From the Production Designer: Project Updates

I met Katie about a year ago at a Columbia College Chicago alumni film event. I felt like a fish out of water there because I was neither an alumnus of CCC, nor was I an alumnus of any film or film-adjacent program. However, despite both of those shortcomings, Katie made me feel welcome and appreciated. I respect that about a person. And despite not having a single piece of creative writing to my name, she welcomed me into the fold of writer’s group.

Fast forward to now when the group is still going strong and Katie has written and is ready to direct her first short. The script is great, the story is excellent, and I think it has a strong chance of succeeding on the festival circuit. When she put out feelers for people to work on it, of course I volunteered to do anything I could. Katie had been there for me, so now I would be there for her.

That’s how I became the production designer, maybe the art director, the marketing director, and the social media manager for Alone Together. Here’s the problem: I have done all of these things exactly zero times.

I’m out of my fucking depth.

This is by no means an unfamiliar feeling. I’m an English major with a psychology minor, which means that out of my depth is my default setting unless my setting is behind a typewriter with a cup of tea. To this day I’m still waiting for my typewriter and my tea. I think it’s time to stop waiting.

But this isn’t a story about self-deprecating jokes, this is a story about what I did to get my head above water for this project.

I did exactly what any Millennial in my position would do. I went to Google and I typed in “what does a production designer do?”

Between Wikipedia, this post on the New York Film Academy website, and this one on Graduate Prospects in the UK, I had a pretty long list of things that I had to do. Here’s the problem: with very rare exception, I have done all of these things exactly zero times.

Noticing a theme?

I’ll admit, it was a bit daunting. But my mom taught me that anything is possible if you break it down into small bite-sized tasks. Even cleaning the bathroom (ugh). So that’s what I did.

A lot of the lists I looked at mentioned locations and sets. That was easy. Make a list of what locations and what sets we’d need. Things like the school, Alex’s house, and her bedroom. The school location was necessary, but still up in the air, so was the house as a whole. The main character’s bedroom, however, was something that I was much more familiar with and of equal importance to the school.

I might be a few years removed from being a teenager, but I remember a few things about it and Katie did a great job of describing enough of Alex’s bedroom that I could sketch it out and figure out what the key art pieces were going to be. There are some pieces of art that would be necessary no matter where the location was. Ergo, I set about to sketching it out. Here’s the problem: I have sketched something in scaled perspective exactly zero times.

So once again, on my very first task, I was out of my fucking depth.

And once again, Google came to the rescue. I did a quick search for drawing in perspective and came up with this video. Between that video, a couple rulers, a little math and a lot of mistakes, I came up with a pretty good mockup of Alex’s bedroom. And from that I was able to figure out the next 5-7 pieces of key art that I need to focus on.

That’s about what I’ve got so far. It’s nothing special, it’s certainly not a lot, but I still feel accomplished. I know that things will start to ramp up quickly, and things might get overwhelming, but I’ll always remember my mom telling me that if I just break the bathroom (in this case, the art and marketing) into smaller pieces that it won’t seem so bad.

Next steps are sketching, designing and sewing Olympic passing athletic gear for my bad ass cousin to wear in a photoshoot where she will be our featured faux Olympian for one of the pieces of key art. Here’s the problem: I’ve already used this line 3 times and I adhere to the rule of threes.

But I’m out of my fucking depth AGAIN.

I’m not worried, though. I know Google will be there. And I hope you will be, too, to see where all this Internet searching gets me. And I know that for Katie all this will be worth it. She took a chance on me, she trusted me, and I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna do right by her and her vision.

-Megan