Skirting the edges of production design

I'm changing my filmmaking strategy this year (you might say).  I am going to be skirting the edge of production design for the sake of ensuring good design on my future sci-fi films.  That might seem like a big change but it's not really big for me- I am doing this to ensure I'm directing a good film.  Getting into production design for me means learning designing and fabricating sets and props. I don't expect to be filling a production designers shoes really but I do expect that expanding my skill set will expand my opportunities and excellence on set- and it will give me a better understanding of what it takes to build some of these props.  It will help me make these goals happen... and more efficiently happen.

The general look of a film is something I've always been concerned with but I specifically had hands on experience while being on set filming "Experiment 7" in 2009.  While working with the Production Designer, Brittany Stevenson, I became involved in depth, as the Script Supervisor/Producer, with helping the look come along by coordinating how the sets and props interact with the characters and maintained their look. Of course with what I was doing as Script Supervisor, the continuity was king, but as it comes to craft, the desire to do production design myself definitely came into play and one of the old desires I had to do industrial design also cropped up.  Yeah, its an old fling I had, like architecture and music... which got subsumed underneath my desire to make films.

For the first sci-film I am working on and for the first feature film I am working on I need to ensure good pleasant aesthetic and functional design so that the audience fully believes the story.  I will be attending welding school for the next year so I can get to creating some genuinely functional steel and aluminum props and possibly I can get some animatronics or robotics involved as well.  If nothing else I can at least help pay for my first few shorts with welding work (which pays more than what I can drum up right now).  So wish me luck on running some good beads on all the types of welders and weldments I need to utilize to complete my tests and get my certifications.  Its gonna be a great adventure!