‘A Complete Unknown’ Production Designer François Audouy Captures the Electricity, Creativity Of 60s-Era Greenwich Village

Imagine the moment Oscar-nominee Timothée Chalamet walks into Greenwich Village as the iconic folk singer Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Dylan enters a world that’s both completely foreign yet full of exciting potential. He strides through the streets with not exactly a swagger but with a definite aura of quiet confidence. The moment may be fleeting, but it’s incredibly important to the narrative of Mangold’s Dylan biopic.

Recreating that era in Greenwich Village history became a key task for A Complete Unknown‘s production designer François Audouy (Ford v. Ferrari, Logan). To Audouy, the importance of the scene and of the overall design realized on the film wasn’t about stuffing every frame with period detail. Rather, orienting the audience within the era — transporting them back to 1960s Greenwich Village — evolved as priority number one.

“What was so unusual about this film is that there was no one set that sucked up all our resources. The challenge for us was maintaining a tone and a feeling through all of our 75 sets we created for the film, so there was a consistent authentic feeling throughout the story’s arc,” 16-time Art Directors Guild award nominee Audouy recalled. “This movie really taught me something I had never considered before — that the size of the sets should always take a back seat to the efforts of helping create an emotional response from the audience and to hopefully help them feel something profound. That’s the job really, to take the audience away on an experience where they feel transported.”

A Complete Unknown indeed transports the audience to Bob Dylan’s emergence and ascension within the 1960s folk music scene. Every detail of the world Audouy created feels explicitly authentic and carefully chosen to recreate and reflect the everyday life of a young Bob Dylan and the musicians he befriends on his rise to fame. In addition to the Greenwich Village designs, Audouy created wildly different environments that reflect the characters who inhabit them. Think of Pete Seeger’s (Edward Norton) log cabin. Think of Bob Dylan’s first apartment. Or of Woody Guthrie’s room at Greystone Hospital. Or of critical music locations such as Gerde’s Folk City or the legendary Columbia Records. Every location extensive researched and lovingly recreated by Audouy and his team.

Here, in an interview with The Contending, François Audouy shares key details about his journey into the world of Bob Dylan and A Complete Unknown. He talks about recreating the Dylan and Seeger homes, and what each location infers about the characters. He further elaborates on the process used to recreate 60s-era Greenwich Village and several crucial stops along Dylan’s rise to prominence, including the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that closes the film.

You can find more detail and set photos of Audouy’s work on his website’s A Complete Unknown case study. A Complete Unknown currently plays in theaters nationwide.

The Contending: I’m fascinated by the differences between Bob’s apartment and Pete’s cabin. Obviously, these are two very different men at very different stages in their lives, but can you describe the process in creating each space?

François Audouy: Both spaces started with an obsessive amount of research. In the base of Bob’s apartment, we had the good fortune of being aided by Bob Dylan’s manager who put us in touch with the estates of Ted Russell and Don Hunstein, who had both photographed Dylan in his apartment in the early 1960s. We had access to all their original negatives—hundreds of them—and set about recreating the space with a magnifying glass to the reference. We also found many details in Suze Rotolo’s memoir “A Freewheelin’ Time,” which recounted their youthful relationship’s raw, transient energy.

My Set Decorator Regina Graves and I went really deep into the layering of the details, down to curating his record collection and also recreating his desk and typewriter, with hand-written extracts of Dylan’s writing. Everything was practical and interactive, from the kitchen to the record player to the typewriter. When it was finished, the effect was walking through a time machine. It took everyone’s breath away.

Research for Pete Seeger’s cabin was a bit more challenging to source, but we found nuggets in Seeger’s autobiography “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” It was important for me to recreate the stability, purpose, and a deep connection to nature that was found in the family cabin that Pete and Toshi built in 1949. We found a hand-built cabin near the Pennsylvania border, which we meticulously dressed to reflect Pete’s folk sensibilities. From “Freedom Red” appliances to handmade furniture, every detail was meant to embody his craftsmanship and rooted ideology.

The Contending: What does each space say about the character?

François Audouy: Bob’s apartment speaks to the youth and vulnerability of a 19-year old young man who’s moved into his first apartment amidst an artistic community. It’s chaotic but full of promise, showing a man deeply in tune with music, literature, art and the news. The apartment is a reflection of the Village itself—imperfect yet bursting with creative energy.

Pete’s cabin, on the other hand, conveys wisdom and a deliberate lifestyle. The handmade quality of the space and its eclectic instruments reflect Seeger’s belief in the power of simplicity and community. The cabin is a family space, and also a refuge, a place to reflect and build a movement.

The Contending: How did you recreate 1960s-era Greenwich Village? What were some key hallmarks of the era you sought to include within your designs?

François Audouy: This was my biggest challenge. I wanted to capture the electrifying moment when Greenwich Village became a crucible of creativity in the early 60s. I also wanted audiences to feel something, to feel a neighborhood inhabited by icons like Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsbourg, Edward Hopper, Dylan Thomas—who all lived there at the time. Recreating the Village was also about capturing the texture of the streets: faded storefronts, hand-painted signage, and the patina of a neighborhood where art was made in smoky cafes and tiny apartments. We ended up recreating many iconic spots in the Village like the Gaslight Café, Café Wha, Gerdes Folk City, the Kettle of Fish, Cafe Bizarre, Cafe Figaro and of course the Folklife Center which lay at the heart of MacDougal Street at the time.

The Contending: You design multiple performance spaces that reflect Bob Dylan’s journey. Tell me about recreating, first, Gerde’s Folk City. I assume you had photos that inspired the design, but was authenticity the primary driver for your design here?

François Audouy: Authenticity was absolutely key, but we also wanted to convey the feeling of a community excited by this burgeoning folk scene. Gerde’s was small, almost claustrophobic, with decaying plaster walls and intimate stage lighting that pulled focus onto the performer. It was erected at the site of a failing Italian restaurant, and you could still feel those bones with the red checkered tablecloths. We used archival photos as a base but added layers of detail, like scuffed floors, low-hanging lights, and 8×10 photos of the folk acts that had graced the stage of the venue.

The Contending: Moving to Dylan’s recording sessions in Columbia Records’ Studio A, I’d read that you “forensically” reconstructed that set. Here, it would appear to me that period authenticity is critical given the recording instruments and importance of the location within the mythology of Bob Dylan. Talk to me about the challenges of recreating that location.

François Audouy: Studio A was a sacred space for Dylan fans, so we approached it with reverence. Using over 1,500 archival photos, we built a 1:1 replica of the studio, down to the exact dimensions and placement of baffle walls. The mixing board was reconstructed as a functioning prop with working VU meters. Every microphone, piano, and organ was authentic, and we even ensured they were wired to capture live sound on set. I even went as far as attempting to make the studio sound authentic, and I brought in our production Sound Mixer to help engineer the room to remove the reverb and checked that the curtains and sound baffling helped make the live recordings sound perfect.

The Contending: By the end of the film, we’ve progressed to the Newport Folk Festival where Dylan goes electric. Tell me about recreating that space and how you aligned it with photos of the actual 1965 event.

François Audouy: The Newport Folk Festival set was one of our most ambitious, as it needed to represent a cultural shift. We relied heavily on Murray Lerner’s *Festival* documentary for reference, carefully recreating the stage, scaffolding, and banners. Regina brought in thousands of vintage folding chairs to replicate the audience’s seating. The challenge with this set was that the stage at the actual festival was quite boring, meaning that it didn’t have any layers in the wings that would photograph well, so I ended up designing a more interesting space with depth and texture, because I knew these scenes would mainly play out with many angles looking towards the sides of the stage.