"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible" Oscar Wilde (quoted in Patrick Keiller's film LONDON)

Anything is possible. Production Design creates the mood, atmosphere and context of a film through the expressive use of space, objects, forms and colour. The Production Designer interprets the written word for the screen, bringing all the visual elements together to create a story world. Ideas, imagination and ambition are pre-requisites.

Students design films involving set builds on the School’s sound stages. All units develop and execute Production Design concepts for each script in production. The Department teaches all aspects of Production Design for both 35mm colour and Digital formats. These include classes in model making, composition and colour, set dressing and drawing.

Students learn how to develop a visual concept and to realize it into cinematic reality. Drawing, model making and computer imaging techniques are taught using the scripted material that students generate. The programme accommodates a wide range of genres and story worlds. Students have created settings for their films that have included a forest, an American trailer interior, an Indian train carriage interior hurtling across a far landscape, a hospital ward, a hunters lodge in 19th century Missouri, an underground bomb-making factory, a spy’s den….. through to domestic settings contemporary, future and period.

Head of Production Design: Candida Moriarty

Senior Lecturer Production Design - Nesta Morgan

Senior Lecturer Production Design - Alice Norris

Visting Lecturer Production Design: Matthew Button

Matthew Button designed his first feature in 2004 and has been consistently in demand ever since, for feature films and TV. In 2014 he was nominated for the Royal Television Society ‘Best Production Design’ award and in 2015 he was nominated for a BAFTA, as a member of the production team on BBC’s  ‘Our World War’.