OUAN406 - Decorating / Furnishing the Set

Decorating and furnishing the interior of the set was a really enjoyable stage in the project because it took me away from the design stage and allowed me experiment with things I'm not familiar with such as layout, shape, colour and even lighting. This was an exciting time in the project because in a sense the unknown part of the task was out of the way and I knew that the whole idea wasn't too ambitious. Before this, I had my doubts that I had intended to over deliver with the project and because of this, would fall short of my own expectations. Based roughly of the ideas I had already had for the furnishing combined with the original artwork I had produced to generate ideas for the project I began to finish the set before the shooting could take place.

The first process that I decided to undertake was producing books and papers that I could scatter across the main character's lab from the story. I imagined there to be books stacked quite high where they had been placed for later on, and complex anatomic diagrams of insects to be lying around on the floor and on his desk. To make the books I went to the book binding workshop and took some of the 'throwaway' samples, or essentially cut off pieces that people had discarded at the end of their projects. This gave me around four different samples of book coverings I could use to create a fairly diverse range of covers for the books, so it didn't look too similar in colour. I think the use of different covers was important so they looked like they belonged in the set and hadn't just been mass produced for the purpose of the production. I then took some fairly thin corrugated card and measured it out to be the correct scale within the set, and in relation to other pieces of furniture, especially the book case which some of them were going to sit on. This was around 12mm in length.



After the books had been created, I really wanted to paint the book case for the books to sit on. I wanted to make it a dark wood like mahogany so that when the light hit it, it absorbed the majority of it and kept the level of light within the room to an eerie and atmospheric glow. I got some acrylic paint with a dark umber tone and painted the book case with it, occasionally mixing in some copper acrylic for some slight variation and giving it a subtle shine when the light hit it. When the two colours were mixed with around three parts dark umber and one part copper, it became a very nice slightly reddy brown that gave the furniture the mahogany tint I wanted it to have. Once I had discovered the way the paint looked on the wood, I decided to paint the rest of the walls and some of the furniture with the same mix of paint. Occasionally I experimented a little to give the walls a little more texture and variation. This is most evident in the back wall of the set, where I used a lot more white and copper paint to allow highlights when the light hit it, rather than there being almost no light coming off the wall. After some colour had been added to the overall set some smaller details were added such as the cork topped miniature glass bottles of two different sizes, brown bottles, some charms in the form of wings and a paper aeroplane, (representing the scientist studying flight, like in the story) and finally some plant and leaf samples to go into the bottles as if they were part of the scientists research. These were places on the tables and book cases so they were easily in view when the filming is done.