ABSTRACT BY LUCY FIFE DONALDSON

In this talk I will situate production designers as a key member of the filmmaking team who is responsible for shaping the material qualities of a film through decisions that compose the specifics of surface, shape and space. The details of such decisions – from the texture of a carpet to the composition of a character’s work space – guide the sensorial relationship between viewer and film; we comprehend the fiction with help from our knowledge of the real world and the nature of the relationship the film asks us to take to it. In tune with the conference’s ‘focal inversion’ to privilege quotidian over spectacular, familiar over extraordinary, the talk will focus on the office as an example of a space that while rich in textures and design details, can easily be overlooked as unremarkable, its bland or institutional surfaces resisting interest and meaning beyond authenticity or continuity with the everyday.   

Moreover, because production designers create a film’s environment both onscreen and offscreen, the talk investigates the significance of their work in shaping others’ contributions in invisible ways. In this sense, I understand the designer’s frame as expanding beyond the film’s frame, one that shapes the work of the actor (on set through their engagement with a built environment which exists in a space that the audience only sees a tiny part of), as well as other crew members, whether designers acknowledge these connections or not (sound designer Cecelia Hall once called production design ‘the map with all the clues’, LoBrutto, Sound-on-Film, 2004).

My case studies, All the President’s Men (Production Designer: George Jenkins, 1976) and The Assistant (Production Designer: Fletcher Chancey, 2019) work in differing scales, constructing office environments which balance authenticity with atmosphere.