ENG 2100 ON-LINE
CHAPTER 7: DRAMA

Assignments  ·  Important Concepts  ·  Instructor Insights

This chapter deals with the roles of the art director and production designer, the tools of production design and their role in creating mise-en-scene.

Assignments

Assignment #8 (worth 5% of final grade) Due Date: March 21
Assignment Length	Textbook Reading	Instructions
At least 500 words	Chapter 7	Evaluate the art direction of one of the following feature films. How well do the costumes, sets, and other aspects work together? Is the function to create a sense of fantasy or reality? In what ways are the settings a symbolic extension of the film? Do the sets embody the essence of the story material? Analyze the sets based on the 8 characteristics on page 337 of the textbook. Evaluate the costumes based on the 12 characteristics on pages 342-344 of the textbook. Barry Lyndon Chinatown Citizen Kane Cleopatra Dangerous Liaisons Dark City Doctor Zhivago Gone with the Wind Henry V 1989, Branagh director Pennies From Heaven

Important Concepts

• What is the role of the director?
• Know the auteur theory and what the qualities are that make a director an auteur.
• Develop an appreciation for the influence of setting and decor.
• Understand the role of the art director.
• How do costumes and makeup add to character and theme?

Instructor Insights

Auteur Theory: To read an interesting article concerning Auteur Theory, click on the picture of Terry Gilliam to the left.

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Production Design and Art Direction: Great production designcan create another world for film. Sets, mattes, and miniatures can take the viewer back to somewhere in the past or to future that has yet to be. D.W. Griffith's Intolerance told four different stories during different periods of history. Perhaps the most magnificent set created for the film was for the Babylonian story (circa 6th Century, BC).

An excellent film to study to gain insight into early art direction is Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1925), a science fiction silent film from Germany, with art direction by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut,and Karl Vollbrecht. Click on the poster to the left for more information.

Lang's visions of skyscrapers, an exaggerated dream of the New York skyline, multiplied a thousandfold and divested of all reality, is splendid. It has become truly the town of the future, reaching up into the sky in luminous immensity...Light and fog mingle to produce an atmosphere of weightlessness, of shimmering brightness.

---Siegfried Kracauer, pioneer film critic

For Metropolis, the German studio UFA almost went bankrupt due to the large budget of the film, particularly for the sets. This is how the city of the future looked on film.

This next photo shows a large set piece of one of the large powerplants for the city.

Metropolis, with its revolutionary set designs, influenced many other films including Blade Runner, Batman, and Dark City. Alex Proyas, the director of Dark City, has acknowledged the influence that Metropolis had on the look of his film. Below are examples of the extraordinary production design of Dark City:

Interior	Exterior

We chose to use the Burbank Studios backlot, the street there, for several reasons. One, it was available to us for a long length of time, and two, it had never been used in the way we were going to use it. It's a street that's been seen a lot of forties movies.... But our job was to take the street and design it into the future. The whole design idea was to give us a very dense-looking, cloistered look.

---Lawrence G. Paull, production designer for Blade Runner

Notice the similarities between the art director's sketched vision for the "look" of Blade Runner...	...and the final product.

Click on the blade runner to the right for more information.

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Computer-Generated Imagery: The magic of ancient Rome can be created without hammers or nails, as it has been in films such as Cabiria (1912) to Cleopatra (1961). Here we see a scene from the film Gladiator. Everything you see in the background is computer-generated. Click on the image to see a larger high resolution image.

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Costume Design: Costumes reflect the time and place of the story. If we look at William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the real Hamlet lived about 1200 in Denmark. However, when Hamlet was first performed in 1602 in England, the costumes were probably similar to what we see in the film Shakespeare in Love.

The 1996 version of Hamlet, directed by Kenneth Branagh, takes place in the late 19th Century and reflects the look of imperial England. From left to right are Derek Jacobi (Claudius), Branagh (Hamlet), and Julie Christie (Gertrude).	The 2000 version of Hamlet takes place in present day New York City. The story revolves around the corporate world. The costumes as worn by Ethan Hawke (Hamlet), Diane Verona (Gertrude), and Kyle MacLachlan (Claudius) reflect that time and place.

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Quotes from Famous Directors:
The task I'm trying to achieve is above all to make you see.

---D. W. Griffith, in an interview in 1913

The substance of the motion picture as it now exists was created by its directors.

---Joseph von Sternberg, from his autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry

A director is a kind of idea and taste machine; a movie is a series of creative and technical decisions, and it's the director's job to make the right decision as frequently as possible.

---Stanley Kubrick, from Elements of Film by Lee Bobker

I admire Kubrick, But I can't say I like him. I mean, I don't know him personally. What he does is terrific and the opposite of what I do. He supervises every little detail of his films down to the last inch. But I leave a gap so wide that anything between A and X may be acceptable. With Kubrick, it's between A and A1.

---Robert Altman, Playboy interview, June 1976

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Quotes on Production Design:
The art director is very important. I wish all films would have good art directors...If you start out with a good set, obviously you are already inspired.

---Vilmos Zsigmond, cinematographer

During the preparation of a film I make endless drawings.

---Ken Adam, art director

Much of the credit for the success of Gone With the Wind must go to the expert production designer William Cameron Menzies. Menzies, who had originally been an illustrator of children's books, was legendary for his sketches, which were not simply drawings of costumes and sets, but also of characters, their entrances, exits, the camera angles from which they should be shot, and instructions on how they should be lit. He drew more than 2,500 sketches for Gone With the Wind, one for each and every camera set-up.

---William Bayer, from The Great Movies

For the 1939 film Gone With the Wind, over $28,000 was spent on the set for Tara. The reconstruction of the Antebellum mansion is seen below:

Click on the photo of Menzies to the left for more information.

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Quotes on Costume Design:
A costume designer really is an extension of the writer, the director, and the actor. If you do your job correctly you have helped them; if not you have sabotaged them. You start with a screenplay. You read it, and it gives you the settings; it gives you a year; it gives you the characters. Now, there are all sorts of decisions that have to be made about the characters if the information is not in the screenplay. What economic bracket are they in? What is their background? If they are rich, were they always rich? These are the things that have to be decided by a director and, finally, an actor. To think that a costume designer just puts clothes on people is a mistake.

---Anthea Sylbert, costume designer

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Interesting Websites on Directors (click on the image):

Click on Sam Peckinpah's photo to the left to access articles about film directors.

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