asmallexplorationintodesign

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Reflection

I found the process of working with Heather interesting because as an amicable collaborator she is amazing. She is super tolerant of changes in design because she doesn’t really care that much. She cares a whole lot more about how satisfied the people feel towards working with her and that everything the director wants is accomplished. It is ultimately how she carries herself as a kind, lovely professional which makes her a desirable colleague and means that those who have worked with her continue to hire her. She quickly makes friends with most people in her vicinity, having a wry humour and good-natured uncaringness which presents as stressfree.

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Shooting in the gym

The gym shoot was our time to shine, masses amounts of things were brought in, over 60% were my things, and there was a lot of parts to it with only HEather and I to set it up. I loved being able to forage for more plant-based things when there was areas that were lacking. 

Nic didn’t seem to be invested in the design however because he would place the action where it was easiest to make the action happen as opposed to incorporating the set and the actors into the same world. I think this was a thing to be aware of for my own film, not to miss the visual opportunities the set offers by being so focused on time constraints and performance.

 As the night wore on Heather's investment in what was on screen was waning, possibly partly because of Nic’s disinterest. She would sit in the back on her phone, which to me felt like a betrayal of the design integrity, however, she might have been working on any number of important things.

 My understanding that a designer should be at the shoulder of a director, pointing to interesting angles or set-pieces and keeping check of the continuity. I was working alongside Heather which could have been why, she was giving me more autonomy. However, my relationship with Nic was not confident enough to be a useful figure in that role. 

Nic asks how to play the board game but it was one I had made and would have required a bit of explaining and I didn’t realise the importance of the question so I gave a flippant answer. It was only after they started filming and I saw the way the actors could have been actively engaging with it that I realised my errors. A deck of cards would have been better, finally clicking with the difference between a prop versus a set-piece after seeing how much having to pretend to something was detrimental to the actor's ability to be authentic. My second mistake was not to take the time to teach them, because it would have been great to see something I made engaged in the film.

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Priorities

 I had a huge deadline for my school project which I notified Heather and Latisha of previously. I tried to work extra hard while I was on set to make up for the absence but it was kind of horrible to leave set like that. 

When Madeleine left set on the Red Shoot to going and do other commitments, it held up production for another forty people. It was alright in the end, but there was a mad rush to reschedule the day. Having led a team, reflecting on leaving set makes me feel horrible because in your head you are counting on those people, and aligning difficulties of jobs to people with particular skillsets.

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Shooting day 2

We worked in the forest which was a great experience, outdoor locations are cold -demoralizing- but outside which is so peaceful and enjoyable. Other challenges are having to be aware of passerbys, finding the shooting location, running back to base for things. There are so many different aspects of being a production designer onset, most of the job is being hyper-aware of the needs that present themselves in order to keep the shoot going.  This is why it is so vital to have assistants on standby as there needs to be eyes in every direction, paying attention to the live detail as well as working on preventing future disruptions. If the assistant can be ready and organised the production designer can be free to pay attention to the live moment and send in others to respond.

Being on set gives me such a rush of energy, you have to be lith, swift and self-aware to move cohesively on set. Often when you’re in the crew, you need to do your job without getting in the way of director, cast or DOP. 

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Tarnished

The gaffer, who worked with Oprah on Winkles in Time and made sure everyone knew that,  would talk about how unprofessional Eden is every time she was out of earshot. It was horrible to watch somebody’s, a student and clearly an insecure one, reputation be destroyed by someone who thought they were king. His gossiping ultimately led to my disrespect of him most of all. Eden was being a slight diva, but knowing her, it’s her form of humor and comes from a place of trying to test out her connections. 

The lesson was learned though, bitching and gossiping ultimately shows you up most of all.

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Shooting day two

Heather, Latisha, and Nic always keep up their composure and good-naturedness, which makes set a warm place to be. 

 The name of the piece gets longer every day and Nic says each time “please be respectful and remember to use the full name when talking about the film”, each addition to the title references a particular moment in the past day's antics. This:

 A. kept the mood light in the midst of a long, focused chat about the work that needs to be done

B. engages people in taking ownership of the film, making us feel like the director noticed key joyful moments in the experience that we had together.

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Shooting day one

We were shooting in the forest, I found some Maori tree painting examples for the trees because I felt that was an interesting beautiful addition, however, I also made sure to have a selection of other examples in case they weren’t to Heather’s taste. I found Nordic rune and alchemy symbols to add to the theme of mystisim within the script.  Heather's open attitude to my ideas, motivated my interest to find solutions utilising the knowledge that I had to offer. It was her openness that made me comfortable to do so. 

It was a challenge to task the props students on Rainbow to bring offers forward both pre-production and onset. I feel that the more open and excited I was about their offers only grew their investment and added to the efficiency and quality of the number of offers we had to work with.  Giving people tasks that they can get invested in and enjoy is a smart way to get great results.  Heather let me offer props that were aligned with my interests. This inspired me to be a similar leader during Rainbow, for example, tasking Kim to paint some 70’s themed paintings. I was flexible with the content of the paintings to allow her some autonomy so that she could feel invested and excited and therefore deliver a better outcome.

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Heather’s kit

Heather has a very comprehensive tool kit at her home which she repacks depending on what’s needed for a particular shoot. I have refined it down to the bare essentials. Not included but vitality important: a lighter and reuseable cable ties.

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Creative endeavors are our children

Heather has two lovely boys, Charlie and Max. The way they are raised, with a plethora of nannies, two loving mums, and a live-in grandmother, makes me think about the parallels for making work. A strong base of loving contributors with the same purpose in mind who communicate effectively with each other. Time invested in thinking about what’s right for the child, the best approach to growing them, making sure they have all the right resources.

Going into Rainbow with the idea that it is my responsibility for growing it to the best of it’s potential, that my leadership needs to empower people to take responsibility for their own role within it as opposed to stifling them with control and severity. 

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Friendship in the workplace

Working with Heather over the few weeks and shadowing her has made it easier for me to tell her what I really think. The transition from acquaintance to friend mean that the work is more fun to participate in and with a greater feel of motivation because you are more invested in their success. The channels off communication are also easier to navigate.

I want to keep friendship central to the working culture of Rainbow. It is such a huge task but it also a wonderful opportunity to work with a wide range of great individuals. Working with Penny on the costume design became easier as we learned how to be honest with each other, and as she started to relax and realise I was not ever going to be angry about an offer, attempt or a mistake. Heather’s openness and love of interacting with people taught me an amicable working style that was a lot gentler and less stressful to what I had previously experienced.

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Curiosity cabinet

I’ve spent some time at Heather’s, working out what the curiosity cabinets look like. Heather wants to be very clear where everything is going before we get to set so there is no fluffing around on the day because we only have two hours to get everything in the gym set up.

It’s been fun because she is not particular and really enthused by contribution. The shelves could show at a snapshot how these people live so I’m approaching it as my chance to feed in my politic.

The preplanning and welcomeness of contribution are both useful things to keep in mind for Rainbow.

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Working Question: How does amiability influence working relationships and efficiency within a film process?

Heather really took on what we talked about last time and went in a completely different direction. After thinking about how clean and lovely it could be, she has developed the design concept of an upmarket, organic deli. Using pallets and creates as furniture and having strings of drying plants, she has developed ideas around where these people would be gathering their belongings from. Her respect for my authority on the subject has been so encouraging that I am super excited to help realise the vision. I think she is partly making design connections to further utilise my skills with foraging and the stuff I have available, more bohemian as opposed to junkyard.

This method of adapting to a situation makes the design process more easeful for everyone and I think a great way to manage decision making because there is a very tight budget and unpaid labour. I carried this amicability forward with me when I was working on Rainbow, realising from the getgo that what I had envisioned was hard work to make a reality, and unlikely to be in the skillset of my team. I wanted the design to be evolving to what skills the art department had and wanted to develop. The castle, for instance, was a lot more organic in material and simplified in structure that what I had wanted but the pride that Steph and Mika had in it made it more delightful a process of making overall.

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Finding a better place

We went to visit a gym in Brooklyn to see if it would work for the film. The script has taken a turn and is based around a group of freegan travelers living in an abandoned gym. It has a lot of really exciting gym equipment that can be used to populate a huge space.

This turn engages me a lot more, as it fits more in line with my politic, however, Heather has a very disconnected notion of what the lifestyle of a squatter is. To her, it’s dirty and unorganized but from the people, I know successfully living on the fringes of society, especially the Europeans, they are very organised, motivated and tidy because it requires more effort to go foraging and dumpster diving. Also, they often live a better quality of life because they are healthier, eating a wider range of food and living an active lifestyle with closer human connections and more free time. If they were living off the grid, then they would spend less time on the internet or watching TV, finding entertainment with reading, board games, flow toys or creative endeavors. I have tried to gently put Heather in this direction, by telling her about my friends, but it is interesting how motivated she was to see the set resources in real life when it comes to “normal” characters, but people on the fringes are easier to imagine from no sources because the average person also knows less about them and will just take what you present as fact.

This sort of thinking frustrates me because film is an empathy generator and for unhelpful bias to be pushed unwittingly seems so unnecessary but must happen all the time as people, just doing what's asked of them, don’t do further research on topics they haven’t experienced. If I continue in this industry, I’m looking forward to actively working against uninspired, unhelpful social constructs.

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Sourcing

I have felt increasingly useful on this project, just because of the sheer volume of stuff I have access to. Heather came over to my house to have a look around because she was curious to see what it was like. This joyful curiosity helps her research indepthly and has people welcoming her into their homes to look around. She finds that a film researched directly from the source, as opposed to a secondary source - the internet, a curated book or another film, means that she can choose more carefully things to influence the story and avoid stereotypes. 

We also had a discussion about the core themes in the film. It’s called Ego Death, and until I asked, Heather hadn’t even thought about the meaning of the name. This is the place I would have started so that every decision I made could have been tested against the core concept. 

Moving on with Rainbow, I have tried to make sure the world we were building fit into the feeling of the clours, supported my idea of anarchist utopia or helped to tell the story of the characters’ love.

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Worldbuilding

I met with Heather to talk about the world. They are looking for an abandoned building hang out zone for the young people to take an acid trip in. I have several questions about what angle they are taking with it. Is this film a warning about taking hallucinogenic drugs? Why is that the politic? I know most of the cast have taken it and had good experiences. 

I’m hesitant to ask these questions because it seems highly unprofessional to talk about drug use because it's very easy to be pigeon-holed. At the same time, they are core concepts in the film so surely we should be talking about them openly, figuring out how the design can feed into or challenge the overarching themes to make it a richer film. 

Heather seems disinterested by exploring the wider concepts, instead, focusing on breaking down the script to identify the props. As the script is ever-evolving, this seems like madness to me, but this is her process. I have tried to slightly bring up these topics and Heather said that she will break down a script, make a sketch up model of the locations and then collect the props. very straight forward with no chance of offending or missing something but for myself, too uninspired and disengaged with the filmmaking process. when working with a director, her main goal is to realise their vision. As a creative eye, hired specifically to be the production designer, I would have thought she would have more investment in the overall visual outcome of the film. 

This does mean that by not putting her ideas forward, she has no chance of being shut down, which can be hurtful. I’m glad that I have a thick skin around this, because growing ideas together is the richest part of a collaboration for me. 

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Exploring new territories

I told Heather about my dreams of a plant laden hallway for Rainbow. She used to work as a location scout in New Orleans so was really excited to help me out. Heather had an idea of a place in Aro so we knocked on doors of places we wanted to look inside. “Hi there, we’re scouting for a film and we wanted to take some photos of your house. Would you be ok with that? “ and people would.

 This was a mindblowing experience for me because it opened up a whole new realm of settings for Rainbow. It showed me how willing people are to help, even if there is no obvious gain for them, and how the words film and movie is so exotic people get a kick out of being involved. This lead to me being more ambitious about making sure that I had locations that fit the mise en scene of the colours in Rainbow.

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Supporting the director

On our first meeting, we went to Waikanae to do some location scouting with Latisha the producer and Nic the director. We went to a farm to scout out a possible abandoned building that Latisha had heard of from a family friend. Latisha’s joy and dedication for the project were extremely infectious and allowed for Nic to easefully gush about all of his ideas which helped us to gain an understanding of what we were building. 

Heather was quite passive with her ideas at the location, she didn’t present any ideas, just listened amicably to what Nic had to say. I never want to have that kind of relationship with the director as the designer because it seems so dominance based. Heather is deferential to everything he says without having an opinion, even from the standpoint of serving the work. Latisha was bubbling forth with ideas, however, which made me feel the design kind of skew away from Heather. Nic also started to aim his questions at Latisha, to test the validity of her ideas and as the day wore on, they sort of started to separate off.

It did make the process of location scouting very placid and manageable, with no tension at all, just gentle floating. 

Cinta and I’s process of location scouting was drastically different by comparison, with me having a clear idea what I wanted to create and then asking clear questions of Cinta and engaging her in what I wanted to create. I would make sure that we identified any problems she could see or any variables I was questioning, which I think made the design come together in line with what I had envisioned. It gave Cinta more agency in the visual design, which the locations are a huge part of because she also proposed shoot angles within the spaces.