The screen adaptation of the Neil LaBute play Some Girl(s) recently premiered at this month’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival. With a story that takes place in five hotel rooms, Some Girl(s) stars Adam Brody, Kristen Bell, Zoe Kazan, Emily Watson, Mia Maestro and Jennifer Morrison. So, do five women, one man and five hotel rooms in four cities equal a cinematographer’s nightmare? Perhaps, but DP Rachel Morrison managed to dodge potential production bullets to shoot a beautifully staged account of one man’s attempt to right the wrongs done with his exes. “The challenge was to find visual variety within the confines of each hotel room,” recalls Morrison, whose film Fruitvale took home the

Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance last January. “I worked with [Production Designer] Maya [Sigel] to come up with interesting ways to make each space distinct.”

While Sigel had a small team due to the low-budget production, they designed all of the rooms and built them in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles — a fact that viewers would never suspect when watching the film. For the storyline’s hotels in the cities of Seattle, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, the production shot exteriors and hallways on location, but the entire film crew and actors didn’t travel to each city. Sigel admits that this made it challenging to evoke the feeling and design of the hotel rooms in each city but, again, no one would be the wiser. “We had two stages, and we’d be building on one stage while they were shooting on the other one,” explains Sigel at the film’s premiere party. “Things got recycled; the walls from L.A. became the walls for Seattle. Once the set was up and dressed, we had one full day of rehearsal and then had three days to shoot on that stage.”

The decision to build sets on a stage was not only about cutting costs, as the producers also wanted the control of having a closed set. “When [Producers] Chris [Schwartz] and Patty [West] pulled me onto the project, they’d already talked about building out the sets,” says Sigel. “Not only is it a more controlled environment, it’s an easier time scheduling with the actors. Also, the shots would be more dynamic. When you can’t pull a wall away in a hotel room, all of a sudden you’re stuck in a really small place.” This production situation is common when a play is translated into a very literal film adaptation, which was the goal of Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer. “We did think about opening up outside of the hotel rooms,” says von Scherler Mayer, “but, ultimately, we felt that the strongest part of the story was in the rooms, and we wanted to focus on that.”