Production design means a lot to me. In the above left image, you can see the protagonist, Margret's, photography on the set's wall. In the right image, you can see the original set dec photo. Both the set dec photo, and the production still photograph, from my short "Grow the Fuck Up!", were taken by the same photographer, Colin Mills.
As an IATSE lighting technician, I've stepped foot onto more movie and television sets than I can count. For a lot of these shows, walking onto set, is like walking into an entirely different world. Period pieces, alien worlds, space ships, comic book worlds, urban and rural environments, and anything you can dream of. I once worked on a sci-fi show, where they built a forest in studio; that one was a tricky one to light, and I remember trying to navigate a boom lift, packed with lights, through all of those branches and the steel cables holding those trees up.
In both pre-production and production, what professional crews come up with is beyond belief. From the production designer, set designer, concept artists, drafters, carpenters, scenic painters, sculptors, makeup artists, props, wardrobe, set dec, and so many others, each position comes with a remarkable degree of specific skills/talents. It all puts my panning and tilting of lights to shame.
As an independent filmmaker, I've always tried to do as much with production design as my resources would allow. Finding good art department and design people on low to no budget shoots isn't easy. Lighting, grip, and sound people, looking to get a start, will jump at the opportunity. Art department people can often get work in multiple industries, and aren't married to film, so it takes a lot more work finding them and winning them over. On my first couple of short films, I just got friends to help out with production design and art department. For my third short film – the most ambitious of the seven – I wanted to go all out in all departments. I gained and lost multiple production designers and art directors leading up to the shoot. Keeping art department members in contact with each other, was also difficult; they all wanted to speak with me directly, rather than speak with each other. The whole process was extremely time consuming and frustrating, but in the end, it was worth it.
For my short film, “Grow the Fuck Up!”, I gave myself six months of pre-production, and I needed every hour of that time. At first, I couldn't find a production designer, no matter how hard I tried. I did half of the production design myself. I eventually promoted my property master, Renee Fulsom, to production designer, and gave her full credit. A friend of mine, Jason Hubbard, who I acted with in the “BC Renaissance Festival”, was a carpenter by trade, and was willing to take on the role of set designer. Jason also built custom set pieces – that our puppeteer could hide inside – as well as practical lights I designed myself.
A friend of mine at the time, was a professional props builder, and he got me in touch with Jeny Cassady, who did a great job modifying our teddy bear puppet. My good friend Carla Sutherland, who was the production designer on my second short film, lent us some of her paintings, and also painted one of our set pieces. Carla's brother Russell, helped us out a lot with props too. Carla and Russell had also been involved in the “BC Renaissance Festival”, oh so long ago. Our makeup artist, Kevin Priebe, did amazing work, both with the makeup, but also with lending us a model corpse he created, which we used for a set dec photo shoot. Our hair person, Dale Nault, went above and beyond on an ambitious flashback scene we shot, which had 25 characters in it.
There are a lot of good films out there: ones with a wonderful screenplay, great cinematography, sharp sound, and brilliant actors. It's often the production design that helps set a film apart from the crowd. There are only so many typical forest, apartment, and cafe sets a viewer can handle. Sometimes, you have to get weird and wild with the visuals.
You can check out the short film, "Grow the Fuck Up!" at https://youtu.be/c53JSPBooTw?si=zpbt_EWqi7sGlu4Z
If you wish to learn more about the author, Chris Griffin, you can check out his website at www.angrybearfilms.com
Comments