art director | production designer | lecturer
After a stop/start couple of months, my latest job has just started filming in London… the latest installment of the Amazon Studios JACK RYAN franchise began principal photography in Dubai last month and is now back in the UK. This is a feature-length story and brings all the regular characters back together plus some special […]
I’ve been updating my web site and realised that it’s nearly two years since I last posted…. time flies! Quick round up of what I’ve been up to in that time: In October 2022, while I was in Turin taking part in another Art Department Masterclass with Grenville, we met supervising art director Elaine Kusmishko […]
A long time ago, in a distant land, I went to art college. The past is a strange place to visit. I was never cut out to be a fine artist and relished the opportunities to bunk off and play with my new chums in fringe theatre. The epic Forkbeard Fantasy introduced me to the […]
Over the last couple of years, Gren and I have had the privilege to work with the TorinoFilmLab as production design expert consultants working with writers and producers developing their forthcoming projects. The first session we took part in was held in Turin at the beginning of 2020 and involved twelve teams in the SeriesLab […]
In October 2022, Grenville and I had the pleasure of taking part in the second Art Department Masterclass session to be held in Turin. This session focused on ‘building the worlds: working with post-production’ and the presentations were given by production designer and art director Paul Inglis (‘Children of Men’, ‘Blade Runner 2049’), VFX line […]
Five participants and six intense days of drawing later…. big cheers to Shani, Curnan, Nia, Amy and Kat for completing the course – they really got to grips with the exercises and made significant progress in their drafting skills. We covered basic technique, working in metric & imperial scales, plans & elevations, details, location surveys […]
One of my favourite parts of running a course is setting up the classroom. It’s really important to make the space feel welcoming and exciting. I am very privileged to have examples of set drawings from some of the best draughting talents in the industry which are displayed on the walls. There’s also a wide […]
I’m really looking forward to running the new ‘Intro to Hand Drafting’ course at LFS next week (13-18 September)! No matter how much digital technology encroaches on our world, the fundamental ability to communicate through drawing will always be essential. Eye/brain/pencil coordination is the best way to work out a set or scenery detail and […]
That’s another successful Absolute Beginners: Introduction to the Art Department completed! Five participants given an intensive six-day induction to all the core elements of art department working: script breakdowns, schedules & call sheets, technical drawing (metric and imperial!), white card model making, location surveys, health & safety and plenty of reference material to dip into. […]
What another strange year…. started out teaching on-line for the London Film School, then moved into the classroom at Pinewood Studios and the Creative Media Skills team. That rolled into a combined course working with students at Bucks College on the diploma course for Art Department and Prop Making. A wonderful opportunity then arose that […]