What is Production Design.

Whilst there is a high level of importance in terms of shot types and camera movements to distinguish a film's look, without production design there is no true overall style. With costumes, sets, props, you can create completely new worlds which further adds to the atmosphere of the film. For such a demanding role, production design is covered by seven different positions within the art department. To make it easier for myself to understand, I'm going to break down all the different areas of production design that I'm not too sure on myself personally and how each department contributes to the overall vision.

Production Designer / Art Director / Costume Designer / Wardrobe Supervisor

One primary thing to note is these roles mainly exist within mainstream/high end productions which can afford the money to hire them, for a smaller/indie production all these roles may be undertaken by one or two people.



PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Like with the director of a film who conceives the overall vision of the film, the production designer
will conceive the overall visual design based on what the director would like, or the time period the
of the story. Additionally, whilst working closely with the director, the production designer will
designate colour schemes working around the mood and tone that the director is after. I've seen with some directors that a lot of the colour schemes are repeated throughout their work, keeping a consistent and trademark style - one of my favourite examples is Wes Anderson.



Overall, the production designer oversees the management of a consistent visual design by integrating and supervising all the department within production design. This will cover areas such as costume, props, set construction and project artwork.


ART DIRECTOR

The primary job of the art director is to design and implement the initial conceptions coming from the production designer, though this is mainly if the production is a high budget/mainstream production, typically with a smaller/indie production, the production designer and art director may well be the same person. Essentially, the art director runs the creative team behind a film's production design, with the production designer overseeing everything. You could say the production designer is the mind and the art director is the body.

COSTUME DESIGNER

Whilst on the front of it, a costume designer's job may just seem like just simply organising costumes for the characters, but there's much more to it than that. Yes, to an extent the job is simply finding costumes that match the concept and context of the story, but they need to find particular costumes that match the personalities of the characters in addition to this. Not only do costume designers have to arrange all of this, but the costumes that they design must not only match the vision of the director, but also provide comfort and durability for the actors, who may spend hours upon hours in the costumes.

WARDROBE SUPERVISOR

The wardrobe supervisor typically tends to work closely with the costume designer in order to fulfil the overall vision. Once the wardrobe supervisor understands what the costume designer has in mind for each character, collaborating with the rest of the art department, they will turn the overall vision into reality. This may include buying or hiring costumes, or perhaps in certain situations, again more so with high end productions, making costumes from scratch.