Brief 2 - Conveyor Film Brief

The Brief:

Almost every piece of Graphic Design you see on screen, either in a film or TV has to be owned by the creative team. The collective assemblage of the smallest details are what convince a viewer that the world they’re seeing is real. Unlike any other brief I’ve ever worked on, meeting the creative team on this project has given me the opportunity to create artwork for such a unique and applied context and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. The films I think of when great on-set graphic design comes to mind include the likes of Her, The Grandbudapest Hotel, and even the Harry Potter franchise. The reason why is that the attention to detail was excecuted so well in these examples, and coherently blended into the made up world we watched. To design and produce a wide range of physical objects, that are functional at the point of human interaction isn’t uncommon in mainstream graphic design, yet doing it with the intention for it to be shot with a camera puts and interesting spin on it. 

The short film produced by final year students at the Northern Film School follows a middle aged man, Frank, whose only joy in life is his pet hamster Reggie. When it dies, he seeks solace with his friend Audrey who works with him at the nodding dog factory he works at. My task was to produce a range of physical outcomes that supported this including:

- Factory Logo
- Box Stencils
- Health & Safety Posters
- Decorative Posters
- Hamster Food Boxes
- Postage Stamps
- Vinyl Album Designs

and more...

Research:

Concept:

Meeting the production team from early on and regularly was essential for properly understanding their vision and approach to how this film should look. I had to be certain in my excecution that every piece of artwork that I made echoed the themes that they wanted to capture. In essence, the short film is a love story, one that embodies elements of isolation, timelessness, human tendancies, relationships and humour. This meant the work I produced had to be in some sense believable, yet not too suggestive of a specific time period in its aesthetic styling. The content for what I made was mostly supplied, for example: ‘Dagny’s Dog Emporium’, was a factory name the production team came up with, my job was to produce appropriate material that supported the ideas visually whilst not looking out of place. Essentially, the overarching bulk of artwork has manifested through a series of smaller branding, packaging and fine art briefs that all had there own specifications and individuals contexts.

Development

The processes used have been mostly practical and productional. Where I’ve noticed differences in the real world production of the materials I’ve made are to with scale and audience; a lot of the the pieces I designed (such as the hamster food box) would be sent to a printing and constructing facility to mass produce the product in a real world scenario, whereas I’ve not needed to produce thousands of products as only singles were needed for shots. Again another good example of what makes this project so unique. Making the finished products myself has meant that I’ve had to demonstrate a high level of finesse to the finishing, as to replicate what would be otherwise made by machinery on a mass scale. The aesthetic decisions and outcomes made were a balance of regurgitating existing market products (research), defining a piece that was one of a kind, and including details that would be otherwise never seen by the viewer but added to the sense of realism.

My personal design process followed a linear pattern of working with pencil and paper to prepare sketches for interim meetings that were held every Saturday with the core production team members, agreeing and developing these artworks and digitally working them into tangible pieces that were ready to be either printed or constructed. All completed before filming began.

Artwork & Evaluation

Any body of visual artwork produced by a designer can only ever be measured in its effectiveness, by it’s reception with the market audience, this instance is made up by a mixture of both a film production team and an amount of film watchers in the short film industry. I was lucky enough to work on set one day with the team, and received lots of positive feedback on the work I’d done, more specifically how much they contributed towards a more finished film set that reinforced the tale being told on screen. Even the actors commented on how the boxes they were  interacting with were believable enough that they didn’t have to ‘oversell’ there acting method to push something on screen that didn’t quite fit there, it became much more natural. I’m pleased that the amount of time and effort I’ve put into this brief has paid off in a way that can actually be measured; by it’s critical reception. So often as design students we produce work to be marked and thrown in a draw afterwards, which in my opinion is unproductive.

The very real world application of the artwork I’ve made has been rewarding. I’d like to share it with you by showing you a collection of stills from the finished movie, photographs from the set, and the raw artwork I produced.

- Beginnings of projects
- Correspondence
- Meetings