Week 9 - Set Dressing Ideas

The entire layout of the set is broken down into two main sections - the bathroom and the living room/kitchen. Within the open plan section, there are three main areas - firstly, the couch, which became a main piece of furniture as Joe works on her scripts in one of the key scenes and will be the base for our clutter props both in the post-birthday party set and during her pitch preparation. Secondly, the mood-board wall, as mentioned previously, sits to the right of the couch allowing Joe to go back and forth between the laptop and the physical mind maps of her ideas. Finally, the kitchen area will be used in the later half of the film as we are presented with a montage of Joe and Joanna spending time together. Prior to the scene showing Joe devising her script, we are presented with the mess left from the birthday party implied to have happened during the opening scene. Below are a few of my concept sketches for the set dressing as seen in the Production Bible.

Concept Sketch of Living Room Clutter

Concept Sketch of Couch Clutter (Scripts, Storyboards etc)

Concept Sketch of Party Remnants

Concept Sketch of Kitchen Clutter

The bathroom, similarly, has two main areas - the bathroom itself (toilet, sink and mirror) and the shower. To create the illusion of a separate bathroom, we have decided to hide the toilet and the shower by using framing. As a result, the set was reduced to the mirror and the sink which is seen in both the opening shot and the montage of Joe preparing for pitches. As the set was not built, the moving image crew experienced difficulties with setting up the close-up shots meant to be a representation of the mirror reflection. If the set had been built, however, these shots would have required less effort and repositioning of equipment and props to achieve a similar effect.

Rough Concept Art of Bathroom Ares & Set Dressing

In addition, we have also designed areas of the two rooms that wouldn't be picked up by the camera in wide shots but that could be used for B-Roll or close-ups to better indicate the space Joe resides in. For instance, within the living room space we decided to print out various photographs from previous photoshoots and events and scatter them throughout the apartment as a hint to Joe’s hobbies. The remnants of the party - event which is not shown on screen and is only implied through lighting and set design - also hints at consumption of alcohol and nicotine similar to the original state of the script.

Art is another one of Joe’s hobbies as portrayed through set design - it is implied that storyboards and sketches seen in her wall of ideas have been drawn by her; the storyboards and sketches were mostly repurposed from my first year module - Interactive Media where I had a similar role. We also see an unfinished sketch of Joanna being placed onto the wall once her character is established and their relationship begins - thus showing the inspiration Joe now has upon meeting her muse.

Joe’s wall also features a series of acetate negatives - often used for screen printing and cyanotypes - which entail Joe’s interest for older methods of capturing and documenting as opposed to new technologies. The primary image seen in most of the scenes is an inverted photograph of a pair of eyes - the image is taken off the wall upon Joe’s process of writing a script but is returned to its place once Joe wakes up with a pair of camera glasses. The image itself is actually the opening shot to one of the first short films I shot. In retrospective, as production designers, a lot of Joe’s character seen in the set dressing is a nod to our own creative work. For example, Joe’s drawings have been done by me on location, the acetates are inverted prints of my previous work, her photographs are part of mine, Sara’s and Aiza’s photoshoots and her mood-board as a whole reflects our previous interpretations of the original Joe script.