How we got here.
By Mimi
Having worked in the limelight (or more like under the fluorescent lights) of the Prague film industry’s Art Department, far from the film sets themselves since 2013 as a Graphic Designer, I came to the realization that the projects I’d worked on, I would mostly not spend my own money to see had I not worked on the project — even after nearly two decades I’d been in this biz. The more mainstream the gig, often the less inspired I tended to be…
Many of those same blasé vibes ripple-effected from film school years prior, but for different reasons…
As years rolled on in this industry, I pondered what had I signed up for?
I’d come out of art school 5 years prior studying Interior Design, burned out to the max on ‘corporate design’ (what pricy art schools consider ideal after graduating with a volcano of student loan debt)(an aspect I wasn’t privy to until I was in it). But what I feared most was the foreboding 9-to-5 office slog.
Having also just gotten laid-off from my own part-time 9-to-5’er during the ’08 economic collapse, I found myself in a favorable position. Collecting ample unemployment checks was a freedom I’d never tasted.
It was an ironic time of liberation to rebuild my student-sanity and (hopefully) find that un-adulting artistic inspo I hadn’t found in those academic “corporate” years.
This is when I met Ben, a film major. Tall, tan and handsome, I never planned to shuffle him (or any guy) into my cards at the end of this college chapter. But that’s not how Love works. He too was climbing out of the same pickle jar I was. We bonded over feeling deflated from the programming and we fairytale’d the next era… maybe together… away… far away… maybe abroad…
“So film, huh?” — it sounded sexy. I had never put much thought in this mysterious realm aside from a childhood fascination around those random, “behind-the-scenes” excerpts at the end of movies on VHS rentals. As excited as I was as a blossoming (but rather bent) young artist, filmmaking just never struck me as “art” until I met Ben and his dense taste for those elusive Art House films, which I found as forms of moving poetry.
Khira, my interiors’ classmate, also jumped our Interior Design major’s ship towards the end, and was experimenting with Production Design on student film sets, suggesting I give it a try too… it sounded provocative… exciting… different! And best of all, my modest unemployment handouts allowed me this shift without distraction. I dove onto designing the sets of 10 overlapping low budget student short films over the course of one fall semester, post graduation.
I didn’t really know what I was doing but I pretended I did. The thrill of no longer cramming on AutoCAD and fussing over flooring samples appealed to me.
Art Direction seduced me. Days (and nights) on sets were intense, agonizing at times, but I was on a high with the crew, my new comrades. Ben was also simultaneously exposing me to beautiful low budget films. Here is where I harmonized my insight of film aesthetic, where those director’s visions were so calculated and distinct and inspiring.
I swiftly learned the ins and outs of being “the low budget Art Director”, which included set decorating, costume designing (thrifting with actors), coordinating how I’d get to 10 short film productions scattered around town without a car, errand running, designing generic versions of Windex labels for props… I learned how to budget, make mood-boards, how to interview the director about what he wants visually (or thinks he wants). I learned that that particular film program didn’t have an Art Direction department, so most of all the directors I’d work under hadn’t put much weight in any of the aesthetics, which intrigued me.
It was an eye opening, cathartic 3 months.
I ultimately landed (via a one way ticket) in Helsinki, to a film school where I’d ultimately get my Masters in Production Design for Film. Though the program (the country! the experience!!) blew open my American bubble, I began to come to terms with the level of backseat Art Direction takes when it comes to Direction and Cinematography… they weren’t particularly intermingled departments. This further perplexed me.
I eventually had the chance to do an exchange as an Erasmus student at a prestigious film school in Prague, which revealed the most negligent take on Art Direction, there was almost no talk about design there, within.
Later, by the grace of my disdain, I’d start to shift my focus towards academia and teaching this mysterious craft to unbeknownst filmmakers, honing in on the greats of thoughtful cinema like Haneke, von Trier, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Kaurismäki, Wong Kar Wai, Varda, Roeg, de Heer, Linklater, Zulawski, Aronofsky…
But…
In the mix of my studies, among this profound realization, I still had to make rent… I hustled on short films, music vids, student commercials, Ben and I would cater on our modest apartment’s cooktop for a film crew of 30… I nannied, cleaned toilets, ironed clothes, taught English to toddlers, the list goes on…
But without visas (another story for another time), we couldn’t get an internet contract for our flat, so those early years without online distractions would become our most creative.
In our bohemian, low-budget lifestyle, we’d jam out random posters focused on films that we simply liked, re-building a portfolio. But for whom, we didn’t really know. For ourselves I suppose, firstly. We came up with the idea to design posters for bands performing here, where we’d get them printed and signed by the musicians at the end of their show, which was pretty rad. Putting them on our little blog the next morning (from a sidewalk wifi connection lol) stirred our senses to no end…
Life was loose... We’d stroll around on Wednesday afternoons around the blue collar districts of Prague, looking “up there”, under those fluorescent lights. I had not much money, but time I did.
Among those starving (thriving) artist years, I focused lengthy, unpaid hours inventing coursework, ideas, lectures, workshops and practical assignments for the everyday film student to (hopefully) get excited about in Art Direction.
I’d pitch my invented syllabus to 80 some film schools worldwide focusing on the one program they didn’t: Art Direction. Three bit; one in Denmark, a prolific one in Paris, and one here in Czech Republic. Unable to trade-in my artistic freedoms for a pricier country on a weary future teacher’s salary, we stayed put. I began teaching in the foggy days of 2011 at an unpretentious film school in the Czech countryside.
Funny that 2 hour commute from Prague by train would cushion my nerves to speak with conviction about a topic I was still grasping myself.
There is where I thrived most in this biz (not financially, but) where I got to unlock any preconceived notions and doubts about Art Direction to students… We’d analyze how great storytellers intricately piece the puzzle of their sets and design. Peeling back these layers turned out to be a massive hit with them.
Then one day (another long story for another time), I eventually “made it big” in the mainstream film biz Art Departments… not as an Art Director but as a Graphic Designer.
Despite not even knowing Adobe Illustrator in those early days, I winged my interview with the fussy Parisien Production Designer and “got in”… for the years to follow, I got comfy being an outsider among the tight-knit, well established Czech crew and flashy department heads who came and went.
The more of a cog I became in the (well oiled) machine, the more my teaching took a back-seat, traded-in for the hot-seat of that rather corporate grind, where scripts change daily (meaning my hard work could therefore be trashed at the last moment), where the film sets to be designed are in the hundreds, and chats by the water cooler weigh heavy on deadlines.
Days I’d imagined being clever and creative working on something bigger than myself, on an Art House set for example, were redeemed for whatever the next call for the next gig was… and is. Chance and happenstance play a great deal in this line of work, but I can still hear my film school mentor whispering to me; Mimi, hope never dies.
I sit in my office corner nowadays and pump out fake passports, newspapers and food tin etiquettes and beer labels and liquor labels from every era, Nazi banners & paraphernalia… I airbrush decades off famous actor’s photos, make labels for submarine dials, design 16th century tapestries and carpets… I’ve made war maps and modern day billboards… and film crew badges and wrap-party invites…
As good as I’ve become at mastering forgery — what so many consider a rockstar profession — the ‘terms and conditions’ have proven at the end of the day, its still an office job, where I’m “up there”. It’s a long episode I never really meant to tune in to, to watch play out. My posture, attention span and general malaise… becomes itchy.
After having children, to scratch that itch, I went on to teach at other film schools more locally in Prague, through the evenings after long work days in the Art Department, where Ben joined me with the kids and we turned up our inner magic through discussion & teaching. Our classes have become more popular than ever.
So we attuned them into Sessions online, here on Substack, as a way to share this legacy, for all those curious by the deeper role Art Direction plays in cinema.
Welcome!