1.What is your role / contribution to the film in each phase?
I am the art director. I have not taken up such a role before in previous productions where there wasn’t really one single person to take care of the wardrobe, props and set design. Back then, everybody tend to contribute their efforts instead of putting only one person in charge.
2.What have you learnt in each phase?
I now know more about the role of an art director and what he/she is required to do on set. The art director can be in charge of designing the set as well but for this shoot, our story takes place in a bus. Hence, I didn’t “decorate” it or did any specific designs in the bus as it didn’t seem appropriate..
We needed a black leather vest for our actor, and a white blouse and black skirt for the actress. Except for the vest we bought, we were able to get the talent to bring their own clothes which matched our description. As we have a tight budget, the buying of clothes would have increased our budget if we had not approach our talent to ask if they have similar outfits. Some of them are quite kind and brought several sets for us to choose. It is also important to liaise with them properly, if not they might bring the wrong clothes and create a bit of trouble for us.
We initially wanted to have extras wearing school uniforms, people reading newspapers and in office wear. However, we were not able to find that many people, and most of them who came are around our age. We still had to proceed on to shoot even though the scene wasn’t what we initially planned but changes are bound to happen. Also, we weren’t able to fill a whole bus. I learnt that extras are really hard to find especially for a student shoot, and those who come are usually our friends. And when the number of extras needed are not enough, we have to work a way out, like use camera angles or change position to shoot and avoid wide shots.
Props and costumes tend to get placed all over the place on set and this goes the same for a small environment in the bus. Thus I need to be aware of where the talent placed the prop/costume when he took if off as we would waste time searching for them if they get misplaced.
