Judy Farr

Judy Farr is a renowned British set decorator and art director. Farr is well known for her excellent attention to detail and her ultimate dedication to each and every project. She has worked on the liked of The Brothers Grimm, A week with Marilyn, Conan the Barbarian, The Kings Speech and the captivating Downton Abbey.

The British period drama Downton Abbey is one project that Farr ultimately showcases her set decoration skills and her many years of experience. In order to create an authentic portrayal of 1910 England, the creative team analysed old photographs of interiors and involved experts to aid in their research.

Set Decoration - Downton Abbey

With the series being set in Highclere Castle, a beautiful location ion Hampshire, England, it has sparked an interest and curiosity into the Edwardian style and appreciation for British historic homes. Highclere Castle was chosen as the setting for Downton Abbey, because of its individuality between rooms, with each room being decorated differently. Therefore, the creative team did use quite a bit of Highclere’s original furnishings. What is more, they added furnishings, art, period furniture, picture frames, cutlery, crystal ware and lamps, in order to fully capture the setting. In addition, Farr commented in an interview that the team updated the lighting in order to show the transition from gas to electric fixtures that was taking place at the time.

Set Decoration - Downton Abbey

Sources:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0268035/#set_decorator

http://www.61-54design.co.uk/

Set Dressing/Decorating

Set dressing/decorating is an important working role within any production. A set dresser/decorator works efficiently and effectively to create a scenic environment and simply dressers or decorators the set. In collaboration with production designers and directors, they dress the set using furnishings, artwork, lighting fixtures, props and many other objects to create a reliable and believable set for film and television productions.

Hairspray, 2007

What is more, historical period dramas are a common area for set dressers to work in. Period dramas that are set in, or reminiscent of an earlier time period, are a creative and imaginative area for set dressers to work within. However, within this creative field comes great responsibility. Especially with historical period dramas, every detail within the entire production has to be suitable and fit for that era, and care and consideration for every inch of the set in key. Films such as Pride and Prejudice, Hairspray, Titanic, Pearl Harbour and many more, are just a few historical period films that set dressers/decorators have artistically decorated/dressed every inch of the set, with historically correct elements.

Titanic, 1997

Pride and Prejudice, 2005

Notable set decorators/dressers include:

Richard Roberts, noted for The Da Vinci Code, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Game of Thrones, Jack the Giant Slayer and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Francesca Lo Schiavo, known for her work on Shutter Island, Hamlet, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Hugo.

Gordon Sim, known for his work on Driven, Chicago, Breach, Hairspray, Nine, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Katie Spencer, famous for her work on Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Hanna and Anna Karenina.

Anna Lynch-Robinson, well known for her work on Les Misérables, Bel Ami, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Made in Dagenham and In Bruges.

Rosemary Brandenburg, known for her work on Hocus Pocus, The Flintstones, Caspar, Psycho, Planet of the Apes, Public Enemies, Hancock, The Island and Cast Away.

Tatiana Macdonald, noted for her work on Billy Elliot, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, Vanity Fair, The Invisible Woman and The Imitation Game.

Nancy Haigh, well known for her work on Bugsy, Big Fish, Forrest Gump, Dreamgirls, and Oz the Great and Powerful.

Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, known for her work on Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglorious Bastards, and Reservoir Dogs.

Debra Schutt, notable for her work on The Dictator, Ghost Town, Revolutionary Road and Noah.

Judy Farr, well known for her work on The Brothers Grimm, A week with Marilyn, Conan the Barbarian and The King’s Speech.

Crispian Sallis, known for his work on Hannibal, Jack the Ripper, The Tudors, Gladiator and Camelot.

Sources:

http://www.imdb.com/

McCain's "Chip Perfection"

The advertisement showcases the loving care and attention that goes into making McCain chips, from planting the seed to testing the product for qualities such as desirability, crispy-ness, and fluffy-ness.

McCain Foods launched a creative heart-warming advertisement campaign created by BMB, showcasing loving care and attention that goes into making McCain chips. From planting the seed to testing the product for qualities such as ‘desirability’, ‘crispy-ness’, and ‘fluffy-ness’, McCain emphasises the creation of ‘Chip Perfection’. The business challenge, “Resist the trend towards Own Label chips and make people prepared to pay that little bit more for McCain”.

BMB (Beattie McGuinness Bungay) is an independent advertising agency, based in London, who aims to use creativity to solve business problems. Some of their other clients include, East Coast, Dairylea, First Choice, Hula Hoops, Linkedin, Microsoft, Thomson and many more. 

The two main production companies that worked on this advertisement campaign were Partizan and The Mill.

Partizan is an award-winning production company that works in the areas of advertising, music videos, animation, and films. The company is well-known for its creative excellence and has a worldwide reputation with offices in London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai and Mumbai. They have produced many advertisements for many of the world leading brands, including Coca-Cola, Cadbury’s, Vodafone, Nokia, Audi and any more.

The Mill is a passionate production company that collaborates with directors, creative agencies and visual brands to bring creative ideas to life. Their reputation is built on the talented minds that make up the company and they find, train and nurture creative, technical and production teams. The company works internationally with offices in London, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The Mill provides a range of visual effects and design projects for advertising and delivers various stages of the production from pre-visualisation to conceptual artwork.

Sources: 

http://www.bmbagency.com/

http://www.bmbagency.com/projects/chip-perfection

http://www.partizan.com/

http://www.themill.com/

Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

Kaiser Chiefs, ‘Ruby’ music video, features a narrative story, where a mini city is being built around the band as they perform. The music video begins with the band performing in the middle of a desert and the city starts to take shape with various building stages.  In addition, the music video included a vast amount of post-production in order to produce the miniature city. The tiny city grows through the entire length of the video and completely envelops the band. The creative work was shared with a number of companies, including Mathematic, Stylewar and Stink UK.

Mathematic, a Paris based VFX animation and motion design studio, whom centred on Art Direction, their work extends across commercial advertisements, broadcast design, brand content, print realms and music videos.  For the music video, Mathematic assisted in the animation and integration in various shots of the video, especially in the close up elements which were animate within the scene, in particular the building scene in the first half of the clip.

Stylewar, is a group of Swedish directors that produce technically challenging creations. They strive to produce creative freedom in collaborations with various brands and music artists, while still using their unique signature style, with a high level of detail and volatile use of colour.

Stink TV UK, based in London is a marketing and advertising production company, who set out to introduce a unique creative collective to an international stage. There specialties lie in advertising, film and music videos, and they draw on various influences with a team of multi-cultural directors. They aim to produce work that is progressive and challenging, but also fully showcasing the talent of its directors and clients. 

Sources:

http://www.stylewar.com/content/kaiser-chiefs

http://www.mathematic.tv/

http://www.stink.tv/

A Journey into Advertising

BBDO is the worlds most awarded, international advertising agency based in New York. The agency aims to tell stories through advertising, both in bite-size and long form and they intend to move their consumers emotionally and change the way they think, feel or act towards a brand. What is more, they believe that ‘in the absence of great work nothing else matters’. The agency’s clients include FedEx, Visa, P&G, Mercedes- Benz, hp, Johnson & Johnson, Starbucks and many more.

FedEx Kinko’s innovative and quirky advertisement campaign, released in 2005, features oversized bottles of correction fluid, giant highlighters and in one case an enlarged office lamp, scattered around the busy streets of New York. The launch of this ad was to redefine the business-services marketplace, through its acquired and re-branded FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centre’s. This ingenious and unique ad campaign was invented by the creative team at BBDO advertising agency.

FedEx Kinko's advertising campaign

Furthermore, advertising agency AMV is a part of the BBDO network, and is the biggest advertising agency in the UK. Being a part of the BBDO network, AMV are in good company and now being recognised as AMV BBDO, the agencies together are identified as the world’s most creative and effective network. AMV BBDO work with over 85 brands and some of these include, BT, Sainsbury’s, Walkers, Mars, Aviva and EDF Energy.

The EDF Energy, ‘Feel Better Energy’ advertising campaign, first aired in April 2012, and was an uplifting campaign for EDF featuring former Human League singer, Phil Oakey’s 1984 hit Together in Electric Dreams. The advertisement features the company’s mascot ‘Zingy’, using various indoor and outdoor electric appliances and the ad aims to make customers feel better about the company’s energy services.

EDF Energy, 'Feel Better Energy' advertisement.

 Sources:

http://www.bbdo.com/#!/the-work

http://amvbbdo.com/

http://amvbbdo.com/work/campaign/edf-energy/feelbetter/feelbetterenergy

Miss Saigon

During a research trip to London, I had the opportunity to experience Cameron Mackintosh’s acclaimed new production of the sensational Miss Saigon, a tragic tale based on Giacomo Puccini’s, opera Madame Butterfly. Set in 1975 during the final days of the American occupation of Saigon, Miss Saigon is an epic love story about the upheaval relationship between an American GI and a young Vietnamese woman.

This West End revival has created a striking, new freshness and accommodates for its 21^st century audiences. This can been seen through the much angrier and meaner American GI’s, through the using and abusing of Vietnam’s woman, and through culture and politics; all of which create a essence of heart and reality for the audience to experience.

Furthermore, Production and set designers Totie Driver and Matt Kinley created a squalid Vietnam, with so much realism you can almost smell the mixture of smoky, contaminated air and cheap perfume. What is more the set design itself explores a sordid atmosphere and an utter emphasis of poverty and destitution. In addition, it allows the audience to understand the desperation of getting out of the slums and keeping her child safe. This type of ingenious use of set design, is the kind that draws the audience into the story and what is more aids in the progression of the characters.

Jon Jon Briones as The Engineer

The scene-stealer of the whole production is the dramatic flashback scene, featuring the Embassy gates and a helicopter. For this scene, the front of a real helicopter is used and lowered onto the stage, the realism is done by using sound, and lighting. This one fast paced, heartfelt scene gives a real sense of the imprisoned corrugated-iron Embassy gates and the agony and despair of the Vietnamese citizens trying to break through.

Embassy Gates and Helicopter

Overall, director Laurence Connor’s production has an astounding cinematic fluency and keeps the drama and tension running throughout, which forces the audience onto the edge of their seats.

Sources:

http://www.miss-saigon.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10846634/Miss-Saigon-Prince-Edward-Theatre-review-superbly-slick.html

Miss Saigon, Prince Edward Theatre Programme

Mackinnon and Saunders

After touching on the subject of fantastical puppet making in my previous blog post, and introducing one of the world’s leading puppet making companies, Mackinnon and Saunders, I felt the need to learn more about the vast world of puppet making and looking in particular into the talented team at Mackinnon and Saunders.

Ian Mackinnon and Peter Saunders

The founders of the company Ian Mackinnon and Peter Saunders, teamed up over 30 years ago on a stop-motion version of The Wind in the Willows and since then they have collaborated together on countless creative and inspiring television commercials and on some of the most successful stop-motion feature films. Based in Greater Manchester, the company was founded after the pair established their puppet making team at Cosgrove Hall, an organisation that shaped the British animation industry. Cosgrove Hall films was a British animation studio and was once a major producer of children’s television and animated programmes. There are best known as the creators of such creative productions such as Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, The BFG and The Wind in the Williows as well as making a handful of episodes for the BBC including Noddy, Bill and Ben and Andy Pandy. Both Mackinnon and Saunders learned their creative trade at the famous Cosgrove Hall studios and also recruited many of the company’s former employees after its closure. Describing the region as the heart of creative talent, the pair were keen on keeping this visionary talent in one place, particularly for their thriving business. In addition, the company still receive fantastic opportunities for collaboration and also have expanding networks, proving that they can still continue to run a prosperous global business. What is more Mackinnon and Saunders have set an example for the animation industry not just in Manchester, but also in the UK.

Danger Mouse produced by Cosgrove Hall Films

Despite having over 30 years of experience, the creative pair found one particular collaboration daunting. Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animation version of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, challenged the duo, their team and their preconceptions about what stop-motion puppets are. What is more with Anderson not haven’t worked a great deal in stop- motion, accelerated the creative team to try new ideas, new techniques and new materials.  In addition, the director insisted that he didn’t want the film to look sleek and polished, which can sometimes resemble computer-animation, but instead versioned for the viewers to respect and embrace the medium of stop-motion itself.  Furthermore, the puppet makers rediscovered and adapted techniques dating back to ‘King Kong’, which was to cover most of the cast in fur, this was insisted by Anderson whom was infatuated with the tangibility of real fur and the effect it gave on camera. When using real fur meant that the hair would appear to ripple unnaturally, this was due to handling the models between frames. However, it give the feeling and effect that there’s a soft breeze blowing on the character, which resulted in quite beautiful qualities. In addition, the animals’ fur was a combination of real goat’s hair, which was dyed using supermarket everyday hair dye and artificial fur, plucked off plush toys. The characters hair colour required specific, individual dying times in order to get the colouring right. In addition, the human characters hair was taken from studio employees, who had matching colour hair to the character. Mackinnon and Saunders produced over 500 puppets for the entire film and every last detail was made by hand. Mr. Fox had 17 different styles and each of these styles had to be done in six different sizes, resulting in the character having over 100 puppets alone.

Applying the fur - image taken from Mackinnon and Saunders' website

Puppets varying in size

Overall, this one collaboration out of many that Mackinnon and Saunders have experienced, proved a challenging yet learning curve experience. Pushing the boundaries, exploring new techniques and materials and re-discovering the old ones, allowed for the pair and their team to expose themselves to something new and re-invent the old. Furthermore, it also shows that even with having 30 years of experience, there is always a new challenge and a new way of thinking just around the corner.

Sources:

http://www.mackinnonandsaunders.com/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosgrove_Hall_Films

Stop-motion Animation: Frame by Frame Film-making with Puppets and Models, Barry Purves