Setting, Set Design and Props Preliminary Exercise

Production Design

Production design is basically the overall visual look of the production, encapsulating unifying vision for the set design, props and wardrobe. Usually, the director would be responsible for production design as the director is the one that plans where certain objects must be, who plays what role, etc. But why is production design so important to audiences? Production design tells the story within one shot or scene. The purpose of production design is to set the scene's mood, reflect the inner state of a character and articulates the theme of the story. The production designer's job is to use the production design to make the movie aesthetically pleasing, use the production design intelligently to tell a story and to give the audience an idea of what is happening throughout the movie, a breakdown of the story, using setting, set design and props.

Setting in film is more or less what is in the background, the middle-ground and the foreground of the shot. It serves a purpose of telling the audience where the shot/scene is taking place. Key elements to helping the audience to identify genre include the lighting, the color scheme, the camerawork and the framing of the shot.

In this scene from the movie "Coraline", the audience can see that the little girl is enjoying dinner with strange parents. The elements that helped the audience to decode this is that they are in the kitchen which means that they are about to eat. The moon in the background shows that it is night time, therefore, it is dinner time. The reason the parents are 'strange' is because they have buttons in their eyes but they don't look like they are in pain. The father is even talking to Coraline like nothing happened.

Set design and props are objects/furniture in the scene that add meaning and also help with telling the audience. Their significance involves the actors interacting with the set design and props to give the audience an idea of the actor/character's personality; emotion; situation; etc. If an actor goes to sit on a navy-blue chair (set design) and rubs between their eyes whilst facing their head down, the audience can connote that the character is not a very happy or enthusiastic person, and is currently very stressed. If the actor picks up a photo of them and their loved one (prop) from a red, green and white decorated fireplace (set design), and stares at it as tears run down their eyes, it means that they used to be happy and cheery until their loved one passed away or is far away from them.

Viewing this scene from "Cruella", the audience sees the actor holding a cane (prop) to match with their outfit (wardrobe) and they are walking on a stage with a lot of people surrounding the platform and many various visual effects can be seen in the background (set design). The occasional outfit suggests that the character is dressed for something big and the set design shows that that something is: a show. Therefore, the audience can conclude that the character is dressing up for a huge show to show off her outfit.

An example of setting, set design and props in a scene has a shot including: a gas station with a city background at night (setting) with no vehicles in sight, blinking/broken street lights and a few men in the distance (set design). The men have drink in their hands and a girl is running through the street yelling "help!" constantly with her cell phone in her hand and panicking (the objects that were mentioned are props). Clearly something is wrong and the audience is trying to figure out what is wrong. A number of things could be happening at the moment: the girl has lost her mom; she was kidnapped and escaped; she is being chased, etc. The setting, set design and props are significant to this shot because the audience was able to think of multiple scenarios which were more than likely what was happening.