Production Design for the Twenty-first Century

Alex McDowell RDI

[Extracted from the CILECT publication "The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes", November 2016, edited by Maria Dora Mourao, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecelia Mello, Alan Taylor. ISBN 978-619-7358-00-1]

https://kinowords.wordpress.com/21st-century-film-school-cilect/

___________________________________________________

We are confronting change within our entertainment media platforms at a scale unobserved since the early days of film, more than a hundred years ago. The medium and practice of cinema has evolved beyond recognition. And in parallel we recognize the rapid development of other, more recent, entertainment media and understand that is essential to examine the impact of these radical changes and their potential influence on one another. There is no longer reasonable justification for considering the crafts of film, animation, television, interactive media, and post-cinematic media space of mixed, virtual and augmented reality to be distinct and separate.

I designed the production of Minority Report for Steven Spielberg in 2000. In the absence of a script, in a volatile environment where young designers were coming into the art department with new and powerful digital tools loaded for the first time on their laptops, with a demand for unprecedented realism in the design of an evolving narrative world through deep exploration of the culture, science and ecosystem of the future, in integration with other real world industries, such as architecture, into our design process in order to achieve the ecosystem that the film required - it became clear that a radical redesign of the process of film design for the twenty-first century was needed. As an outcome of necessity, like osmosis, the process was indeed transformed. The Victorian-era, industrial, traditional, linear practice that film designers had experienced and practiced for up to 80 years, still in place in the late 1990s, had been rendered almost unrecognizable by the time Minority Report was released, just three years later.

Since then, new methodologies have continued to unfold, challenging traditional linear production workflow with a more fluid practice. These new methodologies have proven to be capable of constant and necessary adaptation. Tools create ever-developing opportunities, while these technologies are, in turn, pushed to evolve by the demands of the narrative design process.

Fifteen years after we first applied these changes in the design production of Minority Report, it is time to frame the evolution of our craft by laying down ten core principles of production design. These are my unapologetically personal opinions formed from 40 years of experience in designing outcomes in multiple media spaces for audience, industry and education. They are intended to provoke self-examination of our individual craft and bring to light the imminent and unavoidable evolution of traditional practices for the Twenty-first Century.

Ten Principles of Production Design for the Twenty-first Century

ONE: Production design is holistic because the world as its factual, fictional, narrative resource is holistic.

The designer should always consider the entire scope of interconnected conditions, triggered by the core narrative, that make up the world. The world is not static, but instead evolves from broad understanding to deep knowledge, at multiple scales and in multiple domains. The development of the whole world system for any narrative is fluid. New data, new research, new problems all stimulate change and deeper knowledge. Never relax. Question everything. Build design from ignorance to execution. Apply curiosity, develop open collaboration and expertise, prototype solutions, and apply the outcome to an unflinching design directive.

TWO: The design of the world is as important to the development of the story production as the script is to the development of the design.

The production designer should consider the script, should there be one initially, as a guide to the design framework, but not a bible. The core story is a trigger for the development of the world, before script, before narrative. The rules and connective tissue of the world space are essential to the entire production. They inform decisions between location and set, in-camera and visual effects, script and character development, camera and actor, precisely because the world allows each of the key players to collaboratively engage in its evolution from inception.

If the script development is integrated with the design development the production will always benefit.

THREE: The production designer must first design the production.

As one of the essential first hires to a production, the production designer should begin by designing the production (with thanks, as always, to my pal and renowned production designer Rick Carter for this insight).

Every production is unique and complex, and increasingly so as the line between in-camera and post-production solutions continues to fluctuate. The infrastructure of each production, from pre-production to post, requires a new scaffolding that is in itself a world space of non-linear interconnecting nodes of expertise, that have to be able to interact in radically different ways than in the linear-industrial past. From executing a proscribed and pre-scripted vision to employing a comprehensive prototyping laboratory, and applying design visualization to previsualization in parallel to distributing design assets to production and post-production resources, the art department has seen profound transformation that places it ever closer to the center of the production. In the contemporary art department, multiple key players should be able to enter an immersive and experiential world space where high-level experts can influence the development of a story space while testing ideas in collaboration with the key creative partners, from director to producer to cinematographer to visual effects; from production designer to sound designer; from choreographer to stunts to key grip.

FOUR: Every story ever told exists at the center of the relationship between the world, its inhabitants, and our point of view. The designer is responsible for developing a narrative space at the center of this triangulated tension.

Production design starts by considering the human condition at the center of the story in relation to the architectural aspects of the space. The human lens is always at the center of the world, both driving and being driven by the conditions of the world as it evolves and remains in flux with the changing narrative knowledge. The deeper the exploration dives into detail, the richer the narrative or narratives become. The design of the world has to frame and contextualize the story. It allows us to enter the world through a deep understanding of the human condition.

The human lens, or point of view (POV), which allows the audience access to the narrative exists in fluid connection with the characters and environment that they occupy, creating a state of constant creative tension. The designer is responsible for the evolution of the world space, the influence that the occupants exert on their environment and the conditions that every space, at multiple scales, asserts on the individual threads of each story within the world. This means that the designer is responsible for examining and developing the possibilities for narratives in the world long before they are locked into sequence. An immersive digital workspace allows for the prototyping of this world space and it inhabitants at every stage of the inception. Also known as design visualization (DVis), this should develop in parallel to story and must precede storyboards and sequence design (Previz). It is the first workspace for the production and is centralized in the design department.

FIVE – The Production Designer’s principle task is to develop a fluid and spherical four-dimensional narrative space that is the foundation from which emerges the linear cinematic sequences.

Until the director points, the camera rolls and the scene is locked into celluloid or the digital back, the frame does not exist.

While the output of a film is, by definition, a passive and time-based (or linear) narrative, directing the audience’s gaze by frame, this is not the designer’s viewpoint. The production designer and his or her key team have always to consider all aspects of the world space within a scene that has not yet taken place. He or she must understand the space to be fluid in time, gaze and meaning until the frame is locked. The designer’s role has always been a unique bridge between the intent and environment of the story that has yet to be conveyed in finality.

The digital and interactive tools, which should now be the basic toolkit of the design department, make this an active and real-time space for any and all of the production team to enter. In the digital art department, prototyping the possibilities of this spherical space now becomes one of the crucial aspects of the designer’s responsibility.

SIX – Together, the production designer and art department must define everything that frames the story, showing the inherent interconnectedness of the framework, in the earliest stages of production.

There should be no distinction between pre-production and post-production in a non-linear design development. The decisions that drive the world design as a whole should be the result of a close collaboration between the key players’ and collaborators’ prototyping, design visualization and sequence design. Whether dealing with location or set, using in-camera or visual effects, designing to scale or in miniature or working in virtual or real space – the design intent must be a significant influence on all aspects of production, and provide the scaffolding for all elements of the story.

SEVEN – Defining the interconnected rules of the world is the production designer’s responsibility.

The rules of any balanced and holistic world are derived from the development of an evolving narrative and multi-layered world space. The rules develop as the world develops from a broad horizontal understanding to a deep vertical application to the needs of the story. The designer is tasked with creating a collaboration of design elements that are both accessible and explanatory at all stages of evolution. The initial rules may or may not survive the engagement of multiple collaborators but as the world gels from fluidity to understanding, the final rules that emerge will powerfully drive every aspect of the story and its execution.

EIGHT – Technology is the designer’s friend. The designer is technology’s friend.

The development tools that allow for immersive interaction between the creators are capable of spatially sketching, sculpting and defining the world with respect to all influences that play into the story. With the early stages of design development being directly connected to the final outcome, prototyping progressively in real time, the design of the world evolves naturally as all aspects of the narrative are taken into consideration. The designer is responsible for enlisting all new technologies and their cutting edge capabilities, and diving through the membranes that separate each entertainment media silo to capitalize on new developments. The designer needs to be constantly disruptive, challenging old and new tools to integrate and execute beyond their intended use, and through each world's unique requirements pushing the evolution of each technology forward, while pushing forward the evolution of our craft.

NINE – The Production Designer is responsible for developing a world that grows from the intersection of a horizontal development of knowledge and a vertical expression of outcome.

Beginning with confidence at its earliest expression and lowest resolution, the production designer uses acquired knowledge – informing the fine details of high-level domains – to gradually expand the world and its interconnected elements.

As a broad knowledge of the world is ingested, the story and its actors begin to make demands on the world. Every investigation is a vertical core sample into the sphere of fused rules and information. Each dive challenges the world and makes it more robust. The push and pull between rules, appointed to specific spatial conditions and affiliated inhabitants, move the world to its final resolution.

TEN – The Production Designer must build a rich and integrated new world to encompass every new story. Each world drives the evolution and context of the world space through to the final output while never needed to be seen in full by the audience.

The Production Designer has to be ready to create a multi-layered and multi-threaded narrative space, designed to disappear beneath the narrative framework while simultaneously driving the production’s decisions. This richly defined and intricate space is woven through and used to inform every design decision. Through this a rich infrastructure forms to support the story, clear to the makers while out of view for the audience who are aware of it only by means of engagement and inhabitance.

Some final tips:

Listen, don’t talk. The designer has to absorb the words that surround him or her and transmute them into a dimensional experience. This is an alchemical process that results in spatial storytelling; a combination of magical thinking (imagination) and science (the technological tools). This is a non-empirical process that is defined by the formula 1+1=3.

Previsualization (Previs) is a natural by-product of design visualization (DVis). For that reason all design decisions, whether they are executed in-camera during production or by visual effects in post-production, feed a previs environment that emanates in the design department in oder to frame the narrative space for the director and keys to design and develop sequence. The elements that drive design decisions - scale, ecosystem, culture, politics, infrastructure, energy – are intimately interconnected. Together these rules of the world should be considered influential on each developing sequence of the narrative.

The spreadsheet is a Victorian construct that bears no relation to twenty-first century production methods. It is impossible to effectively, efficiently or economically track non-linear four-dimensional production process with a two-dimensional linear budget. This is not the production designer’s job to solve, but somebody had better start taking responsibility for this misaligned and archaic analogue practice!

Assets created in the design process need to be distributed through the entire production process. Rebuilding assets of any type in the visual effects pipeline merely indicates a lack of proper pre-production planning, and will lead to unnecessary and often highly damaging costs. There should be little to no material left ‘on the cutting room floor’ in a well-designed digital production workstream.

Production design is an art/science practice. The designer is not only responsible for the aesthetic eco-system of an often enormous infrastructure, but also for the efficiency and effectiveness of the outcome.

At our research laboratory at USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, the World Building Media Lab, we are looking at the radical disruption of production being caused by virtual reality and augmented reality, as a Trojan horse to challenge production practices at their core.

Project Tesseract, a funded research initiative that has been running in the lab since 2015, aims to combine best practices from all media industries, and even some practices outside media. We study and implement workflow, craft and methodology from not only Cinema but also Television, Animation, Interactive Media and Games, and also from Theater, Architecture, Engineering and the Sciences. We are taking advantage of academia’s neutral and agnostic relationship to the various competing industries to conduct this unique analysis of future production practice.

I believe that the production designer has a rare perspective on the future of production. More than for any other craft, the designer and their art department have to engage in radically different practices, and work with a unique set of appendages for every production. The demands of a story that might be prehistoric, set in seventeenth century France, or in a fantastical land of chocolate, or amongst the animated deceased, or in a viable future – each demand very different tools and methods, and each unfold out of a unique world. And each world that we build helps to tune our ability to envision the future, and share best practices across production and industry. The collaboration between production designers is essential to help to carve a new vision across industries that for all intents and purposes are engaged in the same creative practices, even if their outcome is a different audience experience.

In my class at USC, where I have taught since 2012, we practice world building as the natural evolution of production design. We see that we are moving into a transmedia future that might be called post-cinematic. Linear time-based storytelling is being replaced by non-linear, spherical story space that fundamentally challenges the frame, the control of the audience’s gaze and the single author, directed, narrative.

We do not for a moment imagine that the traditional platforms of cinema, television, animation, game are going to disappear, any more than the book or theater or radio are disappearing. But we do believe that the provocation offered by virtual reality, for example, to completely relinquish control of the frame to the viewer’s gaze, is a healthy challenge to the past six centuries of single author at the center of every story, in every medium.

Storytelling emerged as a way for humanity’s first tribes and communities to make sense of the world around them, and to pass the aggregated knowledge of the tribe through the generations, in stories told by generations of multiple storytellers. Now that we have returned full circle to a multi-layered social story space, we have to change the ways in which we imagine stories.

We do not have the answer. We are at the start of a revolution in media that requires us to learn and teach new capabilities in design, technology and storytelling for media that does not yet exist or have a name, but that is being hinted at by the rapid development of previously unimaginable new platforms. Because creative inception has always been spherical and flourishes in a shared and unbounded imagination space, we believe that these new media opportunities require a renewed acknowledgment of the cross-disciplinary collaboration at the base of developing story worlds. 

So it is essential to look at the role of education in challenging the Victorian notion of specialized and isolated disciplines. It starts with design. Design is a universal language, not a discipline, that is central to every form of storytelling. When it weaves with the sciences it becomes a post-disciplinary artscience practice that can and should curate the evolution of media and engagement for this new century.

The potential of shared future systems that can envision narrative worlds across multiple media platforms - this is the next great challenge for the production designer. 

c. Alex McDowell, September 5th, 2016. 

Alex McDowell RDI, narrative designer, creative director, production designer and professor of practice, USC School of Cinematic Arts.