An Art Director - what for?

When the Writer/Director fixes you with a beady eye and asks “would you be the art director on this film?”, pause before you blush and stammer “yes, yes!” You are thinking how good it will look on the credits!

Read the shooting script carefully. If the writer/director is given to grandiose flights of fancy, you could be in for trouble.

A false bus stop, set up in a quiet road, seems easy, that’s what you thought. So you set to work, using a long cardboard tube as the pole, painted with grey poster colour and fixed the small sign at the top. It looks good in a ‘day for night’ dramatic shot.

Alas, you forgot to read the small print which says, “Man standing at bus stop in pouring rain."

Three members of crew aiming jets of water high over the scene and your bus stop bends slowly towards the ground. You desperately hope there won’t be more than one take!

“Paint me a large portrait in oil of the main character”

“Make me some authentic car number plates with movable numbers.”

“Disguise those modern windows, doors, railings etc.”

“Make me replica Newspapers, Ration Books, Identity Cards and posters. (Have you a computer fri end available?)

“Would you please disguise that modern piano? It must look Victorian, stick on some imitation candles or something!
 

“Paint me a copy of a famous picture on a small piece of silk, it must be waterproof!”

“Make me a replica Video Camera to immerse in water.”

“Can you do me an ancient ship’s mast and sails? Oh! and a deck that rocks, broken rigging and a cargo that moves.”

Could be anything. Nothing is surprising. “Build me a pigsty a castle!” You hope you will have some help.

Perhaps it would be better not to catch the Writer/Director’s beady eye. But you say to yourself, “It did look good on film/video.”

And, after all, you were not really doing anything else at the time, were you!
 
 
 
  Jon Woolmer