Carcass - knowledge acquired

       Carcass was a 4-week long project which enabled us to get up to speed for our main project during our MA phase of education. Although it was considered only as a starter, during this period I managed to gain much useful knowledge in the pre-production field which I’ll try to sum up in the next few paragraphs:

        During the project we were required to draw the set which was essential while acquiring our initial draughting skills. Draughting sets as a part of the designer’s work could be improved mainly by many practice on illustrating different rooms and halls. The more you draught, the better you become. A key role to the white paper work is also added by the knowing of some key terms.

·            The elevation is a drawing which shows the look of the walls in the different sets. For a normal square room the extended elevation would look like a rectangular from the four continuously running walls with separated with a line on each corner. There could be different elevations depending on the complexity of the shapes which are illustrated on each wall. There should be no furniture and any items on the elevations unless its part of the walls. Elevations could be from one side, front, extended or section in terms of which enable the designers idea to be understood more easily. One example for that could be if the walls are covered by one color, striped or simple shaped wallpapers. In this case an extended elevation is enough to illustrate their outlook. On the other hand, if there is a complicated shape or drawing on the walls there should be separated zoomed elevation for this particular wall in order to allow the depict even the smallest details.

·             The set plans represents the sets looked from the top. There are two types of set plan – with and without furniture. The set plan without furniture is drawn on the same sheet as the elevation because  the walls on the set plan are marked with the same letters on the elevation. And the other set plans with furniture are drawn on the studio plan. While draughting a set plan it’s important to think of the possible camera position and to leave enough space for cameras (3 squared meters). Plans always include door, which has to be drawn open in order to mark the space they will take. It’s also very important every piece of paper to include a box with the name of the production, name of the company, the location, director’s name, designer’s name and contacts, the scale and the drawing title (examples : “Studio plan Pinewood D”, “Jim’s flat – set plan and elevations”, etc.)

·              Another obtained skill during this short project concern the script breackdown.  This process basically includes the coloring of the script paper while marking the different elements. The elements include parts of the day of each scene (night scenes in one color, day scenes in other), all the props in a different color, names of the characters in another color, etc. Thus, a script also could give an idea of some of the required props for a production and their type. Which the active props (involved in the characters actions),the dress props (part of the background) and the prop makes (which should be made especially for the production) would be. The other props which aren’t mentioned in the scenery should be written in a piece of paper divided into the rooms they’d be possessed
                 As a part of our educational enrichment were also some initial product design skills, acquired while drawing our own ideas for prop makes (*different types of props were also some of the new terms). In the beginning I had missed to add dimension but afterwards in my feedback I met  the their requirement.
                  Finally, another useful outcome of this project was that we came across some computer programmes which could be very useful in the field of set design such as AutoCad, 3D max, ect, which we could start to build our skills on.