The Attic Door

Alex Eastwood
Production Designer
Second part in a series. To read “Part 1″ click here.

I had talked it over with my wife, budgeted our finances to make sure we wouldn’t be homeless and made the necessary arrangements to take time off of work; I was officially the Production Designer of The Attic Door.

Part 2…

Filmmaking can be broken down into three categories; Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production. When most people think of the fun and exciting life of a filmmaker. they are usually thinking of the world of Production where all the filming takes place. They might also be thinking of Post-Production, where all the pieces of filming are brought together, assembled and polished into the final product that you see in the theater. However, I think very few people are enamored by, or even aware of, the world of Pre-Production where almost everything you see in the film is conceptualized, researched, illustrated, budgeted, created, collected, sewn, constructed, painted and many other verbs that would take to long to list. The reason I hold this belief is because before I did this film I was that person.

It is amazing how naive I was at the beginning of this project, and also how blessed I was to be befriended by the very talented and experienced Production Designer and film professor, Phil Peters. I was beginning to meet regularly with Danny in January, and these meeting would often times be with Phil who was one of Danny’s film advisors. Phil was a Hollywood production designer for many years for film and television and had infinite amounts of wisdom and experience to draw from. Even more, he could relate to this project as his career started in Australia where he was use to working in small towns, in extreme environments, with a very tight budget. Phil helped guide me through the necessary steps of pre-production and truly filled in gaps that my inexperience was leaving wide open. Even though I was so excited to go out to Utah, start building sets and get the camera rolling in production, I quickly learned that one of the best kept secrets to any successful film is pre-production.
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Since this project was a period piece set in southern Utah in the late 1800’s, I spent almost all of January and February doing as much research as I could. I was researching the history of the area, geographical maps, different kinds of food, vegetation and livestock, tools, architecture, old construction techniques and styles, household items, clothing patterns, color schemes, and old photographs of people, places, and anything that was the 1800’s West. This facet of filmmaking was incredibly tedious, but it was so integral for me to do my homework and know exactly what I wanted so that I could stay historically accurate to the time and create something genuine for the film. While I was doing all this research I was drawing concept sketches of locations, sets, props, etc… and also starting to compile my Art Department that would help bring everything together for filming in July. I was told for every dollar I spend in pre-production I’d save three dollars in production, and in hindsight I can look back and completely agree.

Production was five months away, and though I was steadily getting prepared, one of the most important decisions of the film still needed to be made before I could go any further. In the middle of February, Danny and I flew out to a cold southern Utah to do location scouting and ultimately decide where this story was going to be told…

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