The Oasis is the rare house where the location and the set are the same thing. A 6,000-square-foot Moroccan-inspired compound close to Abbot Kinney in Venice, it was designed and built by the fashion photographer Philip Dixon as a house that would photograph well: hand-finished plaster, exposed timber, water running between the rooms, and a cactus garden inside high walls. It has been working in front of cameras for decades. Here is what it looks like on camera, what a production actually gets, and how to book it.
Inside the Oasis: Interiors, Light and Decor
The pool court is the spine of the house. A long turquoise pool threads between the plaster volumes and runs right up to the open rooms, so the camera can look down the water, across the stone crossings, or back through layered doorways into the interiors. An egg-shaped vessel standing in the water is the sculptural center of the property, and it turns up in the frame from most angles. Covered terraces along the pool give a crew shade for monitors and a way to move between setups without crossing the shot.
Inside, the rooms keep the same sculptural mood without looking dressed. The main living areas are broad and high, with exposed wood beams, matte plaster walls and concrete floors that leave real room for camera, lighting and movement. One lounge centers on a rustic stone fireplace and floor-level rugs. Another has a built-in banquette beneath an opening onto the garden, which keeps the sightlines clean and lateral. Most rooms connect through wide plaster openings rather than doors, so a scene can travel from the kitchen to the dining table to the lounge without a cut.
The decor is built in rather than placed. The kitchen is concrete, grounded by a substantial island, with distressed wood cabinet fronts and open plaster shelving that carries the pottery and bowls that run through the house. Upstairs, wide plank floors, a low platform bed under a suspended fabric canopy and a timber ceiling continue the language. The most controlled space on the property is an enclosed ochre-toned chamber that takes most of its light from a single doorway, which makes it the place to go when the sun outside is too hard.
The light is what the house is built around. Overhead sun makes the pool court bright and graphic, with hard reflections off the water and crisp shadows across the pale plaster. The garden-facing openings push strong side light into the living rooms, where the timber roofs and deep overhangs soften it fast. As the sun moves, a crew shifts from the pool court to the shaded dining room to the ochre chamber and does not run out of a usable room.
The Cactus Garden and the Courtyards
Past the pool the property turns into a contained desert. Mature agaves, prickly pear, columnar cacti, palms and branching yuccas grow out of pebble beds and boulders along winding concrete paths, and the high perimeter walls keep the compound private from the surrounding streets. It reads as somewhere far outside Southern California.
A separate hand-plastered courtyard is the most Moroccan corner of the property: rounded stairs, niches, carved wood trim and oversized urns arranged along a ledge, with a daybed set into a plaster alcove below. Rusted steel gates and a weathered timber wall on the garden side add two harder textures for anyone who needs a break from plaster.
The Studio Upstairs
What separates the Oasis from other houses with good light is the dedicated photography studio on the upper level. It has two built-in sets separated by a picture-frame style divider, mottled gray walls and large overhead skylights, with enough open floor to keep real separation between subject, camera and equipment. The skylights give still photographers a broad top source, and the second bay can hold stands, carts and monitoring without crowding the set. A steel stair and a rusted steel door give the room its own texture, so the studio is a look, not just a workroom. A magazine or lookbook day can shoot the house in the morning and finish on a controlled set upstairs without a company move.
The Oasis House on Camera
The mansion has been published in Architectural Digest, Volterre, MyDomaine and Apartment Therapy, and it has carried covers. Marie Claire put Julia Roberts on its December 2013 cover and shot the editorial in the courtyards. Complex photographed A$AP Rocky on the plaster steps among the agaves for its cover. Women's Health ran an Eva Mendes cover story from the property. Our portfolio holds fourteen jobs at the house. Beyond the covers there are Guess and Guess by Marciano campaigns, Frontgate's outdoor catalog staged around the pool court, Lulus and Alo Yoga in the cactus garden and the pool court, and lookbooks for BHLDN, Free People, Joie, Maje and Michael Stars on the concrete stairs and terraces. The bookings have not slowed. In the last eighteen months the house has hosted shoots for Ann Taylor, Paige, Rails, Torrid, La Blanca, Andre Assous, Bleu Rod Beattie, Fashion Nova and Nordstrom, and a Coco de Mer fragrance campaign. The tear sheets sit at the end of the gallery on the Oasis listing. It suits lookbooks, high-fashion editorial, celebrity portraits, commercials and music video.
The practical side is unusually easy for a house this distinctive. The looks are close together without repeating, so equipment moves between interior and exterior setups while the cross-property views stay intact. Furnished patios and built-in seating can stay in frame as dressed environments or serve as holding during the day. The compound is gated. Parking is close, and a covered drive takes the load-in. For coverage, the strongest axes run along the pool and through the connected kitchen and lounge openings, with a third from the garden back toward the concrete facade.
Venice is a City of Los Angeles neighborhood, so the address runs through FilmLA. Pulling the permit is the production's job, and the listing page's Pull My Permit button reaches the permit expert we refer clients to.
Book the Oasis in Venice
The Oasis is represented exclusively by Image Locations. Start from the Oasis listing to see the full gallery, then send us your dates, the crew size and whether the day is stills, motion or both, and we will come back with availability. If the brief needs a second Venice look on the same day, our Venice filming locations page holds the neighborhood's bungalows, canal houses and beach properties, including Bungalow 15, a canal-front Cape Cod bungalow elsewhere in Venice.
Send us the boards and we will tell you whether the Oasis is the house for them.
