{"id":1187031,"date":"2026-03-26T05:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1187031"},"modified":"2026-03-26T05:15:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:15:18","slug":"the-testament-of-ann-lee-sam-bader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/the-testament-of-ann-lee-sam-bader\/","title":{"rendered":"Craft: How Sam Bader Recreated the Shakers\u2019 World for The Testament of Ann Lee\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Shaker sect portrayed in Mona Fastvold\u2019s The Testament of Ann Lee <\/em>saw labor as a form of worship \u2014and believed that building a chair or a home could be like a prayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the film\u2019s production designer, Sam Bader, tried to emulate their commitment to craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bader set out to physically immerse audiences in the spiritual journey of Mother Ann Lee, the founding leader of the group who is played in the film by Amanda Seyfried. The real Ann Lee led her small band of followers from England to America in 1774, and the Christian group came to be known for ecstatic worship, celibacy, and handcrafted furniture so simple and sturdy that it remains prized today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bader relied on still-standing buildings from the Hancock Shaker Village, a historical site in Massachusetts, and new sets built primarily in Budapest, Hungary. He used paintings to imagine the pre-photographic world of the Shakers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cResearching, you look at artists like John Lewis Krimmel and Francis Guy, and see what homes looked like,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His designs were guided by the Shaker demand for functionality, and the cramped buildings of the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe base layer was a grasp of the 18th century, people\u2019s lived realities and work realities, and how people moved through space,\u201d Bader explains. \u201cPeople owned very little and had even less space to store it. The reality was that there weren\u2019t multi-roomed homes, especially for the lower class in England.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space in The Testam<\/strong>ent of Ann Lee<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The Tree of Life, a fixture in Shaker art, in <\/em>The Testament of Ann Lee. Searchlight Pictures<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fastvold wrote the film\u2019s script with her partner, Brady Corbet, with whom she also wrote 2024\u2019s The Brutalist<\/a>, <\/em>which he directed. Both The Testament of Ann Lee<\/em> and The Brutalist<\/em> are stories of starting a new life in America, and both make strong impressions with their bold production design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bader used the sets to chart the Shakers\u2019 precarious path from a gritty life in England to a better one across the Atlantic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life in England \u201cwas murkier, more muddled,\u201d Bader says. But when the Shakers move in the film to New York, \u201cthings open up with fresh builds, blue skies, and blue waters. It creates a spatial story arc, ending in utilitarian spaces that are in harmony with nature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fastvold and cinematographer William Rexer II shot on 35mm film because of its painterly quality. The film used \u201ca little limited CG, and mostly analog matte paintings, which give a handmade quality that melds well with celluloid,\u201d Bader notes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film\u2019s meeting-house facade, for example, was a freestanding structure with its roof extended by a CG matte painting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeeing the movie\u2019s first assembly, I lost track of which was which, even though I designed them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The painterly approach came naturally to Bader, who eschewed the use of AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI come from an oil painting background. I studied classical drawing and abstract oil painting from a young age, got into college on an art portfolio, and wound up in Los Angeles and USC with the idea of a studio art career,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He eventually moved to New York and landed a job as a production assistant for production designer Adam Stockhausen on Steven Spielberg\u2019s 2015 Bridge of Spies<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an unbroken chain from then to now,\u201d he adds. \u201cThe path through the art department to art directing is how you emerge as a production designer for shows at various budgets and scales.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam Bader on G<\/strong>ifts From the Shakers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
One of the paintings in <\/em>The Testament of Ann Lee. Searchlight Pictures<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most potent symbol in the film emerged from the Shakers\u2019 archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest symbolism that wasn\u2019t on the page, which I found with Mona, was the tree,\u201d Bader says. \u201cThe Biblical tree of life, Eden, and the apple orchard are all strong in Shaker art, and we wanted to riff on that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team also drew directly from the Shakers\u2019 \u201cgift drawings\u201d \u2014 works of art born from spiritual visions. The Shakers believed they were received from God, and often rendered them on simple cutouts of paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bader and Fastvold took artistic liberty to feature the drawings as murals on the walls of the film\u2019s sets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though there isn\u2019t a Shaker meeting house with painted murals as such, we wanted to riff on that,\u201d Bader says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film\u2019s title cards, meanwhile, are inspired by the \u201chieroglyphic, primitive, cave-painting-like motifs\u201d found in the Shaker\u2019s messages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen the movie ends, woodcuts, artwork, and photography become formalized in the audience\u2019s mind,\u201d says Bader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Testament of Ann Lee<\/a> is now available on video on demand, from Searchlight Pictures.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Main image: Amanda Seyfried leads the ensemble of <\/em>The Testament of Ann Lee. Searchlight Pictures<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Shaker sect portrayed in Mona Fastvold\u2019s The Testament of Ann Lee saw labor as a form of worship \u2014and","protected":false},"author":1810,"featured_media":1187032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_comments":false,"cm_data":"","cpt_newsletter_id":0,"tpd_coauthor":[],"tpd_feed_delay":{"delay_type":"default"},"is_tpd_lists_single_post":false,"tpd_featured_posts_arr":"","tpd_franchise_content":"","hide_featured_img_single_post":false,"msn_featured_video":[],"_msn_custom_title":"","tpd_featured_video":[],"tpd_sponsored_post_logo":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_link":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_width":0,"tpd_sponsored_enable_nofollow":true,"tpd_disable_incontent_ads":false,"tpd_disable_right_rail_ads":false,"tpd_disable_after_content_ads":false,"tpd_disable_header_ads":false,"tpd_disable_sticky_footer_ads":false,"tpd_disable_video_ads":false,"tpd_disable_outbrain":false,"tpd_affiliate_disclaimer":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[42006],"tags":[],"coauthor":[],"feeds":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1187031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-below-the-line"},"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Amanda2-428x179.jpg","fimg_url_thumb":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Amanda2-428x179.jpg","fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Amanda2-788x444.jpg","author_name":"Joshua Encinias","author_avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c052ab1d783fa160fdba1469df17eed89b9da27bea95fafad936218d1593a95?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/author\/joshua-encinias\/","coauthors":[],"primary_category":{"term_id":42006,"name":"Below the Line","slug":"below-the-line","taxonomy":"category","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/category\/below-the-line\/"},"featured_img_medium":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Amanda2-788x444.jpg","post_categories":["Below the Line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1810"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1187032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187031"},{"taxonomy":"coauthor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthor?post=1187031"},{"taxonomy":"feeds","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feeds?post=1187031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}