Author Archives: rdwilkins

18 Design Reference Books You Should Have On Your Shelf (UPDATE)

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Ten years ago,  I wrote a post on 10 design books that I thought everyone should have. Looking at that list now, I think I need to expand on it by adding a few more to the list.

Here is my must-have list with sources:

1. Architectural Graphic Standards – 5th Edition –

This was when the books were filled with great hand drawings and actually showed you in detail how things were built. There are lots of period details as well. Out of print for over 50 years, (at least in this edition) you can still find copies for anywhere from $20 to $200. The 3rd edition would be a suitable replacement. the first edition is also good to have and has been reprinted several times. Check Abebooks for copies. Not available digitally.

If you are in Great Britain, McKays is the closest equivalent, and is actually superior in a number of ways from our standpoint as set designers. On the Continent, an older copy of Neufert’s is a must. See this earlier post for details. Not available digitally.

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Another option in England is Period House, by Jackson & Day, which goes into extensive detail about common interior architectural elements for restorers. In Germany, the best book on period construction I’ve found is Konstruction Und Form Im Bauen, by Friedrich Hess. There are lots of very nice drawings and measured details. It’s long out of print but you can still find copies second-hand. In Sweden, an excellent book on traditional construction is Stora Boken Om Byggnadsvård, by Göran Gudmundsson. This is a current book and still in print. In Italy, a nice book on traditional construction techniques with detailed drawings is  Il Legno e L’arte Di Contruire Mobili e Serramenti. None are available digitally.

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2. Time-Saver Standards for Interior Design and Space Planning, 2nd Edition.

This is the interior design complement to Architectural Graphic Standards and covers nearly every situation regarding building interiors. You can find used copies for around $50. There is a digital version available but it’s not only difficult to navigate because of the size of the book but at the price you’d be better off getting a hardback edition.

Another companion to this is a nice slim book that is for kitchen and bathroom standards in the U.S. The NKBA Kitchen & Bathroom Planning Guide was created to make common building codes and layouts available to designers in an easy to use format.

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3. Styles Of Ornament – Alexander Speltz.  

Originally published in 1904, this book uses over 4000 drawings to illustrate 6000 years of historical design. As a general design reference I don’t think it has an equal. Architecture, furniture, text, carving, metalwork are all covered. A must-have. About $20 new.

The Handbook Of Ornament by Franz Meyer would be a close second. Available from a number of publishers for as little as $10. A digital version is available.

Low Budget Option- download the online PDF here.

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4. The Stair Builder’s Handbook – T.W. Love –

Not a design book, but a book of rise-and-run tables that make stair layout a breeze. Available from various sources for about $20.

Low Budget Option – download the PDF Common Sense Stairbuilding and Hand-railing. Skip the mind bending section on handrail layout and skip to page 99. Also, Stair building, which has a nice section on ornamental ironwork.

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5. Backstage Handbook – Paul Carter.

Originally a technical manual for theatrical designers, the book is full of great information for film work as well. There are more details in this earlier post from several years ago. It is one of the most widely used books on stagecraft in the U.S. Available from Broadway Press for about $22. No digital version is available.

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6. Building Construction Illustrated – Francis Ching.

An excellent and thorough book about construction details including wood framing systems and masonry. About $46.

Low Budget Option – access the online PDF here of the 4th edition.

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7. The Classical Orders of Architecture – Robert Chitham

I think this is the best modern book around that deals with the classical architecture proportional system. This book was out of print for quite a while and fortunately is back in print. The new edition deals with the proportions for both metric and Imperial systems. Copies can be found for about $55.

Low Budget Option – Get the PDF of American Vignola by William Ware and The Five Orders by Vignola.

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8. Illustrated Dictionary of Historical Architecture – Cyril Harris

With over 5000 terms and 2000 line drawings, this book covers architectural history from the ancient period to 20th century Modernism. Along with the European styles, it covers Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Islamic and Mesoamerican styles. About $35 from various sources.

Another classic book in a similar vein is A History of Architecture On The Comparative Method, by Sir Banister Fletcher. This dense, fully-illustrated book covers the time periods from ancient times to the 20th century, focusing on Western culture. It was the most widely used general architecture reference book for decades.

Used copies are easy to find for around $20. A good scanned copy of the 1905 edition can be found in PDF form here for download. Avoid reprints. Most of them are badly scanned from originals and the fine details of the illustrations is lost. A 20th edition has been published in two volumes that comes in at over 1600 pages and includes new sections on cultural architecture from countries not fully represented in the original edition. This runs at around $250.

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9. Elements Of Style – Edited by Stephen Calloway

This has been a standard Art Department reference manual for quite some time. Subtitles as “a practical encyclopedia of interior architectural details”, the book covers the periods from 1485 to modern day. Each chapter covers a different time period and is separated into thirteen sections which each feature an interior element, making it easy to cross reference similar elements from other time periods. The book includes over 3000 drawings and 1300 photographs to accompany the written analysis. In hardcover for around $75. Used editions can be found for as little as $20.

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10. By Hand & Eye – George R. Walker & Jim Tolpin.

If you’re just starting out in set design this is one of the first books I’d tell you to buy. Bad proportions can ruin a design. This book will give you a solid understanding of proportion and keep you from making simple mistakes. You can download a sample chapter here. Also, I wrote a longer post on the book earlier. Walker and Tolpin are promising a workbook that will come out later this year based on the book’s concepts so look for that. Available from Lost Art Press for $51, hardbound. A PDF is available for $24.

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11. Principles Of Design – William Varnum

This is a recent reprint of a book published in 1916 under the title Industrial Arts Design. The book lays out the basics of design, with step-by-step rules for designing not just furniture but pottery and metalwork as well, with sections on enriching a surface with detail or hardware. The rules translate easily to architectural forms and will seem like obvious, common-sense choices once you are exposed to them. This hardback edition is the second run of a limited printing. By Lost Art Press at their website. Hard cover edition is $41.

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12. Human Dimension & Interior Space – Panero & Zelnik

This book explains the science of anthropometrics, which is the study of human body measurements on a comparative basis. Whether you are designing interior elements, furniture, or vehicles, this book will help you create those spaces with easy to read diagrams and charts that detail the huge disparity in shapes, sizes, and capabilities of the human form. The authors warn against designing for a ‘standard size’ human body which in fact, does not exist. New in hardcover at about $24. Digital versions are also available.

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13. Field Guide To American Houses – Virginia Savage McAlester

Described as the “definitive guide to identifying and understanding American domestic architecture”, this book is considered an essential source for understanding the myriad of styles and elements that define American houses. With over 1000 drawings and photographs, the book separates the various styles into chronological categories and explains the details and accents that define each of them with clear, simple sketches. The second edition is about $24 in paperback.

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14. Illustrated Cabinetmaking – Bill Hylton

I covered this book in detail in an earlier post. One reviewer referred to this book as the Gray’s Anatomy of woodworking, and that’s a pretty accurate description. If you’re going to design furniture you need to understand how it’s built, and this book explains it with over 1300 color illustrations and exploded views of 90 different pieces of furniture from different time periods. There are sections on joinery, standard dimensions, and sources for construction drawings. Paperback editions are about $24. Digital editions are also available.

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15. The Encyclopedia Of Wood – Aidan Walker, Editor

There are numerous books on tree identification but this one stands out to me because of the variety of wood that it covers and the large, clear color photographs of each of 150 species grain patterns and figure. There are also chapters on how wood is processed, what wood movement is, and how veneers and lumber are milled. In paperback for about $35.

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16. American Cinematographers Manual – American Society of Cinematographers

The new 11th edition will cost you about $120 in hardback and almost the same in it’s digital version through the iTunes and Android sites. Earlier used editions can be purchased for a third of the price of a new edition, but much of the latest technology isn’t in them. This is the go-to book for all things dealing with cameras and image capture. A lot of people will tell you you don’t need this. I’m sure you might also have a great career as a car designer without knowing anything about how cars work. Because when it comes down to it, all we’re really doing is designing big, pretty things to bounce light off of. Just remember, if the department names were based on physics we’d be the Light Reflector Design Department.

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17. The VES Handbook Of Visual Effects – Okun & Zwerman, Editors

Published by the Visual Effects Society, this +1000 page book covers every type of visual effects shot you will encounter. From in-camera effects like miniatures and mechanical effects to green screen work, motion-tracking, LIDAR, tracking shots, LED wall stages, and everything in between. It’s the most complete book on visual effects that has been produced so far. Consider it to be a complementary reference to the American Cinematographers Manual. In paperback, the new third edition costs about $65.

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18. Chenier’s Practical Math Dictionary – Norman Chenier

This book is an odd duck in many ways but it has been a real time saver on a lot of occasions. There are sections on descriptive geometry, survey and layout techniques, solutions to common math problems, and other information that you’ll struggle to find anywhere else. In paperback, the latest edition is $26.

David Lynch – “Sorry, Closed Set.”

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I was listening to the radio, looking out at the clouds and remembering the weather reports that David Lynch used to do each morning on NPR from his house on Mulholland Drive here in Los Angeles. It was at about that moment that I heard the announcement that he had passed away.

I’d been flipping through photos on my phone the day before when I found a shot of a crumpled piece of notepad paper. On it was a small sketch in black ink and pencil with some cryptic notes.

Years ago when I was working on a show on the Paramount Studios lot, I was walking through the mill when I saw a friend who waved me over to his work bench. He pulled a piece of paper from his tool bag and smoothed it out on the table.

I looked at it and squinted. “What is it?”, I asked him.

Sketch for set dressing by David Lynch

“It’s a sketch from David Lynch, he wants me to build it for a scene.” He described the conversation that had happened just a few minutes before. Lynch had come down from his office and searched him out, and conspiratorially explained to him what he needed for the scene the next day.

The sketch was of a small wooden storage unit that would fit between the front bucket seats of a van. He had explained to him in careful detail exactly what the unit had to do and the practical parts that were required to work in the scene.

“Where’s the construction drawing?”, I asked him, looking around at the plan bench. “This is it”, he said. When the Transportation Department delivered the van to the lot, he would measure the interior to see what size the box needed to be. Lynch trusted that he understood what it was he wanted and would follow through.

Suddenly everything I had heard about David from his early days at The American Film Institute was making sense. A common frustration for directors, particularly ones who are artists, is to have a last-minute idea and know that the normal steps you have to take through a film company hierarchy don’t always produce results as quickly as you want them to.

Instead of going to the Production Designer with his request, which would then get passed to an Art Director, who would then get a Set Designer to measure the vehicle, model the box for approval and then create a construction drawing, Lynch made a quick sketch and went directly to the guy who he knew would end up building it. Voila. Complex process streamlined.

In 1970, Lynch applied to The American Film Institute Conservatory by submitting a short film he had made and was offered the opportunity to attend as well as the money to make a short film he had planned for some time whose cost to produce was beyond his means.

He received a call from Tony Vellani, the director of the school, who offered him a place at the Conservatory and $7,200 to make the film.

At AFI, Lynch started work on a film called Gardenback, but was so frustrated in the process by what he felt were constant interference’s that he left at the beginning of his second year.

Vellani and others of the school administration felt that he was one of their best students and convinced him to come back by promising that he could finish his film without any more interference. He abandoned Gardenback and started on another film that would become the feature-length film, Eraserhead.

The poster for Eraserhead – Libra Films International 1977

Initially the concept for the film was opposed by several of the AFI administrators who felt that it veered too far from the typical Hollywood narrative film, but they finally relented when the dean, Frank Daniel, threatened to resign if they vetoed it. The story is said to be inspired by Lynches own fear of fatherhood and his experiences living in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Philadelphia while going to college. Shot over a period of nearly four years, the surreal horror film was initially panned by most critics but became a midnight movie cult favorite along with films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I knew the film led to his being tapped by Mel Brooks to direct The Elephant Man which was one of my favorites but I didn’t see it until years after Elephant Man had been released. At first I was shocked by how different they were in tone from each other but later I started to appreciate the mind that had imagined it and began to see threads of commonality.

Still from The Elephant Man – Paramount Pictures 1980

Vellani would often talk about Lynch when I was a Directing Fellow at AFI in the mid 1980s. He once told me that he considered David to be the most naturally gifted filmmaker he had ever met.

I had always heard that David didn’t like to talk about his films too much and brushed aside questions that required him to explain endings or motivations, which made me wonder how he had dealt with the AFI critique sessions.

The typical sequence of film projects at The American Institute Conservatory was that Directing Fellows made three films the first year. On the completion date the film is screened before the entire school for critique.

At the end of the screening, The director, writer and producer were seated at the front of the room with Tony Vellani who gave the director an intense look and asked, “What is the premise?” Your response was supposed to be a three or four word answer in the pattern of, “Blank leads to blank“, as in “Betrayal leads to tragedy”, condensing the dramatic structure of the story into as few words as possible. The film was judged primarily on how successfully you had fulfilled the goal of matching the final film to its premise.

Knowing of Lynch’s reported distaste for being pinned down on story points, I wondered how he maneuvered through this process when his film was critiqued at the school.

Vellani said that he had gone to Mexico and Davids invitation to visit him at the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City while he was shooting Dune. He described how he was trailed by an army of people. Producers, Art Directors, and ADs. He said he looked uncomfortable and distracted by this entourage and it reminded him of the early 70s at AFI when David was there shooting Eraserhead. They had taken over some stables near the Doheny Mansion in Beverly Hills where the conservatory was originally located and turned them into their stage space.

Tony had brought a group of AFI dignitaries and financial supporters to view the students in the process of making their films and he arrived with these guests, unannounced, to watch David shoot a scene. After a few knocks on the ‘stage’ door, it opened slightly and Lynch stuck his head out, surprised to see the group.

Vellani explained the reason for their visit and introduced the visitors. He said David listened politely and then said simply, “Sorry, it’s a closed set”, and shut the door.

Design Gifts For The 2024 Holidays

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Jeesh, it’s been ten years since my last gift guide and I’m getting it out a little late this year, but some of the same items are still here on the list, mainly the classic tools and books that never become obsolete, (like a lot of software programs do).

I don’t receive any money from these recommendations. These are books and tools that I own and use often.

My Must-Have Tools For Film Designers

FastCap Flat Back Tape – You can not only measure round or curved surfaces but it has a blank area to write on for use as a story pole. – $10.00

Keson Pocket Rod – These are so essential for site surveys that I have four of them. They come in Architect and Engineer models. – $20.00

6″ Digital Calipers – Like these, there are many manufactures. (Avoid any priced under $20.00.) – Must-have tool for doing photo scaling (see article) – about $24.00

Equal Space Dividers – great for not only photo scaling but for designing in general. They run the gamut in price from these to these. $220 to $24.00

True Angle – Multi-use tool for measuring and transferring angles. lightweight. – 12″ -$16.00

Angle Template Tool – Various manufacturers – around 18.00

ChromaLabel Adhesive Measuring Tape – Great for when you don’t have time to measure everything and have to rely on photos of surveys – $16.00

GraphGear 1000 – Mechanical pencils, my new favorite brand. These are great because the barrel sleeve retracts into the pencil to protect it. Comes in .3, .4, .5, .7, and .9mm leads. About $9.00

Compass – So many to choose from, (and a lot of crappy ones are in the mix). This one is a good all-around basic, practical compass that will last a while. $14.00

Design Books

Lost Art Press Books

Still my favorite design and furniture book publisher. Here are my recommendations:

By Hand & Eye – $51.00. Another gem from Lost Art Press, this is probably one of the best design books written in the last 100 years. It outlines the world of design without a rule and using only dividers and proportional methods. I covered this in a previous post and always recommend it. Buy this and a good pair of second hand dividers from Ebay and you will completely change the way you think about design.

By Hound & Eye – $31.00. A companion workbook to By Hand & Eye.

Principles Of Design – $41.00

The Anarchist Design Book – $54.00

Other Books

Historic Millwork – Brent Hull

A Field Guide To American Houses – Virginia Savage McAlester

Stair Builders Handbook – T.W. Love

Backstage Handbook – Paul Carter

American Cinematographers Manual – ASC Press

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects – VES Society

Designer Drafting For The Entertainment World – Patricia Woodbridge

The Classical Orders Of Architecture – Robert Chitham

Illustrated Cabinet Making – Bill Hylton

Styles Of Ornament – Alexander Speltz

McKay’s Building Construction – W.B. McKay

Neufert – Architects’ Data – Granada Publishing

Geometry Of Design – Kimberly Elam

Really, Really Last Minute Gifts

When you realize you’ve really screwed up and forgotten someone and have no time to run to the store, much less order anything, you can always gift a good app.

Log onto the Apple or Android store and gift your so-important-you-forgot-about-them friend one of these apps and your reputation will be saved:

I own and can recommend all these apps.

BuildCalc – construction calculator – $24.99

Photo Measures – saving and sharing measurements – $6.99

MagiScan – Turns your phone into a 3D scanner (pay per use) ( I have used this a lot)

CamToPlan Pro – Uses AR to turn scans into measured drawings – $39.95

Theodolite – Just like a real theodolite but for your phone (fantastic) – $8.99*

Pocket Laser Level – Laser level for smart phones – free

Artemis Pro – professional director’s finder (Most used digital directors finder) – $29.99

Helios Pro – Sun and Moon calculator (fantastic) – $17.99

pCAM – camera info calculator – $29.99 *

Lens Lab – Depth of field app, shows you a visual representation – $1.99*

Sun Surveyor – sun and moon calculator – $9.99

I.D. Wood – samples and data for 200 kinds of wood – $9.99

LensKit – lens technical data – in-app purchases – subscription *

* iOS versions only

Online Design Classes

I have to get a plug in for our own classes at Wrand.

All the classes are 30% off until December 25.

What Just Happened? The Psychology Of Film Scenery

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“Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle. . . .” Michael Shurtleff

The casting director Michael Shurtleff wrote a book called “Audition”, which is a kind of roadmap for actors to use when preparing to try out for a part for a film or theatrical play. It lays out the basics of determining the psychological elements of a scene, even if the actor has only been given a single page from the script.

(An aside: if you really want to understand script breakdown, take an acting class. It will give you a new appreciation of actors too. Do that one better and go out for an audition, and then imagine doing that a dozen times a week for the rest of your career.)

One of the Guideposts in the book is titled, The Moment Before. Shurtleff explains that a scene always starts the middle of a situation. It’s the actors job to figure out what events came before, because a lot of times that information isn’t in the script. A general outline might be there but the small details are missing.

What just happened?

With films, a lot of the ‘personality’ of a set is the work of the Set Decorator. They give life to the structure of the scenery, and it’s a big reason why they share Oscar and Emmy awards with the Production Designer.

But you can only put so much lipstick and mascara on a goat, and if the sets ‘bones’ aren’t great, something big will be missing.

What does your set say about itself once the construction and paint crews are finished, before the set decoration crew even starts?

What happened in this room a week ago? A year ago? Twenty years ago? Was the house built before the development of modern plumbing? Do the mouldings indicate that it was built before electric power was available, and the “new” type of special moulding now hides the wires that snake along the baseboard and up corners of the room?

Once the set is dressed and filmed, are there elements that will stand out or tell a story about the “envelope” beyond the dressing?

When I look at empty houses I always look for the signs of past human lifetimes. Most buildings will survive 4 or more owners, or generations. They all have their scars from surviving their inhabitants; the bad remodels and additions that don’t match, bad repair jobs or damage that was never repaired.

I got to tour a historic house from the 1830’s that was built in the Greek Revival style and was shocked when I saw the front parlor room. The second owners wife was tired of the classical design and had the room renovated in the then-current 1890’s late Victorian “Eastlake” style. The contrast couldn’t have been more odd if they had redone the room in a Mid-Century Modern style.

The historical society who owned the house decided that the Victorian remodel of the room was part of the history of the building and voted to not return the room to its original configuration. It may have not been ‘true’ to the origins of the house but it defined the ‘human experience’ that the home had gone through. It was some of the ‘finger prints’ that its inhabitants had left behind.

This is a photo of a door in a friends families 900 year old Castello in Northern Italy. I wondered about the deep gouges in the upper panel and they told me that they were a remnant from several hundred years before during a hasty removal of a carved crest that hinted at support of a then out-of-favor monarch.

The details of a set don’t have to be that subtle. It could be a bricked up window, a stairway in an odd but obviously not original location. or maybe the wallpaper in a room is torn in one corner, revealing three other layers behind it, or there are scorch marks on the wooden kitchen floor in front of the stove where a red hot cast iron skillet was dropped.

The ‘character’ can certainly come from the paint and age that the scenics apply and sometimes there is even more you can add. One person told me about arriving on a stage set one day for a shoot in a period kitchen set to find the Production Designer Dean Tavolaris bending over the tile counter with a one pound can of Crisco shortening, rubbing handfuls of the stuff in the corners and between the sink and stove.

Actors will often create past stories of their characters for themselves to help them flesh out the role that will give them personal emotional substance to draw on for their portrayal. This is information just for themselves and a lot of times they don’t feel the need to share it with anyone else, but it gives their performance extra ‘bones’.

As a designer you can do the same with a set. You can create the environment’s past lives that may have nothing to do with the story in the script but it will give it a reality that will make it feel like it hasn’t just materialized suddenly out of thin air, which, as scenery, it pretty much has. We think of spacecraft as modern, sterile environments that don’t have much character. Star Wars changed all that with some spacecraft that were past their expiration date and bore the marks of abuse and mechanical failure. It made them more lifelike and less like machines.

Whether you share that ‘history’ with anyone else is entirely up to you, but if you can tie it into the story or at least make it an interesting part of the design, it can help you sell your ideas to a director who will most likely appreciate that you are bringing a depth to the film that they hadn’t thought about.

That work will come from really analyzing the script, and there isn’t always a lot of time to do that. But, you can learn shortcuts, and that’s a whole other blog article.

For starters, I suggest these: Audition, by Michael Shurtleff, and the chapter on script analysis in Directing Actors, the first book from my absolutely favorite directing teacher, Judith Weston.

Why You Should Go To The Cine Gear Expo – Tickets Free Until May 27

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The Cine Gear Expo will be held at Warner Bros Studios from June 7th to the 9th this year after a long run in past years at Paramount Studios.

The event has finally returned to its pre-pandemic size and has been a must-attend event for cinematographers, gaffers, and technicians in the entertainment industry for some time.

This year’s event will feature exhibits, demonstrations, and presentations by over 250 vendors as well as special seminars and master classes. The exhibition area will fill most of the Warner Studios backlot area as well as stages 14, 15, 19, and 24.

The Reasons You Should Go

Maybe you’re not that interested in camera or lighting equipment, so you’re wondering why you should bother attending. You may not be excited right now by the latest in what the new technology has to offer but you should be, because it affects your job whether you want to believe it or not.

The technological leaps that have been made in the last few years in LED lighting and new digital camera sensors alone have transformed filmmaking and, by proximity, the way stage sets are perceived, shot, and expected to perform.

You ignore camera and lighting technology at your own career’s peril.

There are hundreds of vendors there who are very eager to help you understand what their products are and how they work. You really shouldn’t be intimidated if you aren’t familiar with the basics, they are there to educate you in the new ways of making ‘pictures’.

Think of it as a free weekend film class where the ‘instructors’ are eager to answer any questions you might have. Think of the times you’ve been curious or baffled by the terms a DP is tossing around and being afraid to admit that you have no idea what they’re talking about.

At the expo, you’ll not only get to see the latest cameras up close, but you can operate them too. The next time you want to play with a new Arri or Sony, it’ll cost you $800 or more in daily rental fees, plus insurance. Here you can see them all, in one place, and talk to people who are experts in everything about them. You will never see so many cameras and lenses in one place anywhere else.

You’ll also see the latest in lighting, new LED volumes, digital screens, cranes, and specialty equipment.

Register for free here.

If you can’t make the Los Angeles show, there are expos in Atlanta in the Fall and in New York in early 2025, But LA is by far the largest show.

Dangerous Designs

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In 1998, I was working for Production Designer Bill Malley on a television show called Seven Days. The premise of the show was that the government had designed a time machine that could go back in time exactly seven days from the present and decided they could use it to “undo” or “back-step” major global political disasters.

The fictional location of the Time Machine was in a site in the Nevada desert called “Never Never Land”, a play on Area 51.

The irony of the shooting location, which no one has ever mentioned, is that we were the first production to shoot on the site of what was once the top secret weapons testing site of Lockheed Skunkworks in Burbank, California. But this site, the former Rye Canyon Weapons Testing site, was far from Burbank. Situated out in Santa Clarita, it was just across the road from the Six Flags Magic Mountain Amusement Park.

Before the park was there, and before Santa Clarita began to expand, the area was a remote location nestled in the hills where the Lockheed employees could work in relative obscurity. The site was, according to the remaining employees, so heavily populated with deer that one was bagged each 4th of July for the company barbecue.

There were still remnants of the original facility, including a building with an anechoic chamber where sound tests were done. One day they wheeled an old refrigerator into the room and with the flick of a switch, emitted a sound wave that blew the enamel completely off the metal of the appliance.

Rye Canyon Facility – Google Maps

At the south end of the lot was a strange circular concrete pad that I would only later learn the purpose for.

The Art Department and production office were set up in a modern building to the north end of the facility. It was a “quiet building”, especially built for Lockheed. The only windows were on the exterior walls. The inner chamber was accessed through a single electronic keypad-locked door. There were no windows and the walls were so thick that electronic signals couldn’t penetrate them to eliminate the possibility of outside surveillance.

The “Quiet building” – 4 CC Commons License

The stage was just south of the production offices. It was huge warehouse structure with high perms that were perfect for a soundstage. At the west end was a lower platform with a strange understructure that I looked at for a long time, trying to figure out the purpose of.

Stage 9 – Rye Canyon Studios

One of the facilities guards finally told me its purpose. I was staring at the underside of the remnants of the simulator for the F-117 fighter plane, the first stealth fighter. He told me that this was where the selected test pilots were brought for their initial trial period.

If they passed the tests in the simulator, they were shipped out to Groom Lake (Area 51) to test fly the actual plane.

There was a large empty room to the west which once held a huge number of computer cabinets that were the ‘brains’ of the simulator.

Site of the simulator computer

It was then that I realized that our drawing boards were probably set up in the same area that the Lockheed engineers had been when they designed the first stealth fighters.

Bill told me that shooting a television show there was ironic for him. Years ago he had been suspected of revealing government secrets when he was designing a comedy for William Friedkin. Bill had designed a number of other features for Friedkin including The Exorcist for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

The picture, The Deal Of The Century, was a comedy starring Chevy Chase, about an arms dealer who steals a state-of-the-art fighter plane, the F-19X, from an international air show.

Someone with the government saw the production models of the mockup that they created for the film and told Bill they wanted to talk to him. An Air Force colonel showed up and began to grill him about the planes design. Where did he get the idea for it?

Bill explained that despite the famous cast of characters in the film, the budget largess didn’t extent to the film’s design. As is usual with large productions that feature a lot of well-known actors, the above-the-line talent eats up most of the budget. And what you are left with is the below-the-line limits of a medium budget film.

The colonel insinuated that Bill must have gotten the idea from somewhere, not believing that he had just made it up himself. Bill explained that the budget didn’t allow him do design a completely new kind of plane, so they had taken the basic design from the Russian plane used in the Clint Eastwood film Firefox, and just simplified it. Bill had told the crew to just make it boxier and use flat surfaces rather than the curved surfaces and dihedral of a typical jet.

Full size mockup of the F-19X – Warner Bros Studios

This would make it easier to create the full-size version that they would most likely have to create for some of the live scenes with actors, as they’d be able to use wood sheet goods rather than other materials to create curved wing surfaces.

The colonel eventually left, convince that what Bill was telling him was the truth.

Bill was baffled until about 1988, when the military introduced the F-177 stealth fighter. The similarities didn’t seem that close to him, but someone who saw his fake plane was concerned that someone had leaked the F-117 design.

Side by side comparison of the plan views of the fictional F19X (left) and the F-117 stealth fighter (right) – F19X model photo by Joseph C. Brown

Bill didn’t know that those flat surfaces and the twin tails were what had set off warning bells in some government officials mind. The F-117 had been in design since the 1970’s. In the 1960’s a Russian scientist released a paper stating that an objects radar signature was more a matter of its surface structure than its size.

The government started a program called Have Blue, which was a proof-of-concept program to develop a stealth fighter. They discovered that flat surfaces were key to fooling radar waves into producing a small signature. The cement platform at the south side of the property was a test area for measuring the radar signature of different models until a final design was reached that was tested with a full-size mock-up at Groom Lake.

The program would result in the development of the F-117 stealth fighter.

Did anyone know about the fighter program, or the location of the Rye Canyon test site outside of the employees? It seems hard to imagined that someone didn’t at least have an idea that something unusual was going on there. The entire area was patrolled by armed guards 24 hours a day. Even a kid would have known that something must be happening there that was important.

Several months before our company moved in, a fleet of trucks reportedly arrived in the middle of the night. Apparently they were there to recover the remaining files that were stored in the vaults at the main building.

During the production, I found a site where declassified government satellite photos were posted. Among them was a large file of Soviet satellite pictures that the government had recovered from who knows where.

I checked them on the chance I’d find something. And yes, there they were, Soviet satellite photos of the Rye Canyon site. They may not have known exactly what was going on there, but they were sure enough that something important was happening there to allocate satellite attention to the area.

For more photos of the F19X model which was build by legendary model maker Greg Jein see: https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/f-19x-from-deal-of-the-century-greg-jein-auction-lot.354634

My Night At The Haunted Mansion

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Location surveys can be a unique experience. You never know what you’re going to have to deal with when you survey an unfamiliar location. One of the perks of being in the Art Department of a film or television series is that you get to see places that aren’t normally open to the public.

It could be a historic building, or a ship, or a military aircraft, or, it could be a place you’re familiar with but never really thought to look at close-up.

The Disneyland Haunted Mansion at 1:00 AM

A lot of times there are parameters that you have to work around to get all the information that you need. Usually these are limitations having to do with access to the location, either physical constraints or time limitations. You’ll do a lot of location surveys during your career. Often they will be a simple survey to determine a placement of a set piece or a simple drawing for a director’s plan for shot planning.

A deserted New Orleans square at midnight at Disneyland.

Other times you’ll have to do a detailed survey that involves recording a lot of measurements and taking photographic reference for either matching a location at another place or adding onto the existing structures.

I got a call in June of 2022 to work on the recent Disney film The Haunted Mansion, and was told that my first assignment was to survey the exterior of the Haunted Mansion ride at the Disneyland park in Anaheim. We would be building a replica of it on a studio backlot in Georgia.

I asked if they had a set of the original plans for reference and was told “no”. For reasons I was never able to understand, it was important that the film set look very close to the original mansion at the amusement park, but, we weren’t allowed to have a copy of the original drawings from 1962. If you can figure out the logic of that decision, please let me know.

I mentally put together a list in my head of the equipment that we’d need to do an accurate survey of the building but that was immediately discarded when I was told about the limitations of the scale of the survey. It would have to be done at night, after the park was closed to the public. I would have a park employee to help who would also provide a ladder. One of the construction foremen on the film would meet me there to help with the measuring.

Despite not having any drawings to use as a starting point, the survey was only authorized for one night, between the hours of 11pm and 3am.

This wasn’t the first time I’d had to do a survey in a ridiculously small amount of time, but it would be the first exterior survey that I’d done at night. Taking theodolite readings to determine heights in the dark would be fun.

In the past, location surveys were usually scheduled several days to a week in advance and the persons involved were usually asked how much time they needed for the scout. This is rare now and it pays to have a fully-equipped bag of survey tools ready to go. You may have to survey a forest area for one scene and a complicated building interior for the next, so you need to have a wide range of tools in your kit.

This list ranges from simple measuring tapes to laser measuring tools, levels, transits and plumb bobs, simple compasses to digital theodolites and clinometers. a compact tripod is a plus. Profile gauges or moulding combs are a must-have.

Some of the items that are part of my survey tool kit.

The tools pictured above are just a sampling. My survey bag weighs in at over 20 pounds. You’ll notice some duplicated tools. This is intentional. When you have traveled a long distance to do a survey, sometimes across country, a tool that’s not working or dead batteries isn’t an acceptable excuse. Sometimes you have to improvise when you are confronted with a situation where the tools you usually use won’t fit the bill. I once had to find a rural hardware store open where I could buy the supplies to make a water level when the location that I was surveying made using a laser level impossible.

Pre-scout research is usually key to accomplishing a successful survey and I immediately looked for any reference that I could find online. I was sure that someone had to have uploaded some of the original drawings from the 1962 construction. It took some digging but I found the 1/8th inch scale elevations. Now I wouldn’t have to try to get overall heights but I still had a lot of details to record.

When I’m confronted with a tight time schedule I have a checklist:

1- Overall photographs with a collapsable surveyors rod in the shot so I can scale from the images later.

2- Detail photos using a small story stick so that those can also be used for photo-scaling. The photos are important as I know I will often run out of time and the photos are a visual record that can be referred to if I haven’t been able to get a hard measurement with a laser or tape.

3- Overall measurements; ceiling and soffit heights, other measurements that would be impossible to scale from photographs.

4- Details. Here I am as thorough with measurements as I can be as the time allows.

A photo of the front door of the haunted mansion with a surveyors rod in the picture for scale reference.
A few of the hundreds of scaled photos that I took at the mansion to recreate the details for the backlot reproduction of the mansion in Georgia.

We covered the ground floor of the facade while we waited for a technician to get us to the balcony area. This is accessed only through a small door to the south side where you are immediately confronted with an 14′ tall, narrow ships ladder. We struggled to climb that with the equipment and set to work getting the details there.

The balcony of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion at 1:30 am. The photo was taken with a Sony A7S camera whose lowlight sensor makes the image seem like it was taken in daylight. In reality it was very dark and the ceiling details were not visible to our eyes.

In case you wondered, everything on the balcony is bolted, nailed, and glued down. No need to worry about wind carrying anything off.

As we started to record the second story area at about 1:30 am, all the lights around the mansion went out. Luckily we had headlamps in our kits and I had a Sony A7S camera whose incredible sensor makes photos look like they were taken in daylight.

We waited for a tech to take us to the roof to measure the cupola. He never arrived. Maybe the thought of crawling around on the roof in pitch darkness was the scariest thing about the house he could imagine.

3:00 am came sooner than I wanted it to, but I felt pretty certain that we had gotten the most important information.

Was it a spooky experience? The only thing I was afraid of was that the next day I would realize I’d missed a critical dimension.

Next post I’ll talk about how we integrated all that data into the backlot build. Hint- sometimes proportion is not your friend.

New Release – Film Glossary For Film Designers

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I wrote about this glossary over a year ago thinking that It was nearly ready for issue. It wasn’t.

After struggling with finding a publisher for hard printed copies, I gave up and decided to just release it as a downloadable Ebook. There were just too many hoops to jump through and I wanted to see it get out there into the world where it was more useful that just being a file on my computer.

The upside is that it kept getting bigger. And by the time I was ready to put it up on the platform, not only had the main glossary expanded but the appendix had grown from a half-dozen pages to 40. There’s a lot crammed in this book that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

The terms in the glossary itself have tags which place them in 28 different categories. This edition is aimed toward being a resource for film designers but anyone interested in film can benefit from this book.

Most of the over 1800 terms are directly film related and cover everything from job descriptions, to equipment terms, to crew slang, to sound stage etiquette, to up-to-date technical terms and descriptions. And for designers, there are many architectural and sound stage terms that aren’t in any other film glossary. No matter how long you’ve been in the business, there are terms in this book that you haven’t heard before.

The book is fully searchable and can be downloaded to your computer, your phone, or any device you wish. The current release price is $35.00.

Click the Download button below to get a 14 page sample of material in the glossary.

WrandFilmGlossary_sampleDownload

Helpful Hardware Reference

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Hardware and fasteners are usually a conundrum for most people. Unless you grew up with a dad who liked to fix things or had a preternatural attraction to hardware stores (ok, guilty as charged), you are probably at some point confused about specifying or discussing specifics when it comes to connection thingies.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to simplify the explanations and it gets harder as more and more types of fasteners get added to the possibilities pile.

If you really want to just go down the rabbit hole of fastener options, all you have to do is dive into the online catalogue at McMaster-Carr, purveyor of all things industrial.

But if you just want a simple, easy-to-understand diagram, go over to BoltDepot.com. It’s a family-owned hardware company in Massachusetts and specializes in fasteners.

They’ve put together a 32 page PDF of basic fastener terminology that includes full-size print out of fasteners so you can see the exact size you’re looking for, which will alleviate a trip to a Home Depot to wander through the haphazard hard department, trying to find someone to help you figure out what you need (don’t waste your time).

You will also have a lot better time getting some personalized customer service at Bolt Depot than you will from the other giant hardware suppliers.

BoltDepot.com

866-337-9888

100 Research Road
Hingham, MA 02043
Mon-Sat 7:30am-5pm 

International Production Design Week – October 20 – 29

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This is the first day of the International Production Design Week events that have been organized and curated by the Production Designers Collective, an international group of Production Designers whose mission is to be a hub for designers from around the world and to elevate the profession by bringing awareness and acknowledgment of the craft of art direction around the world to the public’s awareness.

The nine day series features nearly 200 seminars, exhibitions, meetups, tours, and lectures with acclaimed Production Designers from 27 countries. Some of the events are presented online for viewing from anywhere while others are held in specific sites for a live audience.

Here is the link to the schedule of events which is searchable by day, city, language, and event category.

https://productiondesignweek.org/program/

Here are some of the planned events. See the website for a full list of events.