Production and design tutorial by Allun Davies.

Friday 1^st March 2011

Production and design tutorial by Allun Davies

The aim of this tutorial was to consider visual aspects of the film, understand the role of the production designer/art director, to create mood boards for the film, to plan out your film scene by scene with visual elements in mind and to consider set, location and props as vital elements in telling the story.

During the tutorial Allun advised us to consider particular aspects in production design. These include:

• Set design
• Scenic painting: Here we can include illustration.
• Locations: Take lots of pictures of locations you’d like to use in the film.
• Props: Look in charity shops, collaborate with other art students to help you make props
• Costume Props: look in costume shops. E.g. Angels ( Near
  Charing Cross Road
  ).
• Lighting: Experiment with how lighting creates a mood in film. For example, you can use candle light, direct lighting and kino flow. Also film at different times of the day where natural lighting differs. Do lots of lighting tests.
• Symbolism: You can add objects to scenes that are not obvious and play with our sub conscious. To help incorporate symbolism in the film it would be a good idea to deeply analysis scenes and question films.
• Colour: Experiment with colour to create certain moods.
• Special effects with camera:  Experiment by putting objects and material in front of the camera to create different effects. For example, plastic bags, boxes, glass, fabric, coloured gels.
• Special effects in post production: e.g. animation.
• Cut away shots: A cut away shot is filmed away from the main action. It gives a sense of air a breath to the film. It is usually show at the beginning or end of the film.
• Character design: Whilst creating a character consider clothes, colour, hair, makeup to send the viewer a message of what the character is trying to tell.  A script will help define the character. A good film to watch for styling is the fifth element.

Planning:

One way of organising and planning a film is to create a table like the one shown below known as a designer grid. The table below is just an example of what it would look like.

Scene	Time	Location	Characters	Production design analysis
1	Morning	Bedroom	Lady Diana	Set build in studio, green birds, wallpaper, vintage props and furniture al painted in yellow, smoke machine for haze effect. Day light
2	Afternoon	Kitchen	Queen mum	70’s style kitchen in location (brains house) strange paper flower props, floor covered in grass. Green slim on door. Kino flow lights.

Visualization:

A key way to help you visualize what your film will look like is to create mood boards for each one of your scenes. It would also help to create character based mood boards considering all the visual aspects of your character and any written description you have created.

Furthermore, when creating props and sets, these should be sketched out from multiple view angles and annotated with material samples.

Recourses:

Lastly it is important to create a detailed list of your resources you have between you all. For example, creative tools like, paints, brushes, staple guns, tapes , adhesives etc. Furthermore, props, spaces, or locations for filming may also be useful recourses too.