Studio shoot research : production designer

 production designer 

the production deisgner has the role of creating real or an imagined world for the screen. They work in parrell to the current technology and current type of filmography. for example their are production designers for 

FILM

ANIMATION 

THEATRE

production design is baised around the detail and accommodating the views of directiors and producers alike. 

A good production designer first starts with the idea. the must first work with the writer, director and DOP to try best to invision the respective elements of each persons vision and capture it on a set. 

the writer will tell you the specfic time period and story baises of the set and the director will give his view on the purpose and vision of the set, then finally you will work with the DOP to best allow for the shots he invisions. 

it is very important to note down and remenber everything the other 3 say as to allow for coherence. 

the production designer the finally there to tell a visual story via the set. but you cant jump in to quickly. first and most importantly. you must research. especially obvousis on a story invisioning the external world you must make sure what you put on set matches the world the story is set. 

for example you cant have a tv in a set if that didnt excist in that time. 

this still from the prodution of the film turner by mike leigh is a perfect example of continuity. they had to recruate the 1832 summer exhibition at the londons royal acadmey of arts

they had to get every painting perfect and this required huge amount of research into the art of the period. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwEGx6_iliI

this video about the produciton design in revenant brings out several points. 

firstly orthantisity to the history of the period which is so importatn to creating a inmessive film. 

secondly working with location scouters to find a suitable place for the vision 

thirdly  about how the locations can have more than just a hisotorical meaning but also a methaphocial meaning through out the film. 

now we come to the story telling aspect of prouction design. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS47EXccx3I

as this video shows production design can tell you lots about a character through where his is an the situation you find him in. 

the film room is a great example of set design being so important in film story telling. firsly how building aspects of the set can inhance the experience for the cinematographer. she here being able to get a shot he just couldnt if he wasnt working with the set desginer. 

also SPOILERS for the film the mother and son spend almost the interity of the film trapped in this small room. this meant that set design was alway going to be put hugley into focus. as a production designer you must take into account the positioning of things in a ergonomic sense but also in an emotional. what toys do you play with when you have nothing else to do. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3xBpTNoo2Y

 designers usually appoint and manage an art department, which includes a design and construction team. They often form a strong partnership with a particular director, who they may work with on many productions.

this means that they work with costume designers and prop designers ext to better understand the vision. 

tasks might include:

• reading scripts to identify factors indicating a particular visual style;
• considering the production brief, which may be written or oral;
• meeting the producer and director to discuss concepts and production requirements;
• researching art history, background politics, historical information and producing design ideas;
• planning and monitoring the design budget;
• providing scale drawings or models for studio or theatre sets;
• producing design ideas for costumes, wigs, props, special effects, make-up and graphics;
• identifying and assessing potential studios and locations;
• sourcing appropriate materials and researching effects;
• presenting ideas to others involved in the production, such as actors and camera operators;
• researching, estimating and preparing a property list;
• hiring and managing an art department team or teams (depending on the size of the production);
• instructing the set construction company, scenic artists and special effects specialists and monitoring their work;
• liaising with the costume designer and the director of photography, as well as the props, lighting and sound directors;
• attending progress meetings, rehearsals and filming to advise on visual presentation;
• checking sets and locations during filming to make sure requirements are met and to deal with any queries.

(this is from prospects.com) 

design ideas : working within the budget is very important. you will be given a set amount of money to work with. you must share it well between things otherwise one set may look amazing and the other terrible. 

drawings are also very important to sement ideas visually. words can only do so much. its important to not just do one wide set drawing but also the little details 

for some things you must do in an archtecual style others in a close up style for example with props

some productions designer build physical modles to represent the set. 

production designers arnt prop deisgners or costume designers but the will sugest ideas for each and allow the respective role to take them and designer them fully. 

finally production deisgners must also work with special effects teams. 

their designs must work with the proposed special effects and create a working world witihn a world. 

this means the must look at the designs for the computer created world and match their set to fit with it. this proccess is becoming more and more popular. 

In conclusion 

Production Designers are major heads of department on film crews, and are responsible for the entire art department.

They help Directors to define and achieve the look and feel of a film.

Filming locations may range from a Victorian parlour, to a late-night café, to the interior of an alien space ship. The look of a set or location is vital in drawing the audience into the story and making a film convincing. A great deal of work and imagination goes into constructing the backdrop to any story and choosing or building locations and/or sets.

Production Designers begin work at the very early stages of pre-production. They may be asked to look at scripts to provide spending estimates before a Director is even approached. On first reading a screenplay, they assess the visual qualities that will help to create atmosphere and bring the story to life.

After preparing a careful breakdown of the script they meet with the Director to discuss how best to shoot the film and work out whether to use sets and/or locations, what should be built and what should be adapted and whether there is a visual theme that recurs throughout the film.

They also consider whether there are design elements that may give more depth to the film and whether CGI (computer generated imagery) should be used.

Production Designers must calculate the budgets and decide how the money and effort will be spent. Then there’s an intense period of research during which they and their Specialist Researchers source ideas from books, photographs, paintings, the internet, etc.

Production Designers deliver their design sketches (showing mood, atmosphere, lighting, composition, colour and texture) to Art Directors who oversee the production of technical drawings and models, which are used by the Construction Department to build the sets and adapt locations. Props Buyers and Set Decorators source props and organise the manufacture of specialist items.

As the start of shooting approaches, Production Designers manage lots of people, prioritise the work schedule and carefully monitor the budget. When shooting starts, they are usually up early each morning to view each new set with the Director, Director of Photography and Standby Art Director, answering any requests or queries.

Later on in the art department office, Production Designers check on the construction and dressing of other sets, and sign off on sets/locations for the next day's shoot.

Although Production Designers usually finish work on the last day of principal photography, on larger films they may be involved for longer periods. Production Designers work on a freelance basis.

They may have to prepare detailed drawings and specifications in order to pitch for work on a number of productions before being offered work on one of them.

I think I would be very good at production design. i have a good knowledge of historical periods, i love story and character fullness. I am very attentive to detail and love building things and drawing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5dvJw2satc

fields and frames idea

create a vinyl and use the needle on either a polyograph or seismograph 

use mood of polygraph to play music of vinyl

artist research - Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono 

"a dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream you dream together is reality" 

known as the women who broke up the best band ever Yoko ono is infamous to some but to others she is an inspiration and true modern women. 

born in Tokyo in 1933 yokos career was jump started when she moved to newyork, meeting lenon in 1966 at one of her art showings the worked in collaboration till his death in 1980. she then began her own lustrous career including peace efforts to honor her husbands memory. 

  Yoko's work started with her poetry which was considered to radical. this peom discribes the similiarity and shared humanity we all contain. bringing emapthy for the fellow man.

Yoko's work often relied on audience participation. for example in her piece "cut piece" she asked members of the public to cut of a part of her clothing till she was naked. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sc47KfJjcI 

this showing a paticular view of comming together and people participation which became a main theme in her work. 

with her affair and later marriage to beatles front man john lennon her art took a more peace influenced view. her art became about connecting people to the view of a better more peaceful world. 

most famous of these peace themed works was her installation piece "bed in" which was a protest piece against the vietnam war. this was meant to bring the idea that peaceful sit ins was a productive way to bring change to society. 

yoko's work can be seen as a journey to peace. writing songs about the very real idea of world peace and using lennons glasses as a symbol. 

this piece called "war is over (if you want it)" shows a very real and personal impact of humanity and the yoko's and the worlds journey towards peace.

yoko set up several foundations for the arts in memory of her late husband aimed at leading a journey towards peace by promotion of the arts in serveral diffrent countries, these included the strawberry fields in new york, the imagine peace tower in iceland and the john lennon musceum in japan. 

in parrell to her artworks yoko was a musician, often her music pushed the limits of the mainsteam using collaberations with artists such as the basement jaxxs. her music often represented her vision for peace and political messages such as her strong views of feminism. 

yoko's work has often been assicated with the Fluxus movment. this was a movement of radical artisits who created new never before seen artforms, breaking the mold and driving technology with their art. they were seen as intermedia which is a key aspect of yokos career. she was massivly influenced by john cages work.   left cage right ono]

she began collabertating with la monte young in newyork creating the piece painting to be stepped on. a work which relyed again on audience participation via footprints and also challanged the idea of works being inaccessible on walls.

as explained before cut piece was another important project of hers, using audience participation to challange views of gender roles and the gaze and feminism as well as other issues of class. 

her next art piece was a book called grapefruit

 the book reads as a set of instructions through which the work of art is completed-either literally or in the imagination of the viewer participant.-wikipiedia

this again requires the audience participation in her work and requires the audience to go through a journey of instructions to reach the artpiece.

One example is "Hide and Seek Piece: Hide until everybody goes home. Hide until everybody forgets about you. Hide until everybody dies."

later in her career she moved into the moving image with experimental films

she made 16 short films. 

Bottoms.^[75][76] The five-and-a-half-minute film consists of a series of close-ups of human buttocks walking on a treadmill. The screen is divided into four almost equal sections by the elements of the gluteal cleft and the horizontal gluteal crease. The soundtrack consists of interviews with those who are being filmed, as well as those considering joining the project - Wikipedia

this film is about representation and our views of people. 

small note .....yoko ono film "fly" vs breaking bad "fly" 

i think there is somthing to bed said for not relying on shock value in film making. actually relying on good film making technique and visual intelligence. 

yokos film is her screaching at a close up of a fly on her foot. very diffrent value of film making in my opinion. 

Another example of Ono's participatory art was her Wish Tree project, in which a tree native to the installation site is installed. Her 1996Wish Piece had the following instructions:

Make a wish

Write it down on a piece of paper

Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree

Ask your friends to do the same

Keep wishing

Until the branches are covered with wishes

in conclusion i think yoko onos work is centred around the theme of audience participation to create a shared idea of peace and human betterment.  

John cage is the is also an artist related to the journey.

his art work travels across the page. its like the paint is on a journey across the canvas. 

here are some examples 

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performancei think this piece is to make people thing more about the nature and structure of music and debate what sound is. in 1951, he tossed coins to determine duration, pitch and dynamics for his Music of Changes. 
Cage discovered that chance was as important of a force governing a musical composition as the artist's will, and allowed it to play a central role in all of his compositions. Although each piece has a basic, composed structure, the overall effect varied with each performance as different variables like the location and audience directly affected the sounds that were produced.


i think chance can be seen as a network as it is something that connects the world and everyone else in it. the idea of determinism. 

dance video idea

music video for up&up by coldplay

use old footage with filmed footage of dancer

experimental sound devolpment - editing

now i had all the recordings it was time to open up audition and start post production. first thing i needed was to download audition onto my computer. but when i started importing sounds i realised there were no bins in audition. this was a big problem as i had 80 or so sounds so needed them organized. after checking the internet to make sure i there wasnt a way of organising the sounds i started labeling and organising the sounds in the folder itself.



i separated the sounds into fire wind earth water guitar flute piano drums folders and named each file.
i then started taking out sounds which were practices or had problems with them. this left only the good sounds to import into audition.

i had used audition in the past but was in no way a expert. but i was a fast learner and new i had given myself a big task but still i was confident.


i first started with the drum track. i had several different beats one with tom one with snare. i choose the snare as i think it gave the most dramatic sound for the sharp sounds of rocks (just to clarify im not a drummer i just had a go). i realise quickly that i needed to edit the sound as the pitch changes were very dramatic. first thing i did was use an stereo expander to seperate the left and right to bring up the certain drums i wanted.

this is the tutorial i used for the expander




i then realised the snare was very high above the over drums i therefore used a compresser to control that.


i decided to take down the output gain and change the ratio

now was time to add the natural elements
i wanted a slow build up so took some of the more subtle stone sounds and added them towards the start of the drums in sudden places. each one being loauder and longer than the last




i now wanted to create the tone morphing together.

this is the video i watched for the effect. it was diffrent to cross fading as it morphed the tones of each sound so the blended together. i looked for a program to do this but found that the wouldnt work with audition. i believe it would be possible but i would need alot more time on this indivdual thing and to learn a bit of coding to create this effect. (I am still looking into it) I might have to buy a program.

i decided from then that i would like to use a cross fade to create a replicatant effect. but i wanted to capture an combination of the two sounds moving into each other. this required a specific method.

first putting the two sounds next to each other and cross fading them (through the key frames to create the perfect tone for my piece
then copying the combined clips
then pasting and merging the clips
then i could razor the clip to pick the bit i wanted

i could then use this clip in the piece.


this is creating the clip


this is using the clip. i had to use suitable cross fades when putting the clips together to not leave any gaps in drums or lose the rhythm (even though i added so extra beats to create an awkard feeling)

then i moved onto the guitar

i first made sure it went over the drum/rock tone and faded into it. then made sure it was the right level. I had to make sure i put the bits of guitar together well so the tempo stayed the same.



i wanted the fire to come in faster in this part as fire is known for starting an spreading fast.

i split the long wood burner sound into seperate parts so i could layer them together at diffrent levels and built the up to match the guitar.



i again used a compresser on the crackling fire as some of the pops when up very high.

i then did the same thing as with the drum/earth and created a cross fade tone

with the piano id had to keep the level of the first chords of each phrase alot lower than i had played it they were jarring.

with the water i had to choose very specific pieces to create the build up in sound which i decided. i moved lots of clips around an create lots of fades so it matched. i tried to keep the beats of water going with the piano, this created a nice flowing motion.


with the flute i had recorded lots of individual notes (not learnt circle breathing 100% yet)
this meant i got the creative choice of where to put notes. thats what i did first, experimenting with diffrent levels and positioning of notes



the next thing was i noticed there was a buzzing on the tracks. it had come from me charging the merance as i recorded. (battereys are terrible)
i looked at a tutorial and learnt how to remove static and used that


first select the place with only static


then caputure noise print


(noise reduction)
this is were you can use the level of the line to decide what is romoved. i wanted it all gone so selected it all (flute is a very high pitched instrument)

this made the flute sound alot better. but it was still missing something to fit with the wind. i dicided it needed a more reflective sound so i used studio reverb and gave it great hall setting. i changed some of the size of the room for diffrent clips to create a build for parts.




i then focused on the wind. i really wanted to get rid of the metal sound of the wind. i decided the best bet was to use EQ. i opened up and took out alot of tones near the mid and upper parts. after a fair bit of trial and error i found the range which contained the metallic sound i hated and removed it, it created a deeper more windy sound


as each wind tone was diffrent i had to do a diffrent EQ for each.

now i could put the flute/wind bit together and create the build of flute and wind using diffrent clips.


now for the hardest part the shepards tone

i first looked at many tutorials. i first learnt the basic theory on how they work. then looked at one on how to create one. sadly i couldnt find one for audition



 the tutorials taught me i needed to use a pitch shift.
the main issue was they were mostly done on contant tone sounds
but i knew i could give it a shot.
(i now wish there was a keyframe for pitch shift)

firstly i put the drums in order. i had to firslty listen through and cut with the razor at start of 4 part beat.
i then started adding pitch shifts
i had to make sure i kept each in c major

i then moved each section up by one semi tone. and the repeated the process as i got to the 12 part.



i then did the same process for the guitar and put it under. i placed it a little but futher down the timeline so when the drum beat dropped the guitar would still be rising.
i then repeated the process with the piano and flute.
the main problem arrose that often the pitch shifter wouldnt work as it would repeate pitches and not raise them or randomly change values. i had more luck changing it but 2 semi tones for the piano but it didnt work perfecly

(i would like to know why this happened)  id like to go through it with James at some point because i would of liked it to have worked better.

i managed to make it work but distracting the listener to the drops and repeations by unspspectly raising the volumes of some parts whilst other bits lowering.


the final bit was the muffled final sound. for this i EQ each clip exactly the same so their tone was very simliar and they fitted well together and let them fade out individually.


after looking at the export requirments i went through lowering certain loud clips and fininal the whole of certain tracks. i listened through a few more times to make sure the tracks still worked together.



i then exported






then i was done :)