominous quality that hopefully is a lot stronger than at Ford's.