film set designers out there?

Question:Where did you start? What qualifications did you get and what's the job like? What is the average pay for a project?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Where did you start? What qualifications did you get and what's the job like? What is the average pay for a project?

You can probably break it into three catagories

Set Designers (mostly live stage)
Art Directors (mostly TV and Movies)
Production Designers (mostly movies)

Usually it involved an Art backround from art school or college.

You get your start by working with the people and doing small projects.

Designing aspects of things.

In movies you might start as a junior artist doing storyboard drawings.

Set designers on stage often draw the layout of where props and furniture would good, where doors and walls could be.

They also work with the director for modular stages and modular set assemblies.

Backgrounds could be drawn by them or a sceince artist.

In movies the Art Director often does the same job, drawing out the sets for a scene.

In a major movie the Production designer draws the whole look of the film, the interior and exterior sets as like a finished comic books.

The term Art Director comes largely from the print world. In magazines and advertising agencies they were the creative "look" person who designed the cover, the posters, the display ads.

(Copywriters came up with the slogans and sound bites. The Advertising Manager ran the show and dealt with the clients and the Art and Copy department and steered the project)

Production Designer is basically a 60 year old concept.

In a production like Blade Runner the Production Designer works with the director for a whole look for each scene. The setting, decore, major accutraments.

Art Directors might work on indivudal aspects. Living quaters, offices, the inside of cars

In Dr. Strangelove PD Ken Adams concenterated on the War Room set while the art director handled the B-52 interior on his own separately

In Goldfinger Adams did the main meeting room for MI6, the valt at Ft. Knox, the planning room in Goldfinger's basement.

Art directors might have done the incidentals like jet plane interior, Bond's prison cell, the Miami hotel interior

Salary has a union minimum for both stage and film Probably in the $3,000-$5,000 a week area.

In a case like Ken Adams it would be negociated and quite high. Maybe $10,000 a week, maybe a flat fee covering a certain amount of months.

In the case of an Art Director who typically gets above union minimum, say $7,000, they might offer him credit as Production Designer if he'll take $6,000 instead that one time.

In the case of an Art Director as good as Ken Adam who makes $2,000 less a week he might demand to get Production Design credit on this moive.

From the old style look, the Production designer was like a key architect while the art director was more of a draftsman

Today the distiniction is often the Production Designer makes the script into a whole comic book with look and feel, while the art director typically just draws the 10 sets they will use.

professional designer usually go to a high powered MFA program like at Yale, take the union test and then seek work.