One of the many vocations available to the artistically inclined is that of Art Director for stage and screen. The Art Director’s responsibilities are many, but aside from designing the sets they are responsible for keeping everything within budget and deadline. The latter are fixed in stone and often every minute is important. Samuel Goldwyn said “the harder I work the luckier I get” – true, providing the end goal is always in crystal focus.

It’s rare when most things go to plan and the budget is sufficient for the job but a commercial I did way back in 1982 was one of those. The Director was Howard Guard, who shot virtually everything you gave him and certainly knew his stuff, becoming one of the most sought after TV commercial Directors of the 1980’s.

The brief was for something beyond the previous client’s themes with underlying pressure to attract awards. Whenever desert is mentioned in film, David Lean’s Laurence of Arabia cannot be avoided. Even knowing some of the obstacles overcome in that film made it a bit like attempting a fresco under the glare of the Sistine Chapel. I remember meeting with Howard on a damp Tuesday and being given a nine day build starting that Thursday on ‘A’ stage Shepperton Studios, the same stage where some Nostromo interiors were shot for Alien a few years previously.

A key priority for an Art Drector is the ability to assemble a team. I was very lucky in that everyone I needed was available. The other stroke of luck was finding the ideal reference in a Kings Road bookshop.

One big decision was to order a grey shark’s tooth gauze from Germany. This was a fine seamless mesh, 12 meters wide by 200 meters long manufactured on special looms up to 25 meters wide. It cost a significant part of the budget and arrived just in time for its scheduled installation the following week. The gauze was needed to provide Ariel perspective and accommodate dawn/daylight/dusk lighting transitions.

Howard is one of those Directors who moves the camera around a lot and so prefers a model, which was duly made 1:12 scale and presented the following day. The model dunes were made from clay, sectioned and scaled up as usual for compound forms. The setting lines for the ground rows took into account the lighting separation parameters. It can be hard to miniaturise light for studio exteriors and here the gauze helped to establish the correct shadow tones for the far grounds.

The plasterers were hard at it covering the dunes with hessian, then plaster. Silver sand was then applied and lightly sprayed in dawn colours. Positioning was critical since it’s very hard to move things around afterwards.

The cyclorama backdrop and ground rows were then completed. If you look carefully at the first few images, the supporting tube is suspended on chains ready for the qauze to be bent on and flown. The scenic artist had some six days to cover cyclorama and ground rows. First they blocked in the sky with neutral graduated blues and same with the clouds in their base tones. These were then softened with a spray gun.

Colours are generally lightened with white and darkened with black because we are painting with a subtractive system and lighting with an additive one, plus absolute tonal balance is required. Using complementary methods on this scale often ends up with a patchwork quilted effect. There were some 200 tons of fine grade silver sand used in the picture.

The key lights were brute carbon arcs drawing some 240 amps each. Five kilowatt sky pans lit the ground rows and lower cyclorama. Space lights provided ‘fill’ and lit the upper cyclorama. 10K’s and 5K’s filled the shadows.

All in all a satisfying job (built over nine days, lighting done in one day and the commercial filmed over two days) though within a day all of it was cleared out and the next one started.

Further information:
» Howard Guard the Director: http://www.howardguard.co.uk/. You can see the final commercial here under the 1980’s section.
» Janet Shearer, the scenic artist: http://www.trompeloeil.co.uk/
» My website: http://marchill.org/