Production Designer Career

Production Designer Career

The Real Poop

Wormholes, black holes, and space ships—oh my!

Before he could envision and design a spaceship plunging through black holes, Interstellar’s production designer got the low-down on some serious math and physics, and had to learn time-space theory from scratch (although he also may have had some help from a hot-shot Cal Tech physicist, who was also the film’s executive producer).

Sound like a breeze? Can you design what a breeze looks like? Anyway, that’s just part of the job of a production designer, whose responsibility is to take the film director’s concepts and themes and turn them into a vision that shines on film.

Building sets, finding the right locations and the right props, and using CGI are all part of production design. And while production design involves the entire art department, it’s ultimately the production designer who has to see it first before he can hand it off to the art director (who will then work with everyone else to turn the vision into a reality).

The chain of command on a film set looks a little something like this:

  • Writer: Writes a story, while describing a thing and/or location—like a spaceship plunging through a black hole.
  • Director: Says, “I want to feel the power of that black hole sucking the life out of that spaceship.”
  • Director of Photography: Says, “Make sure there’s a way I can light the black hole so I can see it and it doesn’t just all look dark.”
  • Production Designer: Goes home, thinks, draws, sketches, and comes up with a plan. Then speaks with a Cal Tech physicist (who’s also a producer), speaks with the director, and finally gets an idea of how this is supposed to look. Worries he’s going to look silly and come up with something the director will hate and therefore fire him from this fabulous film. Double checks things with physicist, DP, and director. Speaks to art director with explicit instructions on what this thing should look like.
  • Art Director: Takes the idea and information and passes it along to the CGI and SFX team, who create the look that is then taken back for the production designer to sign off on.
  • Production Designer: Says, Good job! and takes it to the director who loves it and...poof, an award-winning production design on one single element is born.

Now do that for the entire film, you production designer, you.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Passionate intensity (isn’t that right, Yeats?)
  • The ability to conceptualize ideas on a grand scale and present them visually to the director
  • A really good pen...or maybe a couple
  • A degree in art, architecture, or both, from a really good college
  • A minor in film (or at least a solid film background)
  • An MFA in production design doesn’t hurt—at least it helps to make good connections that might come in handy later
  • Film connections (if you’re not born with them you need to make friends and influence people)
  • Vast amount of experience working on films in the art department, beginning in set design, working your way up to assistant art director, then art director, until you’re the big boss production designer
  • Membership in the Set Decorator’s Guild, the set designer’s union, and the Art Director’s Guild
  • Clean underwear—several sets
  • Superior computer architecture skills and the ability to use complicated 3D drafting programs like MAYA and AutoCAD
  • Accounting skills, so you can stay within budget and afford to design what you say you can
  • Big-time motivational skills or the ability to get anyone to do anything for you—because they really like and respect you and because they want to keep their jobs
  • Geek savvy to communicate with the CGI team

Sure makes you appreciate movies a little more, right?

A production designer is the perfect job for an artistic, talented, and brilliant control freak with an architectural or design background and a film school mentality. Production designers need to get along with everybody, command authority, see the big picture as well as little details, be a problem solver (who likes animals), be down with historical periods, have a keen sense of style, and can also channel the wishes of the film’s director—under budget. Whew! Is that enough for you?