A couple of weeks ago I was called to a meeting for a short film written, and being directed and produced by two Media Production lecturers at University of Chichester.
A week later I am Art Director and sourcing all kinds of weird and wonderful props and costumes.
I just wanted to write a short blog explaining a few of the processes we went through for props and costume for those that don’t know, and perhaps provide a bit of inspiration for anyone who is doing anything similar.
The premise of the film;
When an experiment goes wrong submariner Billy Bourne wakes to find his crew gone and only a photo of his sweetheart for company.
Will he get to dance with her again?
Set in 1951 the production had to be totally authentic, which was helped by a really amazing location; a full sized submarine, the HMS Alliance.
Props and Costume sourcing
On Wednesday 1st July I was at Sabre Sales (an amazing shop in Portsmouth with hundreds of authentic military memorabilia and costumes) checking out costume sizes, and picking up some previously selected props as well as finding some more.
The types of props we needed were:
- Military charts and maps
- Mess room dressing such as plates and cups
- Old tools
- Clock
- Photographs and postcards
- Blankets
- Clothing
- Plus lots of others
And other general things to make the submarine looked lived in. There were 65 men aboard the submarine (although where they put them all I’m not sure, as 20 film crew members seemed a squeeze!).
Here’s a few pictures of the bunks we set up;
Making things dirty
As Billy was a working man on a sub who probably hadn’t had a wash in 10 weeks, a lot of the props needed to be aged and greased up.
His vest for example needed to be dirty and greasy. We tried dirt powder from the make up kit, and dirt from the floor, but it just wasn’t authentic enough looking, so in the end we cleaned the inside of everyone’s car engine with the vest, which did the trick nicely!
Other things that needed dirtying included a sign we made for the radio room which said ‘WARNING – MAINTAIN RADIO SILENCE DURING OPERATIONS’ - which also had to be in an authentic looking font. We looked at all the other signs in the sub and I decided upon Georgia as a font. We then used tea to age the paper slightly and wrapped it round some thick cardboard to make it look like a sign, which worked very nicely.
Tea turned out to be quite a useful tool – not only for tea breaks, but for making things look old, from wooden objects to paper.
A lot of the things we purchased were brand new and shiny, such as folders, clip boards and paper. So I carried a lot of them around in my bag for a few days, and used a stanley knife to create worn edges on the clipboard.
The pencils needed to be short, stubby and greasy, so the Art Dept. Assistant on the day I wasn’t there had snapped off the ends and had people chewing on the ends of pencils for a bit. Did the trick nicely!
The kitchen needed to be full of pots and pans and looked lived in, here are a selection of the props we used.
Preparation
I had with me a list of props and costume for each scene, which were put onto sheet for each day shooting in the order we were shooting it in. The list included the following:
- What room the scene was in
- What state of makeup the actor was in (clean, greasey)
- What costume he was wearing
- Anything that he should be carrying on him (photograph)
- Every prop in the scene
Although we weren’t doing makeup or all of the costume, it was useful to have it written down as it helps set the scene.
Other useful paperwork to have on me are a shooting script marked up with props for each scene, call sheet, shot list, shooting times for scenes.
Although we took a few continuity photos ourselves for prosperity, we had an excellent continuity team who were ready and waiting with photographs when we needed to re-set scenes. Life savers!
My experiences
Having only experienced art directing second hand on sets before, getting the opportunity to art direct on Submerged was a really positive experience.
I’m hoping to get involved with some more productions over the next year and pursue art direction more.
I will leave you with the view we had for our crew BBQ’s for dinner. Can’t get much better than that!
