My First Experience as an Art Director

My First experience as an Art Director happened to be last year and the Director of the project who happened to be my friend called me and gave me a role to head the department as Art Director and Set Designer. It was my first time but he entrusted the project to me.

As a film maker my strength has always been as a Production Manager. But then we were taught that as film makers you need to be versatile, thereby understanding every area of film production, having an idea of what it is all about and being able to practice it. So taking up the responsibility as an Art Director wasn't something entirely new to me.

So an Art Director Basically is someone who is in charge of the overall Aesthetic of a movie production, how the film looks like, the set design, the props and so on. This is majorly the responsibility of the Art Director

So first of all as the Art Director the first thing i did was firstly to read the script/Story and understand what the story is all about, what is required of each characters. The colour pallet etc

Secondly i identify all the props. For example the type of furniture, the kind of house , the settings, the era, the arrangement and all. Thirdly, i listed everything that is meant to be seen in the film and then went to the market to purchase everything.

During this stage we had to scout for location alongside the Director, Cinematographer and sound department to ensure everything goes well. After the location was found i and my team started work. Firstly we started by painting, then construction of other sets needed for the beauty of the film.
And we successfully shot a very good film.