Brandon Tonner-Connolly is an Art Director’s Guild award-winning TV and film Production Designer. He most recently designed Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) and Sterlin Harjo and Ethan Hawke’s The Lowdown for FX. His other credits include Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo’s Peabody Award-winning, Emmy-nominated Reservation Dogs, for which he won an ADG award, as well as features The Bad Batch (Venice, Special Jury Prize Winner), The Big Sick (Sundance), Brigsby Bear (Cannes), and I Saw The TV Glow (Sundance, Berlin).
He also enjoys writing about the movies he’s obsessed with and how they relate to his own work, most recently in an article for Filmmaker Magazine about Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession and the intimate experience of watching a movie after helping to create it. His Filmmaker article “The Seven Arts of Working In Film” is part of the syllabus of Martin Scorsese’s Masterclass program.
The New Yorker
“...unleashes an outpouring of imagination and invention that places the film on a level of intricacy and extravagance comparable to that of Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
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Variety
Production designers Brandon Tonner-Connolly and Matt Hyland are let off the chain with a succession of stylized interiors and lurid, artificial backdrops where painted snow sits heavy on fir branches beneath a peachy purple twilight sky. Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Deadline
"What was so important to us is that we weren’t going to let anything go on the set that isn't 100% real that Jane can’t pick up and turn around and look at or that an actor can’t walk up to and read and think it's funny or insightful or in some way adds to their understanding of the world that we’re creating.”
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Phantasmag
It’s pretty surreal and unexpectedly emotional that these objects we created as an homage to real-world franchises are now, in and of themselves, becoming things people collect. It’s amazing that people are coveting them the same way we would a Friday the 13th trading card from the 80s. The only thing we didn’t get to do — I really wanted to have one of those sticks of pink gum that were included in the trading card packs from the 80s and 90s, which nobody ever chewed ‘cause they were so hard.
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Vulture
The Lowdown is powered by the shaggy-dog pleasures of watching Lee stumble through a Tulsa rendered with such vivid texture you can practically smell the Plains dust. It’s the kind of show that rewards kicking back and basking in its world.
Lee’s shop sits in an unassuming row next to a tax lawyer with whom he lunches and stores his valuables; a record shop his daughter frequents; and a diner called Sweet Emily’s, where he does his thinking…The world-building is lush… Read Full Article ︎︎︎
The AV Club
The best television is the kind that feels so textured and lived-in that you can basically smell it. And The Lowdown stinks to high heaven. The show is steeped in specificity, from the Production Design (you may want to pause scenes in the bookstore to read the spines of vintage paperbacks) to the world-building. Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Vulture
Every aspect of Reservation Dogs’ look was crafted with intention and it showed onscreen. “You’re giving people the opportunity to experience life in a different place,” Tonner-Connolly explains. “The character details we put into a set create intimacy, and intimacy builds empathy, and conveying that experience helps someone understand and feel another person’s world.” Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Variety
Authenticity was imperative to Sterlin Harjo, co-creator along with Taika Waititi of the half-hour comedy, which revolves around four teenagers who live on a reservation and dream of moving to California. Harjo, who grew up in Oklahoma, called on production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly to find the right organic look in towns like Okmulgee, center of the Muscogee reservation. Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Condé Nast Traveler
“These elements combined to present a large task for the production team: To identify and accurately represent spaces and experiences that have, for too long, been left off the silver screen. Brandon Tonner-Connolly, production designer for the show, tells us what it took to create the world of the Reservation Dogs—and why he hopes it will make viewers curious about this stretch of Oklahoma. “ Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Austin Chronicle
“Visually, the film is a kaleidoscopic pastiche of society’s debris, thanks to production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly. The frame is filled with all manner of eccentric ephemera (my favorite being a “Hang in there!” kitten painting, where the cat is clinging for life above a sea of flames).” Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Variety
“From a crafts perspective, “Brigsby” is all aces, but special recognition should go to the art department and designers involved in creating both the world of the “Brigsby” show and the underground bunker where James grew up.” Read Full Article ︎︎︎
Variety
“Production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly, meanwhile, cannily fashions a second-hand America using all the cultural debris that the nation apparently discarded along with these people…” Read Full Article ︎︎︎
The Hollywood Reporter
“... the movie’s grindhouse world remains vividly rendered and immersive, full of inventive touches from production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly…The Bad Batch looks sensational.” Read Full Article ︎︎︎