David Bordwell
David Jay Bordwell is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film and the Poetics of Cinema, Making Meaning, On the History of Film Style. With his wife Kristin Thompson, Bordwell wrote the introductory textbooks Film History. With aesthetic philosopher Noël Carroll, Bordwell edited the anthology Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, a polemic on the state of contemporary film theory, his largest work to date remains The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, written in collaboration with Thompson and Janet Staiger. Several of his more influential articles on theory and style were collected in Poetics of Cinema, named in homage after the famous anthology of Russian formalist film theory Poetika Kino, edited by Boris Eikhenbaum in 1927. Bordwell spent nearly the entirety of his career as a professor of film at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies, Emeritus in the Department of Communication Arts.
Notable film theorists who wrote their dissertations under his advisement include Edward Branigan, Murray Smith, Carl Plantinga. He and Thompson maintain the blog "Observations on film art" for their recent ruminations on cinema. Drawing inspiration from earlier film theorists such as Noel Burch as well as from art historian Ernst Gombrich, Bordwell has contributed books and articles on classical film theory, the history of art cinema and contemporary Hollywood cinema, East Asian film style. However, his more influential and controversial works have dealt with cognitive film theory, historical poetics of film style, critiques of contemporary film theory and analysis. Bordwell has been associated with a methodological approach known as neoformalism, although this approach has been more extensively written about by his wife, Kristin Thompson. Neoformalism is an approach to film analysis based on observations first made by the literary theorists known as the Russian formalists: that there is a distinction between a film's perceptual and semiotic properties.
One scholar has commented that the cognitivist perspective is the central reason why neoformalism earns its prefix and is not "traditional" formalism. Much of Bordwell's work considers the film-goer's cognitive processes that take place when perceiving the film's nontextual, aesthetic forms; this analysis includes how films guide our attention to salient narrative information, how films partake in'defamiliarization', a formalist term for how art shows us familiar and formulaic objects and concepts in a manner that encourages us to experience them as if they were new entities. Neoformalists reject many assumptions and methodologies made by other schools of film study hermeneutic approaches, among which he counts Lacanian psychoanalysis and certain variations of poststructuralism. In Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Bordwell and co-editor Noël Carroll argue against these types of approaches, which they claim act as "Grand Theories" that use films to confirm predetermined theoretical frameworks, rather than attempting mid-level research meant to illuminate how films work.
Bordwell and Carroll coined the term "S. L. A. B. Theory" to refer to theories that use the ideas of Saussure, Althusser, and/or Barthes. Many philosophers have criticized neoformalism, notably Slavoj Žižek, of whom Bordwell has himself been a long-time critic, their criticism of neoformalism is not based on any internal inconsistencies. Rather, critics like Žižek argue that neoformalism understates the role of culture and ideology in shaping the film text, that analysis should reveal the problematic values of the societies in which these films are produced. Bordwell's considerable influence within film studies has reached such a point that many of his concepts are reported to "have become part of a theoretical canon in film criticism and film academia." The David Bordwell Collection is held at the Academy Film Archive and is noteworthy for the strength of its Hong Kong holdings. Bordwell, David. Filmguide to La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bordwell, David. Film Art: An Introduction.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Ninth edition, 2009. Bordwell, David. French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, Film Style. New York: Arno Press. Reprint of 1974 Ph. D. dissertation Bordwell, David. The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bordwell, David; the Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bordwell, David. Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bordwell, David; the Cinema of Eisenstein. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bordwell, David. Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill. Third edition, 2010. Bordwell, David. Post-Theory: Recons
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision; the director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, the creative aspects of filmmaking. Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film; the film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film becomes realized, or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions and stay within the boundaries of the film's budget. There are many pathways to becoming a film director; some film directors started as screenwriters, producers, film editors or actors. Other film directors have attended a film school. Directors use different approaches; some outline a general plotline and let the actors improvise dialogue, while others control every aspect, demand that the actors and crew follow instructions precisely.
Some directors write their own screenplays or collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners. Some directors appear in their films, or compose the music score for their films. A film director's task is to envisage a way to translate a screenplay into a formed film, to realize this vision. To do this, they oversee the technical elements of film production; this entails organizing the film crew in such a way to achieve their vision of the film. This requires skills of group leadership, as well as the ability to maintain a singular focus in the stressful, fast-paced environment of a film set. Moreover, it is necessary to have an artistic eye to frame shots and to give precise feedback to cast and crew, excellent communication skills are a must. Since the film director depends on the successful cooperation of many different creative individuals with strongly contradicting artistic ideals and visions, he or she needs to possess conflict resolution skills in order to mediate whenever necessary.
Thus the director ensures that all individuals involved in the film production are working towards an identical vision for the completed film. The set of varying challenges he or she has to tackle has been described as "a multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with egos and weather thrown in for good measure", it adds to the pressure that the success of a film can influence when and how they will work again, if at all. The sole superiors of the director are the producer and the studio, financing the film, although sometimes the director can be a producer of the same film; the role of a director differs from producers in that producers manage the logistics and business operations of the production, whereas the director is tasked with making creative decisions. The director must work within the restrictions of the film's budget and the demands of the producer and studio. Directors play an important role in post-production. While the film is still in production, the director sends "dailies" to the film editor and explains his or her overall vision for the film, allowing the editor to assemble an editor's cut.
In post-production, the director works with the editor to edit the material into the director's cut. Well-established directors have the "final cut privilege", meaning that they have the final say on which edit of the film is released. For other directors, the studio can order further edits without the director's permission; the director is one of the few positions that requires intimate involvement during every stage of film production. Thus, the position of film director is considered to be a stressful and demanding one, it has been said that "20-hour days are not unusual". Some directors take on additional roles, such as producing, writing or editing. Under European Union law, the film director is considered the "author" or one of the authors of a film as a result of the influence of auteur theory. Auteur theory is a film criticism concept that holds that a film director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur". In spite of—and sometimes because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process.
Some film directors started as screenwriters, film producers or actors. Several American cinematographers have become directors, including Barry Sonnenfeld the Coen brothers' DP. Other film directors have attended a film school to get a bachelors degree studying cinema. Film students study the basic skills used in making a film; this includes, for example, shot lists and storyboards, protocols of dealing with professional actors, reading scripts. Some film schools are equipped with post-production facilities. Besides basic technical and logistical skills, students receive education on the nature of professional relationships that occur during film production. A full degree course can be designed for up to five years of studying. Future directors complete short films during their enrollment; the National Film School of Denmark has the student's final projects presented on national TV. Some film schools retain the rights for their students' works. Many directors prepared for making feature films by working in television.
The German Film and Television Academy Berlin cooperate
Storyboard
A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at Walt Disney Productions during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios. Many large budget silent films were storyboarded, but most of this material has been lost during the reduction of the studio archives during the 1970s and 1980s. Special effects pioneer Georges Méliès is known to have been among the first filmmakers to use storyboards and pre-production art to visualize planned effects. However, storyboarding in the form known today was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s. In the biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney, Diane Disney Miller explains that the first complete storyboards were created for the 1933 Disney short Three Little Pigs.
According to John Canemaker, in Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards, the first storyboards at Disney evolved from comic-book like "story sketches" created in the 1920s to illustrate concepts for animated cartoon short subjects such as Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie, within a few years the idea spread to other studios. According to Christopher Finch in The Art of Walt Disney, Disney credited animator Webb Smith with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them up on a bulletin board to tell a story in sequence, thus creating the first storyboard. Furthermore, it was Disney who first recognized the necessity for studios to maintain a separate "story department" with specialized storyboard artists, as he had realized that audiences would not watch a film unless its story gave them a reason to care about the characters; the second studio to switch from "story sketches" to storyboards was Walter Lantz Productions in early 1935. By 1937 or 1938, all American animation studios were using storyboards.
Gone with the Wind was one of the first live action films to be storyboarded. William Cameron Menzies, the film's production designer, was hired by producer David O. Selznick to design every shot of the film. Storyboarding became popular in live-action film production during the early 1940s and grew into a standard medium for previsualization of films. Pace Gallery curator Annette Micheloson, writing of the exhibition Drawing into Film: Director's Drawings, considered the 1940s to 1990s to be the period in which "production design was characterized by adoption of the storyboard". Storyboards are now an essential part of the creative process. A film storyboard known as a shooting board, is a series of frames, with drawings of the sequence of events in a film, similar to a comic book of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand, it helps film directors and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Besides this, storyboards help estimate the cost of the overall production and saves time.
Storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement. For fast-paced action scenes, monochrome line art might suffice. For slower-paced dramatic films with emphasis on lighting, color impressionist style art might be necessary. In creating a motion picture with any degree of fidelity to a script, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera lens, and in the case of interactive media, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information. In the storyboarding process, most technical details involved in crafting a film or interactive media project can be efficiently described either in picture or in additional text. A common misconception is. Directors and playwrights use storyboards as special tools to understand the layout of the scene; the great Russian theatre practitioner Stanislavski developed storyboards in his detailed production plans for his Moscow Art Theatre performances. The German director and dramatist Bertolt Brecht developed detailed storyboards as part of his dramaturgical method of "fabels."
In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how a scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a sequence of still images displayed in sync with rough dialogue and/or rough soundtrack providing a simplified overview of how various visual and auditory elements will work in conjunction to one another; this allows the animators and directors to work out any screenplay, camera positioning, shot list, timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, a new animatic may be created and reviewed by the production staff until the storyboard is finalized. Editing at the animatic stage can help a production avoid wasting time and resources on animation of scenes that would otherwise be edited out of the film at a stage. A few minutes of screen time in traditional animation equates to months of work for a team of traditional animators, who must painstakingly draw and paint countless frames, meaning that all that labor will have to be written off if the final scene does not work in the f
André Bazin
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, along with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, he is notable for arguing. His call for objective reality, deep focus, lack of montage are linked to his belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator; this placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s, which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality. Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918, he died in age 40, of leukemia. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, along with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. Bazin was a major force in criticism, he edited Cahiers until his death, a four-volume collection of his writings was published posthumously, covering the years 1958 to 1962 and titled Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?.
A selection from this collection was translated into English and published in two volumes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They became mainstays of film courses in the English-speaking world, but were never updated or revised. In 2009, the Canadian publisher Caboose, taking advantage of more favourable Canadian copyright laws, compiled fresh translations of some of the key essays from the collection in a single-volume edition. With annotations by translator Timothy Barnard, this became the only corrected and annotated edition of these writings in any language. In 2018 this volume was replaced by a more extensive collection of Bazin's texts translated by Barnard, André Bazin: Selected Writings 1943-1958; the long-held standard view of Bazin's critical system is that he argued for films that depicted what he saw as "objective reality" and directors who made themselves "invisible". He advocated the use of deep focus, wide shots and the "shot-in-depth", preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" through mise-en-scène over experiments in editing and visual effects.
This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s, which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality. The concentration on objective reality, deep focus, lack of montage are linked to Bazin's belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator, he watched film as as he expected the director to undertake it. His personal friendships with many directors he wrote about furthered his analysis of their work, he became a central figure not only in film critique, but in bringing about certain collaborations, as well. Bazin preferred long takes to montage editing, he believed that less was more, that narrative was key to great film. Bazin, influenced by personalism, believed that a film should represent a director's personal vision; this idea had a pivotal importance in the development of the auteur theory, the manifesto for which François Truffaut's article, "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema", was published by his mentor Bazin in Cahiers in 1954.
Bazin is known as a proponent of "appreciative criticism", the notion that only critics who like a film should review it, thus encouraging constructive criticism. François Truffaut dedicated The 400 Blows to Bazin, who died one day after shooting commenced on the film. Jean Renoir dedicated the revival of The Rules of the Game to the memory of Bazin. Richard Linklater's film Waking Life features a discussion between filmmaker Caveh Zahedi and poet David Jewell regarding some of Bazin's film theories. There is an emphasis on Bazin's Christianity and the belief that every shot is a representation of God manifested in creation. Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt opens with a quotation wrongly attributed to Bazin. David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest references Bazin in regard to film criticism. Bazin, André.. André Bazin: Selected Writings 1943-1958 Montreal: caboose, ISBN 978-1-927852-05-7 Bazin, André.. What is cinema? Vol. 1 & 2. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02034-0 Bazin, André..
Jean Renoir. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21464-0 Bazin, André.. Orson Welles: a critical view. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-010274-8 Andrew, Dudley. André Bazin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-19-502165-7 Bazin, André.. French cinema of the occupation and resistance: The birth of a critical esthetic. New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8044-2022-X Bazin, André.. The cinema of cruelty: From Buñuel to Hitchcock. New York: Seaver Books. ISBN 0-394-51808-X Bazin, André.. Essays on Chaplin. New Haven, Conn.: University of New Haven Press. LCCN 84-52687 Bazin, André.. Bazin at work: Major essays & reviews from the forties and fifties. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90017-4 ISBN 0-415-90018-2 Bazin, André.. French cinema from the liberation to the New Wave, 1945-1958 La politique des auteurs, edited by André Bazin. Interviews with Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir, L
Cinematographer
A cinematographer or director of photography is the chief over the camera and light crews working on a film, television production or other live action piece and is responsible for making artistic and technical decisions related to the image. The study and practice of this field is referred to as cinematography; the cinematographer selects the camera, film stock, filters, etc. to realize the scene in accordance with the intentions of the director. Relations between the cinematographer and director vary; such a level of involvement is not common once the director and cinematographer have become comfortable with each other. Several American cinematographers have become directors, including Reed Morano, ASC who lensed Frozen River and Beyonce's Lemonade before winning an Emmy for directing The Handmaid's Tale. Barry Sonnenfeld the Coen brothers' DP. Ellen Kuras, ASC photographed Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind as well as a number of Spike Lee films such as Summer of Sam and He Got Game before directing episodes of Legion and Ozark.
In 2014, Wally Pfister, cinematographer on Christopher Nolan's three Batman films, made his directorial debut with Transcendence. In the infancy of motion pictures, the cinematographer was also the director and the person physically handling the camera; as the art form and technology evolved, a separation between director and camera operator emerged. With the advent of artificial lighting and faster film stocks, in addition to technological advancements in optics, the technical aspects of cinematography necessitated a specialist in that area. Cinematography was key during the silent movie era. In 1919 Hollywood, the then-new motion picture capital of the world, one of the first trade societies was formed: the American Society of Cinematographers, which stood to recognize the cinematographer's contribution to the art and science of motion picture making. Similar trade associations have been established in other countries too; the ASC Vision Committee is known for working to encourage and support the advancement of underrepresented cinematographers, their crews and other filmmakers, to inspire us all to enact positive changes through hiring talent that reflects society at large.
However, the Soviet filmmaker, Dziga Vertov, writing in Kino-fot No.1 rejected the role of Cinematographer in the "We: Variant of a Manifesto": "We call ourselves kinoks – as opposed to "cinematographers", a herd of junkmen doing rather well peddling their rags. We see the cunning and calculation of the profiteers. We consider the psychological Russo-German film-drama – weighed down with apparitions and childhood memories – an absurdity." There are a number of national associations of cinematographers which represent members and which are dedicated to the advancement of cinematography. These include: the American Society of Cinematographers the International Collective of Women Cinematographers the Canadian Society of Cinematographers the British Society of Cinematographers the Australian Cinematographers Society the Cinematographers Guild of Korea the Filipino Society of Cinematographers the French Society of Cinematographers the Italian Society of Cinematographers the Indian Society of Cinematographers the German Society of Cinematographers the Netherlands Society of Cinematographers the Spanish Society of Cinematography Works the European Federation of Cinematographers / IMAGO the Uruguayan Society of Cinematographers the Lithuanian Association of Cinematographers Cinematographers XX IlluminatrixThe A.
S. C. defines cinematography as: A creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event. Cinematography is not a subcategory of photography. Rather, photography is but one craft that the cinematographer uses in addition to other physical, managerial and image-manipulating techniques to effect one coherent process. Camerimage Cinematography Cinematography Mailing List, a communication forum for cinematographers Filmmaking Glossary of motion picture terms Indian cinematographers List of film director and cinematographer collaborations List of film formats List of motion picture-related topics Cinematography.com Cinematography Mailing List International Cinematographers Guild The History of the Discovery of Cinematography American Society of Cinematographers The Guild of British Camera Technicians British Society of Cinematographers Indian Society of Cinematographers European Federation of Cinematographers / IMAGO Australian Cinematographers Society German Society of Cinematography, BVK Italian Society of Cinematography, AIC Lithuanian Association of Cinematographers, LAC
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, painting, printmaking, crafts, video and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art. Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term'artist' was restricted to a person working in the fine arts and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art media; the distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts; the increasing tendency to privilege painting, to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art.
In both regions painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist, the furthest removed from manual labour – in Chinese painting the most valued styles were those of "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes. Training in the visual arts has been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. In Europe the Renaissance movement to increase the prestige of the artist led to the academy system for training artists, today most of the people who are pursuing a career in arts train in art schools at tertiary levels. Visual arts have now become an elective subject in most education systems. Drawing is a means of using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques, it involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface using dry media such as graphite pencils and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, charcoals and markers.
Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draughtsman. Drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture. Drawings on Greek vases geometric developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC. With paper becoming common in Europe by the 15th century, drawing was adopted by masters such as Sandro Botticelli, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci who sometimes treated drawing as an art in its own right rather than a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture. Painting taken is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier and a binding agent to a surface such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition, or other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner.
Painting is used to express spiritual motifs and ideas. Like drawing, painting has its documented origins on rock faces; the finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet and Lascaux caves in southern France. In shades of red, brown and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle and deer. Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt. In the great temple of Ramses II, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis; the Greeks much of their work has been lost. One of the best remaining representations are the Hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits. Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, based on a Greek painting. Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting. Apart from the illuminated manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages, the next significant contribution to European art was from Italy's renaissance painters. From Giotto in the 13th century to Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael at the beginning of the 16th century, this was the richest period in Italian art as the chiaroscuro techniques were used to create the illusion of 3-D space.
Painters in northern Europe too were influenced by the Italian school. Jan van Eyck from Belgium, Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the Netherlands and Hans Holbein the Younger from Germany are among the most successful painters of the times, they used the glazing technique with oils to achieve luminosity. The 17th century witnessed the emergence of the great Dutch masters such as the versatile Rembrandt, remembered for his portraits and Bible scenes, Vermeer who specialized in interior scenes of Dutch life; the Baroque started from the late 16th century to the late 17th century. Main artists of the Baroque included Caravaggio. Peter Paul Rubens was a flemish painter who studied in Italy, work
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but in recent years, are trained professionals, holding a B. F. A. or M. F. A. degrees in theater arts. Scenic designers design sets and scenery that aim to support the overall artistic goals of the production. A designer looks at the details searching for evidence through research to produce conceptual ideas that’s best toward supporting the content and values with visual elements; the subject of, “How do we generate creative ideas?” is a legitimate question. The most consuming part of expanding our horizons toward scenic concepts is much more than witnessing creativity, creative people, it starts with us opening our mind to the possibilities. To have an attitude toward learning and engaging in creativity and to be willing to be adventurous and curious. Our imagination is visual. Whether outside or inside, colorful trees or concerts, star lit skies or the architecture of a great building, scenic design is a process of discovery.
Discovering what will best clarify and support the setting, atmosphere, ambience, & world, being created. The scenic designer works with the director and other designers to establish an overall visual concept for the production and design the stage environment, they are responsible for developing a complete set of design drawings that include the following: basic ground plan showing all stationary scenic elements. All of these required drawing elements can be created from one accurate 3-D CAD model of the set design; the scenic designer is responsible for collaborating with the theatre director and other members of the production design team to create an environment for the production and communicating the details of this environment to the technical director, production manager, charge scenic artist and prop master. Scenic designers are responsible for creating scale models of the scenery, paint elevations and scale construction drawings as part of their communication with other production staff.
In Europe and Australia, scenic designers take a more holistic approach to theatrical design and will be responsible not only for scenic design but costume and sound and are referred to as theatre designers or scenographers or production designers. Notable scenic designers and present, include: Alban Piot, Adolphe Appia, Boris Aronson, Alexandre Benois, Alison Chitty, Antony McDonald, Barry Kay, Caspar Neher, Cyro Del Nero, Aleksandra Ekster, David Gallo, Edward Gordon Craig, Es Devlin, Ezio Frigerio, Christopher Gibbs, Franco Zeffirelli, George Tsypin, Howard Bay, Inigo Jones, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Jo Mielziner, John Lee Beatty, Josef Svoboda, Ken Adam, Léon Bakst, Luciano Damiani, Maria Björnson, Ming Cho Lee, Natalia Goncharova, Nathan Altman, Nicholas Georgiadis, Oliver Smith, Ralph Koltai, Neil Patel, Robert Wilson, Russell Patterson, Brian Sidney Bembridge, Santo Loquasto, Sean Kenny, Todd Rosenthal, Robin Wagner, Tony Walton, Roger Kirk. Scenic painting Scenographer Scenography Set construction Theatrical scenery Film sculptor Making the Scene: A History of Stage Design and Technology in Europe and the United States by Oscar G. Brockett, Margaret Mitchell, Linda Hardberger 365 pages.
Designing and Painting for the Theater by Lynn Pecktal. Detailing production design for theater and ballet, Designing and Drawing for the Theater is a foundational text that provides a professional picture and encyclopedic reference of the design process. Well illustrated with detailed lined drawings and photographs, the book conveys the beauty and craft of scenic and production design. Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space - the largest scenography event in the world - presenting contemporary work in a variety of performance design disciplines and genres - costume, light, sound design, theatre architecture for dance, drama, site specific, multi-media performances, performance art, etc. Prague, CZ What is Scenography Article illustrating the differences between US and European theatre design practices. Special:WhatLinksHere/Julia Anastasopoulos
