Master class with a production designer
Sep. 30th, 2005 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blue_lotus13I have learned that if you want to work in film, you must generally be very very goodlooking or very eccentric. It is best if you are a combination of both. Talking to people at the Trade Forum was fun, and gave me a look into what the people behind the scenes are like.
I have also decided that there are some wacked out volunteers. There was one woman who was pouting because she felt that someone else was stealing her job, and another one who was so high strung, panicky and stressed that I wanted to hold her down and cram some valium down her throat.
Anyway, I watched the production designer class yesterday. I didn't really know what a production designer did, so I was quite interested to learn. Apparently they decide the general mood and tone of the piece, draw sketches and decide what everything will look like. They constantly communicate with the writers and directors, and help find locations for the movie, and solve technical problems. Production designers really help create the mood and tone of a movie.
For the master session with David Gassner, we watched short clips of the films that he did production design for, and then he talked about each film and the audience asked questions.
Here are some interesting tidbits that I learned-
1. The fish in "Big Fish" was half animatronic and half CGI. Creating the world depicted in the film was challenging because everything had to look very magical and somewhat surreal.
2. Designs for the movie "The Hudsucker proxy" was drawn out on one long sheet of paper which measured 80 feet.
3. "Waterworld" would never have been made in the same way today, because there have been so many technological advances. Kevin Costner wanted to make the movie and sail around, despite the fact that he had never sailed and got seasick on water. The politics of making this movie were horrendous, but Gassner was quite classy and did not go into details.
4. The Coen brothers like to work very closely with their production designer and have the ideas completely fleshed out from the get-go. Scouting for "Oh, brother where art thou", took a long time because they wanted the movie to look iconic. During the filming, the scenery turned green so they had to edit everything to gold, which took them about three weeks.
5. "The Truman show" was shot in a planned community designed by a very strange architect.
6. David Gassner won an Oscar for production design on "Bugsy" and was also nominated for production design for "Barton Fink" that same year.
7. Gassner was involved for the production design for the upcoming "Jarhead", a film about the first Gulf war.
I have also decided that there are some wacked out volunteers. There was one woman who was pouting because she felt that someone else was stealing her job, and another one who was so high strung, panicky and stressed that I wanted to hold her down and cram some valium down her throat.
Anyway, I watched the production designer class yesterday. I didn't really know what a production designer did, so I was quite interested to learn. Apparently they decide the general mood and tone of the piece, draw sketches and decide what everything will look like. They constantly communicate with the writers and directors, and help find locations for the movie, and solve technical problems. Production designers really help create the mood and tone of a movie.
For the master session with David Gassner, we watched short clips of the films that he did production design for, and then he talked about each film and the audience asked questions.
Here are some interesting tidbits that I learned-
1. The fish in "Big Fish" was half animatronic and half CGI. Creating the world depicted in the film was challenging because everything had to look very magical and somewhat surreal.
2. Designs for the movie "The Hudsucker proxy" was drawn out on one long sheet of paper which measured 80 feet.
3. "Waterworld" would never have been made in the same way today, because there have been so many technological advances. Kevin Costner wanted to make the movie and sail around, despite the fact that he had never sailed and got seasick on water. The politics of making this movie were horrendous, but Gassner was quite classy and did not go into details.
4. The Coen brothers like to work very closely with their production designer and have the ideas completely fleshed out from the get-go. Scouting for "Oh, brother where art thou", took a long time because they wanted the movie to look iconic. During the filming, the scenery turned green so they had to edit everything to gold, which took them about three weeks.
5. "The Truman show" was shot in a planned community designed by a very strange architect.
6. David Gassner won an Oscar for production design on "Bugsy" and was also nominated for production design for "Barton Fink" that same year.
7. Gassner was involved for the production design for the upcoming "Jarhead", a film about the first Gulf war.
