Perfectly Yours Production Design
-Jack Oliver
I’m able to bring a director’s creative vision to life
Working on Perfectly Yours was a privilege to showcase my ability to portray director Alana Lehane’s creative vision on-screen through prop design, costuming, and set design.
Pre-Production
My mission in pre-production was to be resourceful and create visual language that speaks to our core theme of cosmetic-perfection. This included working with symmetry, ensuring our labels were perfectly fitted and the set was formed in a sterile, “imperfectly perfect” manner.. Detailed prop lists and shopping lists were created to ensure we were organised for our shoots.
Graphic design was a key feature of my production design. This included detailed label creation that was appropriate for our theme of human augmentation; including satirical commentary regarding “looksmaxxing”. It was a challenge to adapt my initial peptide design into a format that would fit the small vials, but I overcame this through detailed measurements and A4 print formatting.
Pre-Production (cont).
My costuming ethos was to be as resourceful as possible, being budget-friendly having actors, myself and fellow crew members bring items of clothing for scenes. This resourcefulness is paramount for student filmmaking, as it gave our budget more space for effective prop and set design. I communicated with all of our actors to see what they’d be able to bring in, and would organise purchases for items that were missing. For key costuming, including a black dress, we ethically acquired fitting details from our actors and bought from budget friendly websites such as Shein.
My precision of prop design was most tested when physically creating our peptide vials. Making the labels look professional was key in constructing the guise of “perfection” that was the film’s core theme. The vial labels were printed to the millimetre, and placed thirty times onto each label.
Nearly half of the vials had to be discarded due to not being perfectly level. Production design is an endeavour that tests your pharmaceutical, mathematic, and artistic skills all at once, which I love.
On set
Bringing my design to screen
It was seriously rewarding seeing how great the props and the set looked on-screen. Our themes and visual language was portrayed wondefully through blending our props with cinematography. The needles going into the skin were a shock until I remembered I’d ordered blunt prosthetics!
I was making sure the props would be ready for a shot well in advance, assessing the script and consulting with Alana and Declan (DOP) on where they’d like the props to be. We also came up with shooting tricks to simulate the injection of the needles (above). It was a joy to see how well these props came out on screen.
Lessons
The Perfectly Yours shoot cemented my love of being able to adapt to changing conditions in production design. On set, we decided on new shots which included bringing in a multitude of new boxes and labels in a stack. This required rapid construction and keeping all of the labels unique and not printing out any duplicate label numbers. I really found myself enjoying creating props on-set, collaborating with Declan and Alana.
It would be my pleasure to be considered to work with you. If you think my adaptability, organisation and creativity would be of value to you and your film, please feel free to fill out the “contact” form, or reach out to me directly via the contact details below!