The best definition of what art direction in film is I heard from filmmaker Lina Chamie: “Everything you see on screen, framed by the camera, is art direction.”
The art director is a kind of “visual conductor”: he coordinates, tunes and harmonizes the visual elements that make up the scene, which will be illuminated and photographed for a film or for TV. His orchestra is composed of set designers, cenotechnicians, painters, costume designers, makeup artists, hairdressers, object producers, special effects technicians and more recently, computer graphics experts. The team under their responsibility is like an orchestra: each of the members needs to be tuned, needs to know the score, needs to perform correctly and inspiredly their part so that the whole of the work is beautiful and harmonious.
Performing the art direction of a film is a complex task that involves research, cost calculation, people management, and a deep knowledge about art history, scenario building techniques, 3D creation in computer, lighting, photography.
The art director needs to relate to the other departments of the film, especially with the cinematographer and the production coordinator. On TV the work is a little different from cinema, because usually people have fixed contract and a department where the scene material is stored, called counter-rule, but the logic of work remains the same as that of cinema. It is easy to visually identify a novel, for example, which has good art direction from one that does not have. The good art direction makes period novels, for example, have all the harmonious visual elements and within the time portrayed, without mixtures.
Art direction was not always like this. At the beginning of the cinema, what was seen on the screen was a transposition of the theatrical techniques of cenotechnics, makeup and costume. Early cinema, from the 1910 to 1920s, was theatrical, visual composition was still based on painting and photography. When we watch Metropolis of Fritz Lang or the Battleship Potemkin of Eisenstein the impression we have is of a grand opera filmed or of paintings in an exhibition, with grandiose scenarios in long open planes, each of the plans studied as if it were a painting. Cinema still crawled, discovered through experimentalism how to create a language of its own.
The technique influenced a lot in this process, the cameras did not have mobility, the film had limitations. The first actresses in silent cinema wore yellow makeup to increase the contrast with the eyes, the film, of little sensitivity to light, left human skin gray.
With the evolution of equipment and the development of a cinematic language, the need arose for more professional experts to create visual elements for the camera look. The increase in the team caused the figure of the art director to be created.
In the 40’s, American studios worked as major film industries, with several films being produced at the same time. The decisive technical factor for the logistics of the filming was the technicolor, which required a large camera that worked with four film chassis at the same time, fixed in cranes or travelings to be able to be moved, operated by up to 6 people. The lack of mobility required maximum control of weather and lighting conditions. Everything was built in the studio, even the outside streets where Gene Kelly danced in the rain, everything was artificially lit.
The technicolor, by the way it produced the color film, required the use of strong and contrasting colors in the costumes and scenarios. The work of art direction was limited to the set of rules of technicolor, no pastel colors were used, no semitons were used.
The Nouvelle Vague came to rescue the outdoors, producing black and white films with light cameras outdoors. Italian realism has valued man, the human environment portrayed as he is. Cinema began to have a variety of languages and styles.
Hollywood followed with its industrial vocation and kept producing, the actors and actresses turn into idols and myths. Walt Disney begins producing animations in the 50’s. The Italian Cinecittá also begins to produce on an industrial scale, with its city studios. And the art director gets more room to work.
From the 1970s art direction became a much more sophisticated concept. One of the great filmmakers who transformed the work of the art director was Stanley Kubrick, the other was Frederico Fellini.
Kubrick, a photographer and perfectionist, turned each of his films into visual works of art. In 1974, he performed Barry Lyndon and gave conditions to his two art directors to make a period film in a way that had not yet been made. The art direction does extensive research on the clothes of the time, the wigs, the makeup. Kubrick authorizes his team to buy clothes at auctions, original pieces from the time of Barry Lyndon. Each plan is produced as painting, but not any painting, like the paintings of the time the film takes place. Kubrick has a special camera made to film by candlelight. The result is a slow film, with irretocavian environments, illuminated only with natural light and candles, where each character is perfectly characterized as dressed at the time, where each scenario and location was prepared to give the impression to the viewer who returned in time, that what is watching is a perfect reconstitution.
Fellini was one of the most creative filmmakers of all time, surrealist and humanist. Fellini has created a gallery of bizarre characters and dream scenarios. Cinecittá, in full prime, was its environment. His films have a very particular visual language, which mixes reconstructions of real places in the studio – such as the replica of the Trevi Fountain, which appears in Eight and Middle – with evidently artificial scenarios, such as the plastic ocean and the painted background of La Nave Va.
Another filmmaker who allowed innovation was George Lucas with his science fiction films. Lucas makes the first Star Wars with the technique developed by Disney studios to create realistic scenarios: painted glass plates where the characters are then “glued” in the film assembly. The assembly techniques were still the same since the 20’s. Disgruntled by the result, Lucas opened the Industrial Light and Magic. Art direction has gained a new department: computer graphics.
Despite all the current technology and the almost infinitive possibilities of production, the creative principle of the art director remains the same: turning into reality what the director and the film’s writers imagined. Build dream worlds, whether in the real world in the studio, or
on the computer. A film without art direction can be a good film; a film with good art direction will always be a better film.
Daniela Castilho is an art director, artist and designer.
