The smell of fresh flowers in the air, the call of birds outside, and the need to feel the powerful Australian sunshine on my skin, recently brought me back to one of my favorite beaches, along with many others.

I also decided to take up the challenge of walking from one beach to another, which involved getting around a deceptively wide rocky point.  It’s a task I’ve attempted in the past but always been turned back by a rising tide and what is probably an unreasonable fear of getting swept into the harbor.

But I decided to face my more reasonable fears of bloody toes, a lost lens cap (both of which almost happened) and the possibility of needing to be rescued by a family whose small children make the rocky scramble weekly, and headed toward the point.

All the barefoot scrambling and rock balancing with my camera in hand was going fairly well until I reached a point where what lay ahead was the rapidly closing in tide on one side . . .

. . . and imposing sandstone on the other.

I have no idea how close I got to the other beach, but alas I was turned back by the forces of nature.  I have all of spring and summer ahead of me now to make the rest of the journey.  I’ll let you know if I find a pot of gold around the next bend, assuming an Aussie dad and his five year old haven’t gotten there first.

You can see the rest of the photos from my journey on flickr.

Write your World 3

Once I’ve gotten my informative writing out of the way for the time being, I promise to return to Marglish style musings.  I have a few good ones brewing, so stay tuned!

Write your World Part II

I would tell you how many more parts there are to go, if I myself knew.  I guess we’ll find out together.  Stay tuned for more.

Check it out here: Write Your World

There is more to come in the series also.  So now my nose will be to the grindstone of article writing.  Hopefully I’ll be back to my pensive rants at some point soon.  In the meantime I’ll keep you all on top of my other works.  Speaking of which, while you’re here why not also check out the new preview for one of the short films I designed.

Passengers of 7D

There will be more goodies where those came from, so stay tuned!

Disassembly Required

Logline: Enticed by a big payday, an ex-military bounty hunter compromises his family’s waning stability when he agrees to return an escaped experimental super-soldier who has taken hostages inside a local IKEA.

In other words, Die Hard in an IKEA.  What do you think?  You can read more of a summary and some excerpts on the Disassembly Required website.

Feel free to share your comments here, as it’s a work in progress and we’d love to get some feedback on our efforts.  What other parts of an IKEA would you like to see blown to smithereens?  Have you ever made a creative trap out of your flat packed items? Who would you cast as our lead?

Stay tuned for future drafts and more news about our creative endeavors.

Lucky for you, I have these convenient links right here:

The Well – Page 1

The Well – Pages 2-10

For your reading pleasure, I’ve decided to post the next 7 pages.  Those pages also happen to contain the ever controversial “title scene.”  Screenwriters occasionally seem to find incorporating the title of a film gracefully into the screenplay, to be a nearly impossible task.  We’ve all seen just as many groan worthy attempts as we have winners.  Remember all of these?

So give my pages a read and let me know how you think I did.  Graceful or groan worthy?  Of course, a really good title contains several meanings.  So what else do you think “The Well” could possibly mean?  I’ll be looking forward to those comments. Hint hint.

The Well – Pages 11-17

One month it has been

Since Marglish received my love

Haiku for lost time

From over the sea

A visitor to fair Oz

Time to show it off

Down to Jervis Bay

Whitest sand in the whole world

Water clear but cold

I have a new job

Which combines my passions for

Design and nature

Fall is coming now

Goodbye to sun soaked beaches

I’ll see you next year

You can see more photos from Jervis Bay on flickr.

It’s sound advice.  You don’t need to be pinned by a rock for 127 hours to have something bad happen to you while you are hiking alone.  The bushwalks through most reserve parks in central Sydney are fairly even paths, but there are no shortage of snakes, spiders, ticks and other animals that could do anything from give you a mild rash to cause paralysis.  Even walking face first into the web of a harmless arachnid, is no picnic.  And if you are anything like me, you are very likely to sprain your ankle on a tree root.

Most newbies to Australia heed every bit of advice and take every caution they can when venturing into the bush.  They wear close toed shoes, long pants, plenty of sunscreen, and bring enough water to last for days.  But once you have lived here for a while you realize that most sydneysiders treat a bushwalk like any other sidewalk, and will conduct them under any number of circumstances, occasionally even barefoot.

So when I left my apartment this afternoon, with nothing but my camera and my keys, I figured there was no harm in checking out a reserve in my neighborhood.  Wearing short pants and thongs (a.k.a. flip flops) only encouraged me to step lightly.  And though I did trip on a tree root, typical, I came out of the bush entirely unscathed.

The only real problem occurred once I had finally left the reserve, via an incredibly steep staircase, and found myself confronted with this view.

Lovely, but that bushy green island to the right had been my intended destination.  Somehow I had wandered myself to the opposite side of the bay, and now had a fairly sizable body of water between me and my apartment.  So what did I do?  I called a friend with an iphone and asked him to tell me where I was and how the hell to get back to where I had been.  Within minutes, my problem was solved and I was on my way back to a nice hot shower and cool glass of water.

So what did I learn from my sojourn into the wild today?  Don’t just hike with friends, hike with friends who have google maps on their phones.

You can see the rest of the photos from my journey on flickr.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year has in store.

1. Why did you decide to become a Production Designer?

I was really inspired by movies with very strong production design elements like fantasy, science fiction, and period pieces, because I loved stepping into a completely different world through the film.  When I realized it was someone’s job to create those worlds, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

2. What techniques and skills do you typically use in you work?

A production designer has to use a range of skills.  You have to be an illustrator, graphic designer, architect, interior designer, painter, furniture designer, textiles expert, color expert, photographer and storyteller all wrapped up into one.  In low budget film they often don’t have the resources to hire a full art department, so I have done sets, props and costumes as have most of the other designers I’ve met.  Even if you specialize in one area, it’s best to learn them all because you may never end up doing costumes, but you will want to work with the costume designer to create a unified look.

I have a background in architectural design, so I call upon those skills quite often.  Other designers with skills in other areas might go about creating their designs differently, to play up the skills that are strongest for them.  But it’s best to study all areas of design, because you will be required to call upon all of them at some point, and will become a better designer overall.

3. What is the typical process that you go through when designing for film/theatre? (for example, meeting with directors, conceptualizing the script, producing preliminary sketches etc)

The first thing I always look at is the script.  I like to see a script even before I meet with a director if it’s at all possible.  I want to be inspired by the story and have a desire to actually create sets for it, otherwise the work is not going to be worth it in the end.  Since I often work on very low budget independent movies, I then talk to a director and get all the logistics; what the budget is, how much time is available, what the location and set requirements are.  Quite often, people have expectations that cannot be met in the time period or under the budget restrictions, so it’s good to gage that right off the bat.  And the sign of a job well done, is one that exceeds the director’s expectations

The next step is to conceptualize the designs, which I usually do by writing notes on the script about certain props or set pieces that are mentioned, or moments that help inspire the mood for the design.  Then I create concept illustrations either by hand or occasionally by collage on photoshop.  I like this method because I get to both look for images that help inspire the design, and create my own concepts at the same time

From there each project takes its own path depending on the needs and the logistics of the project.  Some of them require a lot of shopping and sourcing, others require a lot of designing in advance down to careful details.  It’s important to have flexible working methods that fit the needs of each project.

4. What are the differences between designing for film and designing for theatre?

The one major difference is that in theater everything has to be built for, fully functional for, and scaled for the specific project.  You cannot improvise as much in theater because everything has to work for a real time performance.  In film, you can change your ideas as you go along, you can move a set around to suit the camera angles, you can cheat the positions of the set pieces and where the actors stand, to better the final result.  And while film is about both the big picture (wide angles) and details (close ups) theater is really about one big picture.  Yes, all the details have to work, but they are nothing compared to the impression of the overall set.

5. What is the most difficult aspect of your work?

Getting decent pay.  Enough said.

6. What is the nature of the industry that you work in? (for example, is it ever difficult do find employment? Do you work freelance or are you attached to a certain production company?)

It has not really been difficult to find projects to work on as a freelancer, but it is difficult to find projects with sufficient or even any pay.  More often than not, production designers will not be attached to a particular company.  Most set designers do freelance contract work.  In order to make a living you would probably be working on multiple projects at the same time or have a day job.  I used my design skills to maintain a steady job in architecture for years, while I worked on indy films in my spare time.

In the US there are a lot of unions and guilds one can join, depending on where you live, which will offer the benefit of more regular work.  The one disadvantage of joining a union is that you must take a certain amount of union jobs per-year and are only allowed to take a limited number of non-union jobs. If your numbers don’t match, you end up owing them money at the end of the year.  Steady work comes easiest from a solid reputation.  Once you have impressed a few directors and producers with your work, they will recommend you to others.  Building a network is the most powerful tool you have for getting work and eventually getting decently paid work.

4. From your experience overseas, what have been the local differences in design for film?

The film industry is noticeably smaller in Sydney.   In New York I was often picking and choosing between projects.  Out here I have taken a lot of the work I have found because there were fewer options.  And even in just a few short months, I have worked with the same people again.  That’s both a good and bad thing.  An Indy filmmaker has a much better chance of standing out and making themselves known in a market that has a lot less noise, but it does make for limited opportunities.

I have also noticed that in Australia, people give significantly less time to development and pre-production.  This means they are hiring designers WAY TOO LATE!  I am floored whenever I see a posting for a production that is hiring within two weeks of their shoot date, and looking for production designers along with boom operators and PAs.  The production designer is KEY CREW!  It doesn’t matter if you are shooting entirely on location and have an extremely limited budget, without someone to pay attention to the overall look of your film, it will not be consistent and will inevitably create a distance between your audience and your story.  Film a visual medium, so how it looks is just as important as what it says.  I have also run into many producers and directors who said they tried to design their projects themselves.  They only make that mistake once.

5. Finally, do you think that design for theatre and film will change and progress in the future? Are there any new technologies that will revolutionize this area that you know of?

CGI and 3D technologies have already revolutionized the industry.  People can now make very stylized films quite easily.  In the past, the painterly touches you now see on films like Avatar were limited to films with heavy fantasy and a more narrow audience appeal.  But now, audiences have adapted to films that have a very stylized look.  They no longer expect everything to look real in order for it to feel real.

This type of filmmaking is still in its infancy and, as is always the case when learning a new art form, a lot of design mistakes are being made.  (This is where I insert my personal opinion)  Movies like the latest Star Wars trilogy and Indiana Jones incorporated elaborate CG sets that had no practical reason for existence and served no function for the story.  Television shows like V use fancy camera movements to show off sets that are, frankly, cartoonish, badly rendered, and laughable.  Remakes like King Kong and Clash of the Titans, go overboard creating highly detailed monsters to the point where the original stop motion creatures look much scarier than their rubbery-limbed modern day counter parts.  And in the latest Alice in Wonderland, filmmakers went out of their way to design for a 3D experience, but didn’t utilize the technology properly and the film fell short of showcasing the designs they way it should have.

This technology will make for some amazingly beautiful films, but people have to adapt to, and learn the advantages and limitations of the technology.  And most importantly, they must remember that the rules of good design; practicality, functionality, emotional response and contribution to the story, still apply.

To learn more about my design work, you can click on any of the images above to be directed to my portfolio, or take a look at my list of services on immmagination.com.