Art Direction for Film and Video

by Robert Olson

  Here are some general categories:

  Iowa, general landscape

  Small towns (general)

  Houses, exterior (Patty)

  Houses, interior (Patty)

  Newspaper offices (Richard)

  Kitchens, 1939 (Mrs. Harrison)

  Parks, Iowa small town

  Hotel rooms (Sweden)

  Go through the pile and place the material in subject-labeled folders. Then, while you’re making sketches, you can find individual categories without having to sift through the entire stack. Clear some flat workspace in your vast studio or on the breakfast bar where you can lay out the folders.

  DESIGNING FROM MATERIALS

  Iowa, General Landscape

  For this project, the general landscape material will be of limited use because most of the sets are interiors. The things in this folder will be useful when it’s time to find or create backings to use outside doors and windows. If this were a film feature, this file would be one of the most useful because a film production on location would be concerned with the appearance of the landscape more than a studio production with just interior sets.

  The most we will need to see of the landscape – other than generic scenes used as stock program opening establishing shots – are some glimpses through doors and windows and in the park scenes to be shot on the stage. If individual houses seen in exterior photography are identified as places where specific characters live, you will need to take detailed photographs of these structures from many angles in case you will need to reproduce portions of them on stage.

  Small Towns, General

  The material in this folder is similar in nature to the general landscape group, but it shows buildings and architectural style and detail, again useful for background design and painting.

  Most old towns undergo “modernization” along the way. If you were to design these lower facades to look like their original condition, what would you do to alter them?

  Is this a contemporary house design, or an updated old house? What do you see in this photograph that makes you think so?

  Houses, Exterior (Patty)

  Look at the forms of the houses, and the materials, colors, and textures created by occupants and weather conditions. Is the house covered with aluminum siding, which is wider than the original wood siding? Has the house been painted many times, revealed by peeling coats of paint? Is the house in keeping with Patty’s background as you know it from the script? What kinds of downspouts, roof surfaces, and chimneys do you see? Is the house well-kept? What kind of shrubbery grows around the house?

  Houses, Interior (Patty)

  Our study of the script tells us that only the front hall, the inside of the front door, and the living room will be needed for the pilot episode. This does not mean that you cannot use elements from other rooms if they seem appropriate and useful for the two areas you need to create. Patty’s living room might be a combination of old and new, because this is the house in which she has lived all her life. Therefore, the room would probably contain old and new furniture and objects.

  Look at the walls and windows in your research photographs. Houses change and have their own personalities. Do you see a combination of tall older windows and aluminum-framed picture windows? Are the walls papered? What are the colors and patterns? Has someone installed printed wood panels over the original wall surfaces? What kinds of moldings show at the baseboards and door frames? Are the floors carpeted wall-to-wall or does wood flooring show around the edges of area rugs?

  Study the ceilings because you may want to include portions to keep the cameras from overshooting the upper parts of the set. Observe the styles of furniture in your photographs. Perhaps Patty’s old sofa would have been reupholstered in a contemporary fabric.

  Newspaper Offices (Richard)

  When Richard took over the newspaper building, how would he have changed it? Would he have left the inside and outside as he found it? Once again, imagine his character, age, and future hopes as described by the scriptwriter. How would he alter the office and living quarters?

  Because the previous owner retired at the age of 75, he probably was still using the same typesetting equipment and press he had started out with. Richard might put in more contemporary devices. His living quarters would reflect his all-absorbing interest in the business but not so much in his quarters.

  Mrs. Harrison’s Kitchen (1938)

  Back into the past with this set. You have found reliable research material and have studied it thoroughly, watching out for the old demon – the new toaster in the old set.

  Pay attention to the windows in the research photographs. Curtains and frames help establish a sense of time. You will need a backing outside the windows, so think about using a wood fence in front of a stock generalized small town scene. Perhaps a miniature water tower between the fence and the backing would help give depth to the exterior view.

  Refer to the script to see if the characters enter and exit through interior doors. If they do, provide suitable wild (movable) walls that the camera can see through open doors.

  Parks, Small Town

  Instead of walls, floor, and ceilings, these photographs show ground, sky, and vegetation. To be convincing, exteriors on stages call for much thought and skill. If you try to get by with some plastic tree trunks and wrinkled grassmats, expect to hear cries of rage from the director. Select research material that shows examples of local vegetation. Remember that avocado trees do not grow in Iowa parks.

  Don’t try to create a forest. Create the illusion of a larger park using economical means such as foreground shrubbery and overhead branches. The audience will believe that the rest of the trees and shrubs are just outside the picture. If the plantings do not have to be in place for more than a day or two, cared-for live plants will work. Realistic artificial plants are more practical, and chemically preserved natural foliage is available at larger production centers.

  Look at the ground surfaces in your photographs. A park can have large areas of gravel or concrete, which is a way to avoid the wrinkled grassmat disaster. Some stages at large studios have real dirt floors, but because you may not have that advantage, think of ways to cover a vinyl-covered stage floor so that it “reads” as grass, dirt, or concrete.

  What do you see beyond the ground surface? A possibility is a view of the town in the distance, depicted on a painted backing. Another could be a building beside the park coming into the camera frame at an angle.

  If you decide to use a backing, think carefully about how to blend the ground surfaces into the painted scene so that the camera does not see an obvious line where the ground meets the sky. A built-up hill can solve that problem, or irregular rows of shrubbery, which diminish in size as they move away from the camera. Be sure that the lighting director does not allow the shrubbery to cast shadows onto the painted backing.

  Place some three-dimensional objects in the set to give the director and actors opportunities for action. A set of swings, some benches, a water fountain, and picnic tables will provide visual interest as well.

  Hotel Rooms, Sweden

  Proceed the same way, from general to specific, with this set. The hotel might be an old building. Find furniture that says Sweden. A tile corner stove would say a lot about the locale. What do old Swedish hotel windows look like? How are they different from American hotel windows?

  If you can’t find a backing that depicts a Swedish city, perhaps you can squeeze the set budget to permit having one painted from your research photographs. If this lavish approach is not possible, put a piece of tiled roof outside the window with the sky showing behind it. Would it be too much to put an appropriately sized Swedish flag waving in a concealed electric-fan breeze above the roof? If the little water tower worked outside Mrs. Harrison’s kitchen window, a flag might do the job in Sweden.

  NONSPECIFIC RESEARCH

  All research material does not have to be of specific objects or places. Production designer Larry Miller uses
general material for inspiration:

  Sometimes I find a picture that has just the right color sense for the film, but has nothing to do with the story. When I can’t decide on a color for something, I can go to the picture and find the answer.

  •

  Now that you have some visual ideas rattling around in your head, put them together and make them visible to others. Turn to the next chapter to see how.

  11

  MAKE SOME SKETCHES

  A good way to put collected images together and communicate visual ideas is to make sketches. Later, we will make a simple model and construction drawings based on these sketches, but for now, just freely put your ideas on paper – successes and failures – and the set sketch to show your client will come together. This chapter shows you how to make a perfectly acceptable perspective sketch.

  Remember that sketches are not meant to hang in a museum (unless you become famous). Regard them as steps in the design process, as production designer Larry Miller illlustrates: “On the film Flamingo Kid, I did presentation boards with a color scheme for the Eldorado Club set—yellow and gold. The producer said, ‘I’m not too crazy about gold!’ so I did something else.”

  MATERIALS

  Tracing Paper

  No matter what your fifth-grade art teacher told you, it’s OK to trace. Don’t draw on opaque paper. You’ll have to transfer everything to tracing paper anyway, because it’s more expensive and difficult to duplicate sketches done on opaque paper. Tracing paper’s major quality is its transparency. If you spend a lot of time on a sketch, and want to keep only part of it, just trace the best parts onto another piece and throw the bad parts away. Also, opaque paper doesn’t work in a blueprint machine.

  Don’t Judge Tracing Paper by Its Cover

  Tracing paper comes in rolls, sheets, and pads. The price of a roll seems high, but it’s the cheapest in the long run because you do not pay for cutting, padding, and covers. You can tear the right size piece of paper off the roll by placing it under a metal edge, or against the side of the kitchen table, or by cutting it with scissors.

  Save the Best for Later

  It’s not necessary to buy fine-quality paper for sketching, no matter what the salesperson may say. Save the tough better-quality paper for final construction drawings because it will have to stand up to a lot of erasing and will travel through the chemical mists and rollers of a blueprint machine.

  Drafting Tape

  Buy a roll of drafting tape, which is similar to masking tape. This useful stuff will come in handy later when you convert your sketch into construction drawings, and when you need to tape a good idea to the wall. Never use pushpins to fasten drawings to your drawing board. Pins make holes that can ruin beautiful lines and break lead points.

  A Little Talk About Pencils

  Unless you feel insecure without a large jar bristling with pencils, all you really need for sketching is a soft lead pencil such as 4B or 5B. Soft lead works best because it provides little resistance to being zipped across paper, makes clearly reproduceable lines, and can be smudged and smeared for professional-looking shading. All you need for that is your thumb.

  PATTY’S LIVING ROOM

  After collecting and studying your research materials, you have an impression of Patty’s living room. Remember that a set is not a real room; it is just a collection of information based on what you know about the time period, the town, and how you visualize Patty’s character. Tell the audience that only Patty could live in this set – not her uncle or grandmother.

  Give the room three-dimensional character for the camera so that it does not look like a painted theatrical backdrop. Set the windows and doorways in alcoves, use picture rails to give the walls character, and show logical changes in floor level. Don’t jam all the furniture against the walls, but group tables, chairs, and sofas out in the room, which will give the director and actors opportunities for action. Remember that all the furniture does not have to face the camera. Foreground pieces for the camera to look past enhance the real-room feeling.

  The audience must sense that the rest of the house is there, but they just don’t see it. Provide open doors, which give the camera glimpses of other rooms that may exist only as a flat with a picture hanging on it.

  How Big?

  Cameras make sets look larger than they appear to the eye, so if you want a wall to look 10 feet wide, you might make the wall 9 feet wide. If unsure about room sizes, measure some familiar rooms for reference. When making sketches of sets, don’t worry too much about exact dimensions, but make your drawing represent the set in general size and feeling. When you have designed some sets and see them sitting grandly on stage, you will develop a sense of how sketch appearances compare to the result.

  Remember that the producer and director, as well as other members of the company, will look at your preliminary sketches to get an impression of size, mood, and playing areas. When the producer tells you to make construction drawings, keep in mind what they have seen in the sketches so that you will not hear the dreaded words: “I didn’t know it was going to look like that!”

  Perspective

  To make the sketch look three-dimensional, you need to use a simple system of drawing called one-point perspective. Don’t be alarmed at that dreaded word; it’s just a mechanical device that will serve you well all the days of your design life. Tape the corners of an 18" x 24" piece of tracing paper to your drawing surface. If your sketch is smaller than 18" x 24", clients at production meetings will not be able to see it clearly from across the room. A reducing copying machine can make smaller versions of the sketch, which you can distribute at the meeting.

  Slightly below the center of your taped-down tracing paper, draw a horizon line across the paper. At the center of the paper, make a dot. This dot represents the vanishing point where all extended lines representing the tops and bottoms of the right- and left-side set walls will vanish. In this simple perspective system, the lines representing the top and bottom of the set’s back wall will be above and below and parallel to the horizon line.

  Visualize how much space the finished drawing will occupy. Before you begin drawing the set walls, remember that your finished drawing should be roughly centered on the paper with about two inches of border around the edges. If you start drawing down in one corner, you will end up with vast areas of blank territory on the rest of the paper.

  Draw the Back Wall

  About six inches above the horizon line with the dot, draw a line to represent the top of the back (upstage) wall, and draw another line about four inches below the horizon line to represent the bottom of the upstage wall. Then draw vertical lines defining the length of the upstage wall. Now draw longer vertical lines a few inches to the right and left of the lines indicating the ends of the upstage wall and connect the tops and bottoms to the top and bottom corners of the upstage wall. Place these angled lines by putting your ruler or straightedge on the dot, line the straightedge up on the appropriate corner of the upstage wall and end the line at the tops and bottoms of the vertical lines. Voila! You have now created what looks like a three-sided box with no top, bottom, or front.

  Add a little stylized human figure near the front, which will give a size comparison for the room. From now on, be sure that all parallel lines moving away from the front end at the vanishing point dot if extended.

  What Do We Do with the Box?

  Perspective wasn’t so hard, now, was it? Surely you can see that the foundation of Patty’s living room has emerged. Draw doors and windows and remember that the ps and bottoms of lines indicating these additions vanish at the horizon line the same way the tops and bottoms of the side walls do. Establish other dots on the horizon line for the vanishing points of objects you draw at angles.

  Don’t draw a complete ceiling, because this surface can complicate the lighting designer’s job, but you might put in a piece of ceiling at the back to keep the camera from overshooting the set and to give the idea that the rest of the cei
ling exists. Add furniture, pictures, and other set dressing, but keep the perspective rule in mind.

  Give your drawing some freehand character, thumb-smudge some of the lines and use the side of your pencil lead to create shadows. Take a hard look at the drawing to see if you need to make some tentative lines bolder. Some careless abandon at this point will remove the tight wiry look that mechanically produced sketches can have. It will also make the company certain that they have hired a talented designer who knows how to make lively sketches.

  GET COST ESTIMATES

  You, the designer, need to know if your set fits the production budget. Later, when you have finished the construction drawings, you will take them to construction shops to get firm bids. For now, however, take your uncolored tracing paper sketch to some shops and ask them to give you preliminary cost information. Most shops are glad to do this, because you may ask them for a construction bid later.

  The construction shop bases their quick estimate on dollars per running foot of wall and how much detailing they see. Their bid will not include any set dressing, so you will need to visit property rental shops to get estimates. If you find that the estimates average higher than your budget, eliminate some set elements such as fancy door moldings, platforms, or jogs in walls. The construction shop supervisor can illustrate other ways to bring costs down, such as using already-built stock flats. Make the producer aware of changes you need to make.

  No Coloring Yet

  Stifle the urge to color your original sketch at this point. Take the sketch to a blueprint shop and get prints on paper. They are not expensive, so get some extras in case of coffee spills. You will be thrilled to see how much the printing process enhances your sketch. Shops offer blue-, black-, and brown-line prints. Trim and mount the print on mat board with spray glue, rubber cement, or dry-mount tissue.