Preliminary Design (Floorplan. Rough white card model)
May 23, 2018
I know a lot of people have different ways of starting their designs. For me, I always start of with sketches of how I envision the space to look like. From there, I will experiment with different floorplan layouts and then work my way up to each elevations.
I have a confession to make. I have a really bad habit of discarding my bits and pieces of sketches sometimes because they are just ugly to me, but my tutor is going to kill me for this cause she always tell me not to throw them away. In my defence, I have been better lately at keeping them, although I cannot seem to find some of them that I knew for sure I drew. I guess I must have thrown them out again. Ops. Sorry Anna!
I did managed to save these four though. In my first two designs, I went for a more king and throne kind of vibe. But then I realised that it did not match my location as the gardens that I looked at had more of a zen feel and more humble. I also found out that in China, instead of Duchess and Earls, or all those fancy titles. The next in line after the Emperor, are the scholars. So instead of designing a throne room or something that fits for a King, I decided to still give Macbeth a rank, but a more humble one.
Initial Designs
Design Development
Decided to incorporate and mash the bottom two ideas into one. The header from the first picture, and the elevated platform and additional side panels from the second. This way Macbeth sits on an elevated platform, but at a much lower incline as compared to the first few designs of a high throne. And since the Chinese are also a big fan of dividers and panels, I decided to use them as both a decorative element and as a means of setting him apart from his guests.
With a rough design in mind, I started with the floorplans.
At this point in time, I only knew that I somehow wanted to show the status division between Macbeth and his guests, so I decided to extend the room and make it longer instead of wider to split it into two sections. The panels in the middle will act as a divider between the two design and social division between the Scholar (Macbeth) and his guests.
Here is a rough white card model of my design.
-insert rough white card model-
I also did not realised it earlier, but because I only had one door in my original design, it automatically makes the space very boxy. We have to bare in mind that while designing something for screen, not only is this a fire hazard for the actors, but it also limits the flow of movement and makes very static shots as the people all comes in from the same direction with no variety. Therefore I decided to add another 2 more doors on the side which provides the actors another option to enter from. (This does not need to be built. It is just a set and strike wall to give the illusion that one is walking out to a corridor that leads to another part of the building)
Moving on to elevations.
These were some of the reference images I took when I was doing my location survey.
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| With a measuring tape set at 1m for reference |
If you are wondering why I did not match my exterior to my interior studio set, is because the windows were transparent and see through, therefore any close up shots might reveal that the interiors are not the same. I could just copy the design and still make the studio set the same. In fact, if this was an actual production, I would probably have done it that way as it is much more practical as it saves the trouble of redesigning a whole new pattern and working out the dimensions for them.
Since this is a theoretical production and ultimately a way of me honing in my skills, I decided that I did not want to just copy someone's design. I wanted to challenge myself and do the research and make it my own. (Which gave me a massive headache as I was doing it) But no regrets, because all these struggles just means I am one step closer to being ready to be in the real working world.
Other reference images of decorative wooden panels from books:
From there, I drew out a lot more other elevations to try and work out the measurements and designs for it.
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| Trying To Iron Out My Designs |
As you can see, I did a lot of changing and playing around with my windows and panels before I finally settled for one. (Which I thought I did, but ended up with a slightly different design/version when I carried it on in SketchUp.)
I also struggled quite a bit on what dimensions and how I was supposed to draw the circular door as well, because each time I drew it, the two sides were not equal, but Anna and Rosie helped me in the process of it.
These were the designs I done by hand, the rest were designed and developed on SketchUp. (Refer to the next post.)
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