When the assignment was first set, one of the first things I decided to do was draw quick thumbnail sketches of both the original set, and how they set I wanted to make would look.
The image above is a quick design I drew of the original set, even after extensive research I could not find any original floor plans or lighting plans for it, but from watching the show, I was able to draw this from eye and hazard well educated guesses from it. My best guesses also determine that the set was lit with lights pointing though the windows, and also lights that were able to be moved around the set for different shots.
As you can see, my version of the office is a very similar shape to the original. This is because I really do like the curved back wall shape and find it to be very empowering, which is what my aim is for this set.
I mainly wanted to change the interior design of the set more than anything, with minor tweaks to the original structure.
In Maya today, we started to learn how to use Polygonal shapes rather than NURBS. To get used to the new tool, our lecturer showed us how to make a very basic hand, which I found very similar to making a house in Sketchup. Here is my finished result.
I am a huge fan of a show called "Breaking Bad", I love it for it's actors, it's writing and it's story, but another great thing that sometimes people may not appreciate is it's choice of sets and locations.
One set in particular I like is the character, Saul Goodman's office. Saul is a criminal lawyer, which means he defends people who he knows are criminals and get's payed for it, he knows the right people and he knows the wrong ones, but he always tries to save as much money as he can for himself by limiting his own budget, but he is a big spender of others'. He is described in the show as a "Criminal" lawyer (with extra emphasis on "criminal").
This is Saul's office. From watching the show, I think the theme of Saul's office is a mix between Roman Empire/U.S. Presidency. As you can see, there are decorative pillars surrounding his desk, and if you look even closer, behind the pillars is a mural which states in bold letters: "We the People" and under that is a lengthy passage which is very hard to read, but from my research I have found that it is the opening passage from the constitution of the United States of America.
By having the constitution on the wall, this would demonstrate that he is a man of the law to his clients, but the audience soon realizes that he is not this at all, he is a crook who knows his way around the law. A way I suppose you could look at it is "Law behind bars" with the pillars representing a prison cell, almost.
Normally pillars are made to support structures, and to Saul's clientele; they look like they are doing just that, however, we soon learn that they are cheap, fake replicas that are in place to hide safes scattered around the room. Another thing that may also tell the viewer that he's not all that he says he is is the colour clash between the stone pillars and marble wall decor, and the hideous bright blue carpet.
Although Saul is cheap, a fiend and a crook, we can clearly see he has a thing for making him self look wealthy and powerful.
My idea is basically "What if Saul's character was wealthy and powerful because of his dodgy dealings?" The fist step I took to interpreting how Saul's office would look if this were the case was to think about his personality, and the first thing that caught my eye was his extravagance, he likes keeping up his appearance, and then I thought "If he has the money to be extravagant, maybe he would like to show it off?". This has led to me thinking his office would look like a fairly similar surrounding (e.g. Empowering curved back wall) but more modernized and more expensive items in the office.
I have chosen a short scene set in his office for my idea, and this is it's script:
Saul: Drum roll, please. Wait for it. Laser tag. Laser tag!
Skylar: Laser tag? Laser tag, it just doesn't add up.
Saul: It adds up perfectly! Walt's a scientist, scientists love lasers. Plus, they got bumper boats, so--
Skylar: "Hey, everybody, laser tag. Just out of the blue". Really? Saul: Let me bottom line this for you, You don't need to be involved, okay? I've been doing this for a lot of years successfully, believe it or not, without your help. So thank you for stopping by.
Here is the scene
This scene perfectly depicts both Saul's extravagance and his arrogance, and this is why:
Walter White (The main protagonist in "Breaking Bad") is a low earning Chemistry teacher and part time car washer with a brilliant mind, but at age 50 develops terminal lung cancer. This pushes him over the edge, or to "Break Bad" causing him to quit his part time job and begin making a chemical based drug with the street name "Crystal Meth", whilst still teaching Chemistry, and starts to earn millions of dollars to leave for his family when he eventually dies, but when gets fired from teaching, Walt needs a way to cover up him earning so much money without attracting attention from his brother-in-law, Hank, who is high up the ranks of the D.E.A (Drug Enforcement Agency). This is where Saul comes in.
Saul suggests Walt invests his money into a business, so whatever money he makes from drug dealing looks as though his business is earning it. This is known as "Money Laundering". Before Walt can even think of a low-profile, plausible business to invest in, Saul suggests the idea of a Laser Tag facility.
Laser tag is a family attraction drawing hundreds of customers per week, plus Walt has no history of affiliations with family attractions. Given Walt is trying to be as low profile as possible, investing in a laser tag attraction would not benefit him, but with Saul suggesting the idea it shows that if it were him in Walt's shoes, he would invest in Laser tag.
With this in mind, it has given me the idea to make his office bigger, better, more modern and show his character even more.
Maya is a very complex 3D design software that can be run on either a PC or a Mac. For this module, we have a choice to either use Sketchup (Another 3D design software) or Maya, but in order to decide which is best for us, we have to learn to use both.
With our tutor, we briefly touched on Maya in the first lecture for the last fifteen minutes, where we were shown how to make a sphere and view it from a full 360 degrees. To import the sphere, we used the "create" tab along the top of the program, clicked on the "NURBS Primitives" option and clicked "Sphere".
In the second lecture, we had more time with using the software and learning how to use it's "Hotbox" short cuts. Here are some screen captions of them.
After having some time getting used to it, we were asked to make an object to help us get into the swing of things, in this case, the object was a lamp.
To make the lamp, we first had to import a sphere and shade it so that it was more than an wire frame using the "5" key, then we had to stretch and skew it into a shape that resembled the base of a lamp using the "Translate" "Pick CV" options from the hotbox menu. Once the desired shape has been achieved, we then had to create the lamp shade.
To do this, you follow the same steps as making a sphere, but instead of sphere, click "Cylinder" and use the hotbox feature to scale it to size. Once done, go to the hotbox menu and select "Pick nothing", then re-select the cylinder, open the hotbox menu and choose "Pick CV", view the cylinder from above or below, select the inner circle of points and delete them. The cylinder is now hollow. Once I accomplished this, I placed the cylinder on top of the shape I had previously made and skewed it to make it thinner in the center of the shape, to make it more lamp shade-like, and this was my final result:
During this lecture, shortly after I made this lamp, the program crashed and I was unable to continue to use it for the rest of the lecture.
In the first lecture of Production Design, the class walked through the module brief which overlooked a number of things including; The targets each student has to aim for over the duration of the module and some of the components they will have to use to reach their goals.
For this module, the students must design and create a television set using either a digital 3D software (Maya or Sketchup) or a physical structure made out of balsa wood and/or card.
As a small task to begin development of the students' sets; they were asked to photograph any bricks they saw as they were out and about to give them an understanding or the different kind of bricks they could use for their structures. These photos will then be able to be added to the students' mood boards.
Mood boards are a collection of photographs and images which can help determine the theme of which the students' want their studio designs to follow.
