Art Direction Training at Pinewood Studios

Terry Ackland-Snow runs a special school based at Pinewood Studios in the UK.

It looks quite magical. and worth every penny to pay to go on these 2 courses.

As Terry explains ...

Film Design International (FDI) is an Art Direction training provider, which offers essential, industry-relevant courses for anyone who wants to work in the Film and TV art departments.

Ideally located at the internationally renowned, Pinewood Studios; both the Art Direction Course promise the student a total immersion in the film and television world, and a vitally important first step towards becoming a successful Art Director and Production Designer

We currently provide two training courses and you can find out more detail about each of them via our Courses page.

FDI was set up at Pinewood Film Studios in 2001 by Terry Ackland-Snow, to offer draughtsmanship courses for the film and television industry.

The courses are taught personally by Terry along with other professionals, so students benefit from the vast knowledge, insight, skills and techniques that he has acquired throughout his illustrious career which spans 50 years in the industry. Starting as a Junior Draughtsman in 1960, he worked on more than 80 film and television productions making his way up to being appointed as a Supervising Art Director and Production Designer. IMDB link.

Terry along with the team members are passionate about the industry that he has devoted his career to. The courses are intensely practical and designed to give comprehensive knowledge of film techniques to be used on the drawing board.

A happy hard-working student has a blog of her journey at the school.

Playing with Scale: How Designers Use Set Models

There is a fantastic exhibition at the National Theatre in London, UK on designing with set models for theatre.

It looks magical.

As reported in Design Week in an article written by Sarah Dawood November 20, 2018 5:23 pm.

"Playing with Scale: How Designers Use Set Models looks at how stage designers for the National Theatre have used model boxes to help inform entire sets, and will feature original model boxes used in the theatre's productions, archive materials, films, audio and photography.

..."

As described in an article on National Theatre

"This free exhibition explores how designers use set models for theatre-making. Playing with Scale unfolds the idea of a scale model and explains the importance of models as a design tool. The exhibition features examples of models from five productions designed for the Olivier stage between 1977-2018 and explores how these intricate models are used in the process of theatre-making. Production models include Exit the King, Antony and Cleopatra, The Life of Galileo, Antigone and The Comedy of Errors.

The exhibition includes archive materials, films, audio, images and set models. The exhibition is curated by Eleanor Margolies, who has been the Jocelyn Herbert Fellow of Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Graduate School, University of the Arts London, and is designed by Jemima Robinson. This exhibition is the outcome of the Jocelyn Herbert Fellowship (2016-18) and forms part of a collaboration between the National Theatre and Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon. The exhibition is funded in part by the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation."

The inspiring set design's of Tony Geddes

About 13 years ago, I came across an exhibition in the Christchurch Arts Centre of the stage set designs of Tony Geddes. Here are some photos I took at the time.

Tony, the genius set designer at the Court Theatre  was to become a great inspiration to me some years later, when I finally meet the man.

The exhibition contained dozens of models and drawings of Tony's work. I was completely taken by the rich imagination and fantastic worlds created for stage plays on display.

Some years later, I ended up working at the Court Theatre workshop building these marvelous designs. There were other set designers as well but Tony was my favourite. Each of his set's had a life of it's own and had a richness that added to each play.

During each production week, Tony would rapidly finish off each set with fantastic paint effects. He had excellent instincts based on natural ability and honed by the impressive experience of 200+ productions. It was pretty amazing to be there and watch.

As the set workshop engineer, I often got to meet Tony in his design office to help figure out the underlying metal structures required to bring his ideas to fruition. All around the walls were these models which are a national treasure just like Tony. One day it would be great if they could go on permanent display somewhere to inspire future generations.