shadowscast

Posted by Alex McDowell / Tara Lomax

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2025/10/24/ipdw2025-redesigning-production-an-interview-with-alex-mcdowell

To celebrate International Production Design Week (IPDW) between October 17th-26th, Pop Junctions presents a range of contributions related to the craft of production design, with particular focus on the art of world-building and the creativity and culture of production design practice. IPDW is an initiative led by the Production Designers Collective and involves a calendar of events that showcase production design around the world.

In this contribution, Tara Lomax asks Production Designer Alex McDowell about world-building, reimagining the production process, and his work across industry and education.

TL: Alex, thank you for sharing your time and experience in this discussion to celebrate International Production Design Week. I’d like to start by reflecting on the history and transformation of production design in the filmmaking process. Throughout your career, have you experienced much change in production design and the role of the production designer in filmmaking and screen storytelling?

AM: Hi Tara, thanks for your questions! 

There have of course been huge changes in our craft since I started, but not enough to fully integrate Production Design in the opportunities of non-linear production. Rick Carter has one of my favorite quotes for all of us: “the production designer's first job is to design the production”. 

This has always been true, and it's our responsibility as designers to take it on. But the context has changed radically. For over 20 years we’ve been pushing for a change in the relationship between the front end and the back end of production and since the early 2000s we developed an art department workflow that aligned closely to visual effects. But the reality was that the pre-production assets that framed the shoot tended to be discarded and then rebuilt in post. 

With virtual production, non-linear production has kicked in. Now our work is to use the tools we have—and keep them up to date—to design the virtual production. Now we take responsibility to update the production design/art process to drive the full breadth of the production, which means a different make-up of the art department. Increasingly, we are working with illustrators using 3D and game platforms, engineers, designers in Rhino or Maya to drive models informed by photogrammetry scans from drones in a location, reference images to blender or rapid fabrication, etc. At this point, the design development can be distributed to any of the appropriate departments—construction, location, stunts, set dressing, DP, VFX, virtual production—and director.

The art department increasingly needs polymaths. Schools need to teach accordingly, and designers need to hire appropriately. It’s also worth saying that a lot of these processes no longer apply only to mega-productions. The smallest budget can use a drone to scan a location and a single designer to accurately add a set extension. 

Across your career you have worked as a production designer on a range of different projects, including Madonna’s early music videos, The Crow (1994), The Fight Club (1999), Minority Report (2002), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Watchman (2009), and Man of Steel (2013). How would you describe your own approach to production design and has this changed across your career?

In addition to the previous response, the only thing to add is obvious: every show has different demands. We learn from every show and apply that learning to the next. The designer probably has to adapt to the nuance and context of a script and direction more fully than almost any other department—materials change, crew skills change, vendors change, tools change, location resources change and your knowledge updates exponentially. 

Your work has been instrumental in the development of a world-driven approach to storytelling, whereby the world is designed prior to and beyond the boundaries of a script. This seems to enable a stronger relationship between production design and other filmmaking crafts across the storytelling and production process. What do you see to be the role of the screenplay within this approach and how does this redefine story ideation, authorship, and collaboration in screen production?

What we have learnt simply is that non-linear production is possible when storytelling meets narrative design. Every world provides unique context and logic from which any number of story paths can evolve. Ideation, authorship, and collaboration in screen production become a single workspace for development. Production design in this context provides an immersive and adaptive container that much more closely mirrors the conditions of production start to finish for all the makers of a film and evolves accordingly. 

World building requires an interdisciplinary approach to storytelling, within filmmaking departments and with experts in other fields like computer science, animation, and culture. This seems to require a reimagining or reorganization of the traditional film development and production process. Do you see evidence of this kind of reorganization happening in the industrial context? And is it possible for traditional filmmaking processes to still embrace world-building principles without a complete restructuring of the production process?

Industrial is the right word. We are finally moving from a 19th century Victorian-industrial linear production process to one of the most agile and effective non-linear practices in the world. I’ve experienced a broad range of industries outside entertainment media, and our industry can compete with any of them. But it absolutely requires a restructuring of the traditional production process. This assumes that the traditional creative skills remain and are still vital, but we all have to work with new tools as we always have. These tools speak to each other in ways that make ideation and creativity more intuitive, closer to our imagination, and we have to adapt to take advantage of that. We are biological, cellular creatures, but we’ve been forced to work with straight lines. It’s fun to see us getting closer to our intuitive selves. 

Your work sits at such an interesting intersection between design, technology, and education and you have been instrumental in promoting the critical role that production design plays in world building and storytelling. Can you discuss some of the work you have been doing as part of the World Building Institute at USC, particularly the Project JUNK consortium? Why has it been so important for you to also work across education and support the development of future world builders? What has been the most rewarding part of working at the interface of industry and education?

Most rewarding and valuable continues to be the demands of the students when they see that the edges of their work are unconstrained, and when they understand that world building demands cross-disciplinary co-creation. I hope we are developing the base for new generations of polymaths, who can work across media, in industries within and outside entertainment, and in fields that do not yet exist. If we are able to focus on the need to break down the silos of disciplines and understand the power of folding together the craft skills and toolsets across media, we need to train generations that can navigate and exploit these changes as they happen. 

The JUNK project is a world building program that we are now teaching globally that originated in a collaboration between USC SCA and Austral University in Buenos Aires. It is not only reaching students in entertainment media but also in trades as wide reaching as engineering, biology, anthropology, architecture and social politics. It’s a true test of how what we are learning through the intersection of the advances in media and world building can change the world. 

Finally, how would you characterize the twenty-first century production designer based on creative and technological developments in screen practice and the film industries?

Our work is to stay on our toes, be aware of every change in tools and resources, interface more deeply with the full breadth of production, and increasingly demand that the technology keeps up with our imagination. 

Biographies

Alex McDowell. Designer. Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). Creative director, production designer, professor, world builder. British citizen, US citizen, living in the US since 1986. He has been a production designer and creative director in film, game, animation, theatre and other media for over 30 years. McDowell is an advocate and originator of the narrative design system world building. His practice incorporates design and storytelling across media in education, research, institutions, corporations, and entertainment media. He is co-founder & creative director of Experimental Design, Professor of Cinematic Practice at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Director of the USC World Building Institute & World Building Media Lab, USC William Cameron Menzies Endowed Chair in Production Design, founder of the the JUNK Consortium, Associate Professor at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, The Bridge Institute. He’s written and talked a lot about narrative design, for a long time, in many places, to many people.

Tara Lomax is an Associate Editor at Pop Junctions. She has expertise in entertainment franchising, multiplatform storytelling, and contemporary Hollywood entertainment and has published on topics such as transmedia storytelling and world building, creative licensing, seriality, virtual production and visual effects. Her work can be found in publications that include JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Senses of Cinema and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the book collections The Screens of Virtual Production (2025), Starring Tom Cruise (2021), The Supervillain Reader (2020), The Superhero Symbol (2020), The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), and Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling (2017). She is the Discipline Lead of Screen Studies at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and has a PhD in screen studies from The University of Melbourne.

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2025/10/24/ipdw2025-redesigning-production-an-interview-with-alex-mcdowell

Posted by Virginia Mesiti

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2025/10/22/ipdw2025-making-visible-the-invisible-natural-realism-in-production-design-through-the-lens-of-watching-you

To celebrate International Production Design Week (IPDW) between October 17th-26th, Pop Junctions presents a range of contributions related to the craft of production design, with particular focus on the art of world-building and the creativity and culture of production design practice. IPDW is an initiative led by the Production Designers Collective and involves a calendar of events that showcase production design around the world.

In this contribution, Australian-based Production Designer Virginia Mesiti unpacks the craft of “natural realism”: a design approach that disappears into character, psychology, and place. The goal is not to create spectacle but to persuade; to build spaces so truthful that viewers forget they were ever designed. This article is adapted from her chapter in Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis (UoW Press).

When audiences think about production design, they often imagine the elegance of period pieces or futuristic science-fiction. But in contemporary drama, design succeeds by doing the opposite — disappearing. The goal is not to create spectacle but to persuade; to build spaces so truthful that viewers forget they were ever designed.

As Production Designer on the Stan Original series Watching You (2025 – ), this creative paradox was at the heart of the work: the more authentic a world appears, the less audiences notice it. Yet achieving that invisibility requires an extraordinary amount of visible labour — research, experimentation, collaboration, and sensitivity to story. The show has been described as “elevated Australian noir — sexy, stylish and suspenseful” (The Conversation, 2025). For me, it was an opportunity to explore how the language of natural realism can heighten psychological tension while staying grounded in emotional truth.

Watching You is a contemporary thriller built around the themes of surveillance, intimacy, and power. The story follows Lina, a paramedic whose one-night stand is secretly recorded, spiralling her life into paranoia and danger as she hunts for the voyeur while questioning everyone she trusts. From early script meetings, it was clear that voyeurism wasn’t just part of the plot — it was a design philosophy. Sydney’s oppressive summer became an agitator, a force that pushed our characters to the edge.

We embedded these themes into the visual language building it around reflection and concealment; exposing for harsh sunlight, embracing deep shadows combined with Hitcockian framing. Urban environments featured glass facades, open-plan layouts, and visible sightlines that could both reveal and obscure. We used fluted and mottled glass in key locations to distort visibility, blurring what's seen and unseen. In contrast, our rural setting — an old bush house belonging to Lina’s Grandfather — worn timber, aged metal, heavy drapery — was the opposite: concealment, protection, and memory. It provided refuge yet carried an unease through its isolation.

This environmental contrast operates on multiple levels—urban versus rural, modern versus aged, transparent versus opaque—all reinforcing the story's themes without announcing themselves. Rather than dressing sets to look “pretty,” we designed environments that were sun-bleached, tactile, and alive with atmospheric heat, letting natural elements like fire and wind shape the emotional landscape.

Every character’s environment reflected their psychological arc. Lina’s home felt warm but constraining, echoing her move from security to vulnerability. Low ceilings and vertical blinds foreshadowed her eventual sense of entrapment. Clare and Axel’s aspirational home embodied femineity through curves and archways, its palatial scale contrasted with Lina and Cain’s modest townhouse, reinforcing themes of desire, duplicity, and power. Pa’s House became almost a character itself — a space layered with memory, decay, and transformation.

The way a person lives tells us everything: clutter versus order, material choice, colour temperature, or the wear on a chair arm. Cultural identity was also integral. Characters’ mixed backgrounds were represented subtly through heirlooms, design motifs, or pattern that reflected layered heritage without cliché. Similarly, their occupations as first responders informed practicality: furniture placement, accessible storage, lived-in functionality.

We personalised environments with small, authentic touches drawn from collaborative conversations. During pre-production, Aisha Dee, who plays Lina recalled a set of childhood toys she’d collected. We sourced those exact items and placed them in Pa’s House on the shelf beside a photograph of Lina’s Mother. They never needed to be referenced, or have a close-up, we dressed them into the set to support her performance and trigger an emotional connection to a real childhood memory for the scene.

Production design thrives on collaboration. My Design Bible — a visual compendium of mood, palette, materials, lighting and spatial reference — became a shared language for our second block director and cinematographer as well as the whole art department team. Design thinking often happens collectively and physically. For one major set build, we taped out dimensions on the office floor so the director and DOP could walk it and lens up on it, feeling proportions viscerally before construction. Practical limitations inevitably shaped creative choices. A dream location might collapse due to permissions or scheduling; budgets stretch only so far. But constraint breeds authenticity. When our ideal setting fell through, we adapted an industrial space instead — and it felt more truthful than the original concept.

Naturalistic design doesn’t mean neutral design. Every colour choice, material, and line carried meaning. Orange emerged as a key accent. Through the last-minute location change mentioned earlier, we were gifted a bright orange door — an unmissable visual warning. Vanessa Loh (Costume Designer) dressed Lina in an orange dress as she entered for the first time. That repetition of the orange dress against the orange door amplified the danger like a subliminal message: don’t go in. Orange became a warning associated with specific characters and props foreshadowing danger. These decisions aren’t decorative — they’re narrative.

Natural realism extends beyond walls and furniture. It lives in the brands, logos, and artefacts that populate the world. We designed fictional companies like NestShare and ForgeFit with the same care real branding demands. Hundreds of names, logos, and applications were tested until they felt authentic. These details, a phone App logo, a promotional LED screen video, may pass unnoticed, but they cement the believability of the universe.

As production designers working in contemporary drama, we face unique professional challenges. We must advocate for resources and creative vision while deliberately creating work that shouldn't draw attention. The irony of natural realism being the more invisible our work, the stronger its impact. What looks effortless on screen is, in truth, the result of intense collaboration between departments; costume, cinematography, direction, and the entire art team. Every seemingly intuitive choice reflects careful consideration of narrative function and authentic representation. Our work may remain largely invisible, but it profoundly shapes how audiences experience and emotionally engage with screen narratives. Production design is not just about choosing the right couch or wall colour, it’s the architecture of emotion — the invisible scaffolding that holds story together.

This article is adapted from her chapter in Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis (UoW Press).

Biography

Virginia Mesiti is a visual storyteller who is drawn to character driven drama and projects she can build worlds within. Her passion for colour, research and developing a rich backstory drive her creatively. Her Production Design credits include some of our most loved Australian TV such as After the Verdict, Diary of an Uber Driver, The Moodys, A Moody Christmas, No Activity and the Seachange reboot. She also Production Designed AFTRS Alumni Craig Boreham’s debut feature film, Teenage Kicks with fellow Alumni Bonnie Elliott as Cinematographer. Her most recent credit was as Assistant Set Decorator on George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing. Virginia is Senior Lecturer in Production Design at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2025/10/22/ipdw2025-making-visible-the-invisible-natural-realism-in-production-design-through-the-lens-of-watching-you

Posted by Jane Barnwell

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2025/10/21/ipdw2025-making-the-invisible-visible-new-book-celebrates-and-reframes-production-design

To celebrate International Production Design Week (IPDW) between October 17th-26th, Pop Junctions presents a range of contributions related to the craft of production design, with particular focus on the art of world-building and the creativity and culture of production design practice. IPDW is an initiative led by the Production Designers Collective and involves a calendar of events that showcase production design around the world.

In this contribution, UK-based Production Designer Jane Barnwell introduces the forthcoming open-access collection, Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis (University of Westminster Press, 2026), co-edited by Jane Barnwell, Jo Briscoe, and Juliet John. The book brings together voices from across industry and academia to illuminate the creativity, challenges and cultural impact of production design. This contribution signposts some of the book’s central concerns: how production design is practiced, taught, critically analysed, and why it matters to the wider ecology of film and media studies.

Production design is the backbone of screen storytelling. From the grandeur of a fantasy city to the subtle texture of a lived-in kitchen, production designers shape the worlds we see on screen. Yet their work is often overlooked in film discourse, education and even within the industry itself. Our forthcoming open-access collection, Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis (University of Westminster Press, 2026), seeks to change that. Co-edited by Jane Barnwell, Jo Briscoe, and Juliet John, the book brings together voices from across industry and academia to illuminate the creativity, challenges and cultural impact of production design.

Production design is everywhere, yet often invisible. Every detail of a film or television environment, the architecture of a room, the texture of a piece of furniture, the placement of a prop shapes how we interpret story, character, and emotion. Yet the field remains relatively unexplored compared to directing, cinematography, or performance. Our collection responds to this gap. Drawing on the voices of practitioners, educators and theorists, it reframes production design as central to storytelling and screen culture. The book also serves as the first major output of the Production Design Research and Education Network (PD-REN), an international community founded in 2022 to advance scholarship and pedagogy in this field.

This article signposts some of the book’s central concerns - how production design is practiced, taught, critically analysed, and why it matters to the wider ecology of film and media studies. The book is divided into three sections - Practice, Education, and Analysis, with written chapters interlaced with visual materials that capture and convey the processes of production design. These include original artwork, sketches, photographs and process documentation contributed by our authors. Each editor led one section: I curated Practice, Jo Briscoe Education and Juliet John Analysis. Our collaboration reflects a shared design sensibility; we worked collectively on every aspect of the book, enjoying the creative challenge and finding inventive solutions to the publishing process.

Section 1. Practice: Making Worlds Visible

The practice of production design is both pragmatic and visionary. Designers translate words on a page into material environments that feel lived-in and emotionally resonant. They collaborate with directors, cinematographers and their art departments, yet retain a distinctive creative voice. The Practice section features stories from working professionals who reveal how ideas emerge, evolve and materialise. Virginia Mesiti foregrounds “natural realism,” showing how everyday environments can carry implicit critique when staged with care. Wynn Thomas, in a sketchbook contribution, invites readers into the design logic of Cinderella Man (2005), where sets were built not only for authenticity but also for narrative affect. Moira Tait reflects on the realist aesthetics of the BBC design department during the 1960s and ’70s; Karen Nicholson considers the evolution of the prop master; Sebastian Soukup and Wim Wenders discuss their creative collaborations; and Inbal Weinberg shares her detailed design notes.

Other contributors explore questions of cultural representation, such as Sarah Mursal’s chapter on authenticity and sensitivity in design, or industry-specific challenges, like May Davies’ examination of low-budget art departments in Europe. Jeannine Oppewall’s reflections on L.A. Confidential (1997) and Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer’s sketchbooks for Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Barbie (2023) reveal how sketches, references and imagination map onto finished films. Together, these contributions underscore that production design is never purely decorative. It is the architecture of meaning on screen.

Section 2. Education: Building a Pedagogy of Design

If practice demonstrates the richness of production design, education reveals the fragility of its foundations. Many film schools worldwide still do not teach production design systematically. Where it does appear, it often emerges from theatre scenography or as an add-on module in generalist film programmes. The Education section begins to redress this absence. Paola Cortés argues that production design training should be core to all filmmakers, not just specialists, since visual storytelling underpins every aspect of cinema. Valérie Kaelin demonstrates how interdisciplinary curricula, blending design, history, technology and practice can provide holistic training. Other contributors address urgent contemporary challenges. Jo Briscoe explores the teaching of collaboration, leadership, and management, skills essential to production design but rarely emphasised in curricula. Emerging technologies are also transforming the classroom. Natalie Beak’s chapter on Unreal Engine and virtual production highlights how pedagogy must adapt to digital workflows without losing sight of the storytelling principles that ground the field. The images below showcase some of these Unreal Engine activities as part of the Master of Arts Screen (MAS) at AFTRS.

PD-REN members have generously contributed curriculum outlines and project models, including Anne Seibel (La Fémis, Paris), Anna Solic (University of South Wales), Kerry Bradley (Nottingham Trent University), Angelica Böhm (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf), and Boyana Bucharova (NAFTA). Together, these contributions offer practical resources for teachers worldwide and mark a crucial step toward a shared pedagogical language, one that honours both craft and creativity.

Section 3. Analysis: Bridging Practice, Education and Theory

The third section, curated by Juliet John, situates production design within broader frameworks of theory and analysis. The aim is to build bridges between practice, educational need and critical understanding. Including vibrant contributions from Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Ian Christie, Lucy Fischer, Geraint D’Arcy, Jakob Ion Wille, Benjamin McCann, Vincent LoBrutto, Abraham Thomas, Liselotte Justesen, Juliet John and Sir Christopher Frayling, the significance of this scholarly intervention becomes clear. Production designers often lack the time or space to reflect on their work, yet analysis can illuminate what practitioners know intuitively. Essays in this section connect visual style to political context, showing how production design registers ideological currents. Others engage with metaphors of space:labyrinths, thresholds, architectural motifs that shape audience perception. Such analysis does not serve academics alone; it also advocates for production design in the public sphere. By making visible the interpretive stakes of design decisions, theory demonstrates why production design matters - not as background, but as the very fabric of cinematic meaning.

PD-REN: A Global Network for a Growing Field

Underlying this collection is the story of PD-REN itself. Founded in 2022, the network emerged to address the misunderstandings around the role and the structural barriers in industry and education. PD-REN connects researchers, educators, and practitioners on a global scale. It functions as both a professional platform and an academic forum, designed to generate research, foster pedagogy, and advocate for the field. Its emergence reflects a wider shift: production design is no longer content to remain invisible.

Conclusion: Toward a Visible Future

Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis marks a milestone. By bringing together practitioners, educators, and scholars, it reframes production design as a vital, complex and collaborative field of knowledge. This collection and the network it from which it springs reveals the centrality of production design to visual storytelling, where pedagogy nurtures future designers with rigour and creativity and analysis builds bridges across practice, education, and theory. Perspectives on Production Design advocates for a new understanding of visual storytelling. It positions production design not as background decoration but as a central force shaping character, atmosphere, and meaning in film and television.

On a personal note, it has been a pleasure to work with such a talented and inspiring group of writers and artists, all of whom have been generous with their knowledge and time. It feels as if we have cooked up a delicious feast together and my hope is that readers relish the results as much as we enjoyed making it. For filmmakers, educators, and anyone who loves screen stories, this book offers a rare look behind the scenes and a compelling case for why production design deserves greater recognition. Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis will be published open access by University of Westminster Press in early 2026.

Special Thanks to collaborators on the project:

Juliet John, Jo Briscoe, Virginia Mesiti, Wynn Thomas, Moira Tait, Karen Nicholson, Sebastian Soukup, Wim Wenders, Inbal Weinberg, Sarah Mursal, Fleur Whitlock, May Davies, Jeannine Oppewall, Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, Paola Cortés, Valérie Kaelin, Natalie Beak, Anne Seibel, Anna Solic, Kerry Bradley, Angelica Böhm, and Boyana Bucharova, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Ian Christie, Lucy Fischer, Geraint D’Arcy, Jakob Ion Wille, Benjamin McCann, Vincent LoBrutto, Abraham Thomas, Liselotte Justesen, Barbara Freedman Doyle, Rose Lagace, Sir Christopher Frayling, Anne Winterink, Romke Faber, Ondrej Lipensky, Kaisa Makinen, and Rauno Ronkainen.

Biography

Jane Barnwell is Reader in Moving Image at the University of Westminster. Graduating from the University of Leeds and The Northern Film School she began her career at the BBC, before working freelance in production. Jane has authored articles in a range of forms and genres including popular magazines, periodicals and websites. Her books include Production Design for Screen; Visual Storytelling in Film and TV (2017), Production Design: Architects of the Screen (2004), The Fundamentals of Film Making (2008) and Production Design & the Cinematic Home (2022).  She is co-founder of PD-REN and co-editor of the forthcoming collection, Perspectives on Production Design: Practice, Education and Analysis, (UoW Press, Open Access, due 2026) a ground-breaking collaboration with authors drawn from practice, research and education. 

http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2025/10/21/ipdw2025-making-the-invisible-visible-new-book-celebrates-and-reframes-production-design