Bad Day For The Cut
Graphics and Art Department Trainee
This is the first feature film I’ve been involved with and it was a great experience to work on it from start to finish. The art department was comprised of a small crew lending a hand wherever necessary. We started with a shell of a farmhouse that we then gutted and redecorated specifically for the shoot. I took part in a great deal of the painting and decorating. John Leslie did an excellent job filling the house with furniture and props; by the end of the first week the bulk of the house was a hot set and ready to go.
Graphics for Props
I was very happy to take the reigns with the graphics for the film; it’s an area I feel comfortable with, particularly when working to a deadline. I made a wide variety of pieces for the shoot; I was particularly proud of a batch of eastern European passports that included stamps and different names/photos incase they needed to be seen in detail.
I also produced a few pages for a fictional newspaper. As you can never be sure what will make it into the frame the challenge here is producing enough (vaguely) credible content to fit around the important articles. It was a lot of fun to make. You can also see a flier that I designed as a prop and a photograph that I digitally aged through various filters.
Signage
I drew up signage for several shops mentioned in the script that could be dressed over the existing location. This was done using vinyl mounted to foam board so that they could be hung easily using temporary fixings. I measured up each site first to ensure that the new signs covered the existing ones appropriately and worked with John to ensure the style of the signage matched that of the overall tone of the film.
Phones and Websites
It was also my duty to look after the phones and computers on set, including whatever was to be shown on screen. For this I made a fake website, hosted here, so that a scrollable option was available. These are the screenshots used for the phone versions (right) and here is the live post.
