This Bluffton woman had a hand in making a 2018 Oscar nominee for best picture

It has won 67 awards including four Golden Globes and three Screen Actor’s Guild awards, and been nominated for 156 according to IMDb. It appears on over 80 top ten lists according to MetaCritic, and this morning it just received seven Oscar nominations, including best picture, actress, supporting actor (twice) and screenplay.

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is the toast of Hollywood insiders and critics alike this award season, and none of it would have been possible without the work of Bluffton resident Lillian Byrne Heyward.

Heyward designed the billboards from which the film takes its name. Simple, starkly contrasting black words against a red backdrop, spurred by the rage of a grieving mother, they drive the complex plot of a story that is equal parts tragedy, comedy and character study.

“I can’t tell you how many versions of red and how many typefaces we did on those three billboards,” said Heyward. “We even printed out a full sized billboard for the director to look at before they went up. They’re blood red. That’s not an accident.”

A graphic designer on not just this, but many other films, she plays a pivotal, though often unsung role. According to Heyward, that is the point.

“If I do my job right you don’t know I did my job,” she said, being sure to point out also that just because you don’t notice something, that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. “As much as the actors bring the characters to life, the art department brings the visuals to life.”

Working on the film

The visuals in “Three Billboards” are lived in and captivating, hewn in chipped paint, wood, brick and rust, and besides the titular billboards, Heyward played a part in a lot of that, designing a mural for the film, posters in the background of many scenes, the patches on police uniforms and logos on their cars, and about a city block of signage for “downtown Ebbing,” which is actually Sylva, North Carolina.

“I’ve done a lot of police cars in my career,” Heyward said. “I was kind of thrilled how much my graphics show up in the movie.”

In each of her designs, attention to detail is meticulous, often for things that might not even show up on screen, or only be there for a second. Her job involves not just making the designs themselves, but extensive research, all to achieve an effect that audiences might not notice, but that makes the world on screen that much more real.

“When I designed the police cars, the center section of the logo, with the county seat, is actually the building at the end of the street in Sylva, because you see the building in the scene,” Heyward said. “That helps the place we’re in become Ebbing, because it includes what a logo would, a county seat or a town hall.”

Pulling from her own past helped Heyward in her graphics work. She didn’t always work on film sets, and the skills she brought to “Three Billboards” were honed right here in Beaufort County.

“I had a sign company in Beaufort before I started doing movies,” she said. “That was a great prep for doing what I do, because I know what signs look like, because I made them, and I know how a small town is because I worked in one.”

Attention to detail

Heyward’s work can be a bit deceptive, as some elements that don’t look designed at all were in fact carefully planned, such as the billboards at the beginning of the film, which are crumbling and peeling under the weight of three decades of neglect. They look so disheveled that one might assume the production just found some actual billboards that were falling apart. That isn’t the case.

Under the guidance of production designer Inbal Weinberg, who oversaw all of her work on the film, Heyward painstakingly created the old billboards in Photoshop before they were actually constructed, building three layers of graphics for each one and then removing pieces to achieve Weinberg’s desired effect. The end result is not just artistically stunning, but serves a story purpose as well.

“There is a subliminal thing that is going on, like if you notice on one of them you see the word ‘life.’ It says ‘visit the Ozarks for the time of your life,’ and the part that you are able to see is ‘life.’ And it isn’t an accident that you see part of a baby on one of them,” Heyward said. “It doesn’t hit you over the head, but there are subtle things that set up what the story is.”

That much thought went into every aspect of the film, Heyward said, so it should come as no surprise that it has become an awards season darling. Even before then, when Heyward read the script, she knew she was involved in something special.

Awards season darling

Having worked on Academy Award winning films like “Forrest Gump” in the past, Heyward doesn’t normally get caught up in the fanfare, she said. But she enjoyed her experience on “Three Billboards” so much that this time she can’t help it.

“I have never worked with a group of people who were more inclusive,” Heyward said. “On this film Martin (McDonagh, the writer and director) took us all out to dinner. I’ve never been to a dinner with the director, but he made us feel like we were a team. He made a comment at the Golden Globes that his crew brought their “A” game, and that is because you wanted to bring your “A” game for this group of people.”

When the film won multiple Golden Globes in early January, Heyward squealed with delight, saying she was “over the moon.”

Her elation this awards season had been limited to enthusiasm for her nominated collaborators on the film, but that changed when “Three Billboards” was nominated for an Art Director’s Guild award.

“When they told me about the Art Director’s Guild nomination I thought ‘Oh, good for Inbal,’ and then I got an email saying ‘we don’t have your address’ and I thought ‘why do they need my address?’ and they’re like, ‘no, you share the award as part of the team,’” Heyward said.

While the film did not get an Academy Award nomination for production design, Heyward will definitely be watching the show when it airs on Sunday, March 4 with bated breath.

“If it wins best picture I think we all share that, because it took everyone to make it,” she said.

The Art Director’s Guild Awards will be given out on Saturday, Jan. 27. The Academy Awards are Sunday, March 4 at 8 p.m.

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 9:22 AM with the headline "This Bluffton woman had a hand in making a 2018 Oscar nominee for best picture."