In 2019, IndieWire declared the house in “Parasite” the year’s best set. It tells the story’s principal dynamic between the wealthy and unsuspecting Park family and the poorer Kim family, who infiltrate their beautiful home. Director Bong Joon Ho envisioned the interaction between the two families as a cat-and-mouse game of spying, set in an open-plan house.

This layout allowed him to depict the spatial relationships between rooms using carefully crafted wide shots with great depth of field. Production designer Lee Ha Jun designed his set around Bong’s carefully storyboarded blocking and compositions.

When Bong returned to IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about his long-awaited sci-fi space expedition film “Mickey 17,” he explained that he adopted a completely different approach to spatial storytelling.

“With the rich house in ‘Parasite,’ it was important to create an illusion for the audience,” said Bong through translator Sharon Choi. “The...