Celebrating ten years of Production Design for Film and Television at the VCA
As the acclaimed program at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) turns ten, we look back on a decade of film production design and celebrate the work of students and alumni.
Filmmaker David Fincher has said “In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.” However, as his frequent collaborator Alex McDowell points out, the production designer builds the world, then inducts the rest of the crew into it, so that “they step right into the world that we’re creating”.
When ‘sculpting’ screen worlds into existence, the lion’s share of responsibility falls to the production designer, who translates scripted words into visual language. They craft environments, atmospheres and objects to shape the viewer's experience and bring the unseen details of a story to life.
“Without production designers, we don’t know where we are, or when, or who the characters are,” says Jo Briscoe, Senior Lecturer in Design at the VCA. “If you imagine Ned Kelly’s last stand, or Hobbiton, or the interior of any spaceship, the pictures you have are created by a production designer.”
In 2013, the VCA launched graduate study in Production Design for Film and Television, ensuring this vital artform could augment the auteur programs within the long-established film school. It remains one of only two programs nationally specialising in this important craft. The program is now highly regarded for training industry-ready designers who have gone on to work in film art departments nationally and internationally.
“Studying design and production is inherently collaborative,” says Associate Professor Anna Cordingley, Head of VCA Design and Production. “Our program is very hands-on and industry focused, with students regularly working on film projects within the VCA and on placements in the industry. When they graduate, they have diverse portfolios of work that set them up for successful, resourceful and responsible careers.”
Work from the past decade of VCA production designers will be on display at an exhibition at The Hub on the University’s Southbank campus, as part of International Production Design Week (IPDW), a major event in the global production design community.
As part of IPDW, the VCA will also host a panel discussion on sustainable set building. As Lecturer Nell Hanson explains, “while there are promising innovations in sustainability in international screen production, those materials and methods don’t automatically translate to an Australian context”.
The panel will feature a case study of the upcoming TV series All Her Fault, starring Sarah Snook and shot at Melbourne’s Docklands Studios. “With sustainability as a key priority for the production, their ambitious approach provides an exciting blueprint for Australian art departments,” Nell says. “It’s especially important as we train the future generations of filmmakers to design with sustainability as a central consideration in their work”.
Jo says one highlight from the past ten years is seeing how the graduates work together in the industry. “There’s a daisy chain of connections between cohorts, and many art departments have several graduates from different years working together. They are such a strong community in the industry, and it’s really heartening to see their successes.”
One such alum is Pernell Marsden, who graduated 2019, and says she started working on a mixture of creative projects straight out of graduating from the VCA.
“I've been working in art departments on big studio shows over at Docklands, getting quite a lot of experience on large-scale TV shows and films,” she says. “I’ve also done quite a few music videos and designed multiple short films, a feature, and won an APDG (Australian Production Design Guild) award for best production design.”
Since graduating in 2021, alum Wei Guo has designed two feature films and has become an in-demand set designer on large-scale productions. “The most exciting thing after I graduated has been winning the APDG Award for my grad film All we have is Time. It was a huge validation for me, because my crew and I worked so hard on that film. It definitely paid off and that's been a highlight of my early career,” he says.
Both Pernell and Wei credit the course as a basis for their later success. “It was a very meaty course, with a lot of deep diving into the whole process of filmmaking” Pernell says. “We learned a lot about collaboration with other people in the art department, but also with directors and directors of photography. During the course you connect with the kind of people that you might go out and work with afterwards. We also got the opportunity to do quite a lot of internships, which really places you straight into the industry where you're working and learning new skills on actual productions.”
Wei agrees: “Filmmaking is such a collaborative process, and it was important for us to learn in a hands-on way, collaborating with students from other disciplines, such as directing, screenwriting and producing.”
Reflecting on the achievements of the program, Anna says: “A decade in, our graduates are making such an impact on screens, all around the world. They are creating heart-wrenching, vivid, wild, unforgettable pictures and productions. They’re designing the gamut, and they’re doing it brilliantly.”
“International Production Design Week offers an occasion to reflect, take stock and celebrate all the talent and ingenuity personified in our alumni, while anticipating all the wonder that lies ahead, as this program approaches its second decade, hitting its stride.”
Find out more about VCA Design and Production, International Production Design Week and the panel discussion on sustainable set building on 17 October.