Hannah Turley
Beginning Hour
A short horror film, on which I worked as Production Designer, Art Director and Standby Art Director. See the images below for examples of my model making, set design, and graphic designs on this project.
This project required a large, creepy, manor style house which could be filmed from all angles, including high up. As no house fully suited to this specification could be found, and filmed from such angles within the film's budget, I designed and made a scale 1:25 model house in enough detail to pass as a real house when filmed, and combined with footage of the actors. I used 5mm foam board for most of the walls, and mount board for some of the supporting walls and details, as well as balsa wood and cardboard. I painted it with gesso primer and acrylic paints, and created the ivy detailing from tufts of merino wool. The moss on the roof was grated bits of a kitchen sponge painted green.
We filmed the house with an image of the night sky projected onto a cloth behind it, and some 'trees' made from twigs to provide masking and help set the house in its surroundings.
Use the arrows to browse through images of the model.
This is my model of the interior of the above house. Though not physically connected, it is implied that this is the room on the other side of the front door. Similarly, it is made of foam and mount board, and is of a 1:25 scale.
As is is a room with four walls, this model presented more of a challenge with regards to how it would be filmed from the inside, on a camera that is bigger than the whole model. The solution I found was to make each wall individually removable; the walls slot into grooves on the base/floor, allowing the remaining walls to be filmed from any angle through the gap of the missing wall. This footage would then be projected onto a backdrop, in front of which actors perform their roles in real time, as though they are in the house. This is then filmed to create the actual footage for the film.
The design of this house is closely based on the abandoned Lincolnshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, at the request of director Giovanni Mineo.
The above images are some of my set designs/concept images for a scene filmed on location, in a security guard's office. I combined hand drawing and Photoshop skills to create these images, to both communicate my design ideas to the director, and serve as reference images when dressing the set.
These are some examples of my graphic designs to create props for this production - a health magazine featuring one of the film's characters, and including some hints towards his nefarious intentions within the plot, and a template of an ID card which several characters will have their own versions of.
