ART DEPARTMENT

Job Overview

Working under the direction of the production designer or art director, the set designer creates working drawings of assigned sets or props. “It may be as simple as measuring an existing location and having it drawn up, then turned into a model for studying, or sketching sets from scratch to be constructed on a soundstage,” says set designer Todd Chernawsky

Special Skills

Set designers must possess good illustration or drafting skills, be flexible and creative, and have the ability to communicate well.

Advice for Someone Seeking This Job

No matter what industry job you aspire to, Chernawsky suggests learning all you can about the craft of filmmaking. It is important to have strong drafting and illustration skills before beginning the job search. Work on student films, commercials, and music videos to gain experience and make contacts. Let people know of your desire to work in the art department for a feature film or television series.

“Many people's first jobs find them,” says Chernawsky. “You'll offer to help someone on a project and they will hire you for their next one, or you impress someone else who is also helping out and they hire or recommend you for a job. It's all about networking.”

Professional Profile: Todd Chernawsky, Set Designer

Although he had been interested in films from the time he was a young boy, it was while walking home from the theater after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark that Todd Chernawsky first considered making them. Midway through his college studies in architecture, industrial design, art/design history, and painting, the idea of a career in filmmaking began to resurface. After providing art direction for some small short films, he realized it was something he wanted to pursue. Chernawsky received a bachelor's degree in fine arts from University of Alberta, then went on to earn a master of fine arts in production design from the American Film Institute in 1996.

While at AFI, Chernawsky acted as production designer on eight short films. The first two and a half years following graduation were spent working on a variety of projects, serving as an electrician, grip, carpenter, and scenic painter, “just to learn more about how production worked and how the set ran. It really gave me a sense of every aspect of how films are made.”

Chernawsky then began to focus his energy toward art direction, taking on only those types of jobs. He worked on television commercials, network campaigns, and bumpers. As his name and reputation got around, he was offered work as a set designer on Sphere, working on several interiors and details for the underwater laboratory.

Under the direction of production designer Michael White, Chernawsky went to work on Armageddon. “I took care of the interior of the space shuttle and a variety of props.” White hired him again to design the set of his next film, Inspector Gadget. “I ended up focusing a lot of my time on the gadget mobile and a variety of gadgets for Gadget himself. It was at this point that I realized I was doing a fair amount of drawings specifically for the special effects department, which became useful down the road, as far as my understanding of how the special effects department works.”

After Inspector Gadget wrapped, Chernawsky went to Toronto as production designer of the independent movie Ginger Snap, which had a successful run on the film festival circuit. Returning to Los Angeles, he worked on James Cameron's IMAX project Mars, before landing the job of set designer on Planet of the Apes. Although Chernawsky worked primarily with set decorator Rosemary Brandenburg, detailing items of the spaceship, he also met production designer Rick Heinrichs and had an opportunity to work closely with him.

Chernawsky worked as the set designer on another James Cameron IMAX project titled Ghosts of the Abyss, and picked up some work as an illustrator on Company Man. He next worked as the production designer for the television movie 100 Days in the Jungle, shot in Central America. There he had to hire a local crew to realize his vision for the film, which wrapped just before Christmas 2001. He had only been back in the States a few weeks when he was hired to design the set of The Hulk, another film with production designer Rick Heinrichs.