Film art and production direction is a direct descendant of stage design and the very first art director was a craftsman. In many ways, I find stage design a more compelling medium due to its direct interaction with the audience and a greater impact and a awe arising out of usage of multimedia and unusual distortion of space and reality. The special effects-educated audience is more likely surprised by the miracles arising in real space than in the so commonly manipulated world of film, unless the film itself brings with it an element of tangibility.

While much even of the more contemporary stage design s

Art direction for films comes as a natural offspring of stage design. At its birth, film production was a largely uncharted territory, and the first sets, so as to not to confuse either the actor or the audience, used painted boards and boxlike sets of the stage, and little was done to change the basic filming of a play Yet, as the public grew more accustomed to film, it demanded more realistic settings. The first successful film utilizing modified stage effects was the German expressionism film Cabinet of Dr. Caligary (1919), created by Hermann Warm, Walter Rohrig, and Walter Reimann Expressionism dictated direct reelection of internal state in external media and paint-thus the sets of the film were created, forcing a 3 dimensional look of obvious theatre borrowed wooden props by using distorted forced perspective. Many films, not so much in America, but i n Europe, were directly influenced by the genre, but not necessarily in following the look, but rather in the notion that the characters must be integrated and submerged into the setting surrounding them, an imaginary, highly constructed mood setting. It was the imagining of nature, construction of life, stylizization of the truth, an invention of reality.

A descendant of this tradition was another famous revolutionary film Metropolis (1926), designed by Otto Hunte, Karl Vollbrecht, and Erich Kettelhut, focuses on dehumanizing machines and subterranean worker's quarter, city of the future, catacombs, pleasure palace, combination Gothnc house and science fiction laboratory, Tower of Babel, and the cathedral. It contains artificial sets that are predominantly descriptive, defamiliarising, and detach audience from ordinary and everyday and plunge into an alternate, invented world or Art Deco style. This was also the first film to use the special effects technique by combining models with full-sized actors and party built sets. A fully visual experience, Metropolis became the standard for science fiction for years to come.

Most recently, not only large scale motion picture, but more increasingly the culture of short films and music videos has come to play a very large role in the world of art direction. There is a huge number of amazing experimental films, and I want to mention some of the larger artists.

The world of science fiction, of course, is deeply related to and intertwined with the world of horror-many consider Aliens a science fiction, not a horror story.. This genre, too, borrows a great deal from the Calgary and metropolis tradition, and also borrows from huge productions such as Thief of Baghdad of 1924, which, with its gigantic set, demonstrates the function of art direction in support of fantastic narrative, as well as the more contemporary approach to fantasy and mysticism in The Mater Of Life and Death. The early science fiction, or, rather fantasy, was much based on myth and retrospective, while science fiction discards the fairy-tale city and metaphysical heaven for a computer ship. It usually shares its credits with the special effects department for the matte paintings, model sets, and rear projections. Science fiction typically always test the values of contemporary society against their ever evolving environment, and thus the art direction is preeminent in this genre, often much more so than the actual story.. One of the masterpieces of science fiction is a film Things to Come, directed by William Menzies and sets designed by Vincent Korda. It was based on an H.G. Wells book and screenplay. The film opens when London, called Everytown, is destroyed, and is said tp

Some common words found in the essay are:
Theatre Images--they, Peter Lamont, Caligary Metropolis, Space Odyssey, Neuromancer Bladerunner, Life Death, Patricia Norris, Metropolis Sam's, Little Caesar, California Depression, science fiction, art direction, stage design, special effects, horror film, film genres, music videos, film noir, heavily influenced, world art,
Approximate Word count = 2421
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)