Week 11 - On-set & Off-set Production Design

The first two days of shooting and dressing for our short film have been mostly successful despite all of the mishaps, panic, and small safety issues. The first day saw the entire crew dealing with timing issues such as not being able to stay on schedule due to set-up difficulties and extras not showing up on time. As production designers, our process was much smoother than the moving image and sound pathways as once the set dressing for each scene was done we were only tasked with assisting with lighting and creating any additional props while shooting was ongoing. The initial party set involved a lot of glitter placement, trying to handle bottles of soda and alcohol without showing the labels, and preparing a store-bought cake for its close-ups. Tactfully creating a mess proved itself to be fairly fun, though cleaning up for the next set was less of an enjoyable experience.

Main Set - After Party

Sara assembled the camera glasses during our lunch break as we prepared the mood board and changed the set from its after-party messy state to a cleaner yet still disorganised work environment for Joe. As Sara discussed in her blog, we used script breakdowns, her own notebooks, my sketchpad, and our photography to decorate the set as well as the mood-board prop I discussed in an earlier blog.

The bathroom set went through a similar transformation - as the getting ready montage required a cleaner bathroom as opposed to the glittery chaos of the party scene. The final set for a part of the dream sequence involved us simply cleaning the sofa dressing and setting up simple one-point lighting for the extras to perform in.

Bathroom Set - Party Opening Scene

Bathroom Set - Pitch Montage

The second day involved much less set dressing and a lot more prop making as discussed in my previous blogs. The sets, while mostly the same as we have left them the day prior, had new additions of props such as the sketches of Joanna and the polaroids. Some of the sets filmed during this session also took place outdoors - which was a fairly unpleasant experience due to the weather conditions and early sundown. In terms of the outdoor sets, we were only able to assist with lighting - which can be seen sketched out in our Production Bible.

Day 2 - Outdoors Shoot, Kitchen Montage & Final Scene

Finally, I was not able to attend the third day of shooting in the M Studios as a lateral flow test I took on the day turned out to be positive. However, I did my best to help the team despite not being able to assist in person by finishing the storyboard for the scene early in the morning, rendering 180 panoramas for projections, and sketching out a layout of the studio set for the dream sequence - most of which can be seen in the PD Bible document.

Studio Projection Concept Sketch