Kitty_K
5 Years Experience
Los Angeles, CA
Female, 30
I am a Los Angeles based decorator and have worked on a range of projects from an Academy Award winning feature to commercials for brands like Bank of America and Kay's Jewellers. An average day on the job involves me visiting high-end stores and prop houses in Los Angeles to photograph and price furniture, lighting fixtures, drapery, and art. I am responsible for running a crew and collaborating creatively with the director, production designer and cinematographer. Ask me anything!
Seeing everything come together once the furniture and dressing is unloaded onto the set is really gratifying, especially after going through the initial stages of visualizing and looking at sketches drawn by the art director. Being able to turn a two-dimensional drawing into something real you can walk around in never gets old.
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Definitely. I frequently turn down student movies. For a while student films were all that I did, but once I could be selective and pick and choose my projects, I found myself turning down pretty much every student film that came my way. Most pay little to nothing and the budgets are not very big either. Often but not always - there isn't a point to putting a film on your resume if there isn't enough money available to make it look good. If a low budget project comes my way, I am reluctant to work on it unless I know there is a star attached or at least a decent budget.
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This has never happened to me. I rotate between the same two or three production designers and thankfully all of them like the job I have been doing so far! I really do try to uphold a strong work ethic. I believe my reputation depends on the quality of my work and ability to please my designer and the client. If this means I have to put in an extra hour that I'm not compensated for, whether it's doing research online or shopping for materials - I am willing to do that without complaint. I feel like it's worth it in the long run to ensure that I will continue to get hired.
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There is both an Oscar and Emmy for Production Design. The Emmy award is shared between the Production Designer, Art Director and the Set Decorator and the Oscar is shared between Prod. Designer and Set Decorator. Neither are easy awards to achieve. I know several art directors and production designers who have been nominated multiple times for Emmys but have not won an award in their category even if they were deserving of the recognition. There is also the annual Art Directors Guild awards.
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There have been a couple occasions where I've had a disagreement with the director on a certain idea, but never a situation where there has been complete dissatisfaction with a set I've designed. The key to avoiding this is to stay on the same page with the director and producers all steps of the way. There is the occasional crazy director out there who decides they want one thing one day and then changes their mind the next day. I work mostly in commercials and this has indeed happened a couple times. It's all about being able to roll with the punches and keep up with the changes being requested.
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To a degree, CGI and the new advances in green screen have taken away jobs from art dept, mostly on big budget science fiction films (Star Wars, Avatar, etc) However, at the end of the day most actors rely on set decoration, set dressing and props to help immerse themselves into the character and setting. That is not something that will change, even as film making becomes more technologically advanced. Also, super low budget films have become sort of a trend of late and good CGI is not cheap. I don't see a future where all film sets will be green screen and motion capture. I think some of the lazy story telling we've been seeing lately in Hollywood is really the enemy of traditional set design, not CGI. It is possible to utilize digital effects tastefully to tell a story and still let the art direction shine (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Fight Club, etc) Hollywood has gotten so used to making movies that make money as opposed to making movies that tell stories, that the artistic quality of our films has suffered overall.
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If you are talking about shooting at an actual location versus building a set or shooting on a set, using a set is always going to make more sense and be more convenient for every department in the film crew. On a film or tv set built on a soundstage, the walls of individual rooms on the set are "wild" - they are temporary held down in place but can easily be moved out of the way to make room for camera, lighting, and moving furniture or dressing in and out of the space. Using a stage is more convenient for sound recording as well since it is enclosed and there were be less disturbances that will create interruptions.
If we're talking about shooting on a stage that is already pre-built, depending on what is needed, occasionally productions will rent out a space that is partially decorated and fits the visual look for the story they are trying to tell. An example is Lacey Studios near downtown LA, which has been used to film some of the most popular and recognizable horror movies made -Candyman, Saw, etc. It is a convenient space that has the right look and some already built sets for productions to use. However, some adjustments are always necessary since the pre-built set is never going to have every single detail that the script calls for. I worked on a show that shot at the police station set at Lacey Studios once, and while the set already had desks, chairs and other pieces of furniture, we still had to bring in other set dressing to give the space character: signage, computers for the desks, boxes of paperwork, etc to make the space look like it was functional and in use.
While the police station at Lacey had the perfect run down look we needed for our story, it might not be the right place to film a different show also featuring a police station. Think of how different the police stations from "Miami Vice" and "Law and Order" look : the audience might have a hard time believing that the characters from "Miami Vice" are in Miami if scenes in the police station, which have a fresh, almost tropical color palette, were shot on the gritty decrepit looking pre-built stages at Lacey. We may not think of it when we're watching a show- but something subtle like the moulding around a door frame or a paint color may click with a certain time and location in our head. Those simple visual cues can help make the viewer believe they're looking at a police station in Brooklyn instead a soundstage built in Los Angeles. All those little details are important. Overall, putting together a set rather than filming on something pre-built/ or at a real location can allow the crew to work more efficiently at bringing the details of the script to life and making it believable for the audience and also to have the convenience of a contained environment where they have complete control over the space.
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