Photo by Esther Robards-Forbes

Jeanette Scott, a Hollywood set decorator, takes a break at her unofficial office, Mozart’s on Lake Austin. Scott’s film, “Tree of Life,” is nominated for several honors at this month’s Academy Awards.

On the night of Feb. 26, Jeanette Scott will be holding her breath, along with millions of others, as they wait to find out which film will take the honor for best picture at the 84th Annual Academy Awards.
But Scott has a bit more riding on this than the average viewer.
She was the set decorator for “Tree of Life,” the winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which has also been nominated for three Oscars, including best picture, cinematography and best director for Terrence Malick.
Immediately following the nomination announcements, Scott said it was thrilling, amazing to have played a part in the creation of an Oscar nominated film.
“I’m especially thrilled that Emmanuel Lubezki is nominated for cinematography,” she said. “It’s a beautiful film. It celebrates light, and he, along with Mr. Malick, created a thing of wonder. I have seen the film five times in the theatre, something I rarely do, and I was moved in a different way every time. I couldn’t be happier!”
If “Tree of Life” does take the Oscar for best picture, Scott won’t be one of the people accepting that golden statue, but that’s the way she likes it, preferring to work in the background of more than 30 films in her 25-year career.
Scott has worked primarily as a set decorator, but also as artistic director, on everything from big-budget pictures like “Sin City” and the “Spy Kids” series to smaller films like “Cedar Rapids” and “Grindhouse.”
A versatile artist, Scott can turn a bland hotel conference room into a swanky 1950s sitting room and a rawboned soundstage into a scene from the zombie apocalypse. Each set, she said, is like a character in the film. It tells a story. And it can reveal something about the human characters.
“If you see a character sitting in their living room, and it’s very barren, it says one thing,” Scott said. “But if you see them in a living room filled with family photos and collections amassed over years, it says a completely different thing about them as a person. I try to find the right things to use to tell the story.”
While a film shoot can be a grueling, months-long process, Scott enjoys traveling to different locations and getting to know the community. Because the art department is one of the first crews to arrive on a location, often weeks ahead of the actors, they are in a unique position to really explore the cities and towns that they film in, she said.
“I did a movie in northern Maine that was about the decline of wooden boatyards, so we went in several months early and met with all of these old guys who had been building wooden boats all their lives,” Scott said. “We did research and talked to them to find out what these things would look like and where can I go to fine giant block and tackle and where could I get boat parts that I could work into my set?”
When she immerses herself in a community, she picks things up, things others might not notice.
While filming “Selena” in San Antonio, she noticed, “that every little taco place and seafood restaurant has a picture of John Kennedy, Selena and the Virgin of Guadalupe right there together” and she uses these insights in her designs.
Often, Scott likens her work to a daily scavenger hunt, looking for just the right piece, the perfect item to complete a set. She may have to hunt through antique stores, meet with collectors in their homes to ask for their furniture or work with fabricators to build something out of this world.
Other times she might have to wake up at 4 a.m., like she did while filming “Mississippi Masala,” to try to get a vinyl airline logo to stick to a plane that’s just landed on an African airstrip, covered in condensation, with only an hour until shooting starts.
“We used every towel in the hotel to try to get the plane dry,” she said, recalling her concern that the letters would fly off when the plane took off, ruining the shot.
While the long hours, the weeks away from home and never knowing when the next job will come along can be a stressful part of the job, the chance to work in a job she loves and travel the world are pretty appealing, Scott said.
“I love the collaborative process,” she said. “I love figuring out how to tell the story. And I just love the stuff.”
Having just come off a shoot for the upcoming film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” in Atlanta, Scott is enjoying spending time with her husband, Don Sembera, her daughter, May, and her garden. But pretty soon, it’ll be time to head out again, to parts unknown.
“What I love about filmmaking is that it’s full of curious people, and to me the most interesting people are the curious people,” she said. “It’s a great way for a curious person to live.”