Victorian London and Colorado Springs The Prestige
Nolan staged Victorian London in downtown Los Angeles
The film is set in turn-of-the-century London and Colorado Springs, but virtually all of it was shot in and around Los Angeles. Production designer Nathan Crowley searched for approximately 70 locations that could stand in for fin de siecle London, working from what he called a "visual script" -- scale models, images, and drawings built in Nolan's garage while the screenplay was still being written. (wikipedia, joblo)
Four downtown Los Angeles theaters served as the magicians' performance venues: the Los Angeles Theatre, the Palace Theatre, the Los Angeles Belasco, and the Tower Theatre. Crowley chose them because they "haven't been touched since the '20s and '30s" and offered "Victorian style" architecture with "realism and rawness." (joblo)
Crowley also transformed a section of the Universal back lot into Victorian London street scenes. The approach was consistent with Nolan's preference for practical locations over constructed sets -- only one set was built from scratch: the understage section housing the machinery for the larger illusions. (wikipedia)
Colorado Springs represents the point where magic becomes science fiction
Tesla's Colorado Springs laboratory marks the film's tonal shift. Before Colorado, the rivalry operates within the logic of Victorian stage magic -- doubles, trapdoors, misdirection. Colorado introduces science fiction: a machine that duplicates matter, an inventor whose real experiments were strange enough to make fictional ones plausible.
The real Nikola Tesla did conduct high-voltage experiments at a laboratory in Colorado Springs in 1899-1900, generating artificial lightning and claiming to have received extraterrestrial signals. Jonathan Nolan visited Colorado Springs to research Tesla's actual experiments and based the electric-bulb scene on real demonstrations Tesla conducted there. (wikipedia)
The Colorado scenes were filmed at several locations: Redstone Castle and the road toward Marble, Colorado, provided the mountain landscape. The Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills stood in for Angier's Colorado hotel. The electric-bulb demonstration -- in which Tesla wirelessly powers light bulbs scattered across a field -- was shot in the parking lot of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Osgood Castle provided additional exteriors. (movie-locations, wikipedia)
The two settings embody the film's central opposition
London is the world of performance -- stages, audiences, applause. Colorado is the world of invention -- laboratories, experiments, discovery. Borden lives entirely in London; his trick requires no technology, only commitment. Angier must leave London and travel to the frontier of science to find an answer he cannot invent himself.
The geographical division mirrors the class division between the magicians. Borden is rooted in working-class London, performing in small theaters. Angier, wealthy enough to finance a transatlantic journey and fund Tesla's experiments, moves between worlds. Colorado represents Angier's willingness to go further -- geographically and morally -- than Borden would.
Pfister used the settings to evolve the lighting palette
Cinematographer Wally Pfister used the transition between settings as a lighting strategy. London scenes rely on warm practical sources -- gas lamps, candles, overhead soft boxes -- reflecting the era's transitional lighting technology. The Colorado laboratory introduces harsh electrical illumination: Tesla's coils, arcing current, and wirelessly powered bulbs. The visual progression from warm firelight to cold electricity mirrors the narrative progression from stage magic to science fiction. (nofilmschool)
Nathan Crowley received an Oscar nomination for the production design
Crowley's work on The Prestige earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction (shared with set decorator Julie Ochipinti). The nomination recognized the achievement of creating a convincing period world almost entirely from existing Los Angeles locations. (wikipedia)