PRODUCTION


PRODUCTION DESIGN


Production design has been transformed by the use of digital tools and the rise of vfx. Now, with virtual production on the horizon, more change is on its way. Andy Stout reports


impact in many areas of the television and film production process. One of its key impact areas in recent years


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has been in production design, which is at least a decade into a radical reconfiguration of the way it works and set for a period of further accelerated evolution as virtual production workflows attempt to, quite literally, take centre stage. There is a lot going on, from dealing with


truncated production schedules and a distinct lack of industry training and expertise, to a rise in tensions with the VFX department in particular, but amidst it all the core nature of the job has remained the same “The conceptual view has and never will


change; we are responsible for the image and everything that is projected on the screen,” states New York-based Inbal Weinberg (Suspiria, The Lost Daughter), one of the co-founders of the increasingly influential Production Designers Collective. “The realpolitik of it day to day is that market forces are at play, new technologies are being pushed in specific ways, and a new workflow is being suggested. But it doesn’t matter what tools are used to create the things on the screen — it can be carpenters on the ground it can be people drafting on a computer, but it’s all the Production Designer’s responsibility.”


The rise of technology The Collective recently held its Gathering 2022


event on the Greek island of Spetses and the topic — and occasional difficulties — of working with vfx was one of the meta-themes discussed. Ged Clarke was one of the many there and charts how much the role’s use of technology has changed. “When we shot The Fall (2006) everything was


captured ‘in camera’; there was no use of CGI, no digital effects and I drew everything up by hand. I did have a small digital camera and a laptop, that kept my 27,000 digitally saved references, but that was it for me,” he says. “In the last 10 years, I have had a much closer relationships with VFX


66 televisual.com Winter 2022


Supervisors and their teams. I rarely work on a project these days without early calls with vfx, who now attend set locations and stages, making on the spot decisions, where they may need to confirm set extensions, take 3D Lidar scans and measurements, stills and references of skies, textures and props that may need manipulation or recreation later.” Invariably tensions can occur. Weinberg


points out that vfx companies are often the only outside contractors to a production, and there


are many war stories regarding what is seen as encroachment on the PD’s traditional territory in both pre and post production. “I’ve worked on a couple of projects where


vfx has said ‘we can pre-vis for you and you can explore it,’” says Jamie Lapsley (Bodyguard). “I’ve had to say: ‘We do that already; that’s actually part of what we deliver as a department on payroll. Is it the best choice for the production to pay another company to come in and do this?’.” Such economic arguments tend to eventually


igital transformation has changed the way that many industries work and, unsurprisingly, is having an increasing


Building for the future


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