After production, we caught up with Director Sabine Boss and Set Designer Su Erdt to talk about how the film industry goes about selecting equipment partners, and how a simple office chair can influence filming.

Su Erdt: Giroflex is a household name in Switzerland, which meant that the brand was predestined for a Swiss film. But what really tipped the scales was the chair’s aesthetics. We were impressed by the unbelievable range of colours. We were thrilled that the chairs came in colours like antique pink, as we wanted to develop a retro style for the office design.

Su Erdt is a renowned production designer and art director, having previously worked on films such as 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'

What happened after you configured the chairs for the film?

Something unplanned happened. We started by configuring the office chair according to our vision of what the set was supposed to look like later. Afterwards, we caught ourselves planning the set around the chair to a certain extent. That is unusual, and it was a first for me. After three months of intense exploration of the chair’s design language on the set, I view the outcome as a real success.

Su Erdt: Here, visuality takes precedence over functionality. We dove right in and put the chair through its paces. We had looked at a lot of offices in the USA and Europe in order to create the optimum setting for our film. The design was also essential in this respect. For example, we needed several camera settings for an executive chair as opposed to a normal office chair.

At the same time, the camera’s angle of view says a lot about the corresponding film scene. Consequently, the office chair took on a lot more importance than initially intended. The chair is a psychological moment, an image transfer to the protagonist, as it were.