The Art Department and Production Design — Roles, Concept and Mood Boards, From Script to Art List

• Production designer — turns the script and the director’s intent into how the spaces look. Sets the concept and color plan and decides, within the budget, what to build and what to rent.
• Set designer — draws the plans and builds models of the sets, thinking ahead to where the camera goes, which walls come out (wild walls) and where lights will hang.
• Construction — carpenters, painters and finishers turn the plans into real spaces. Signs of age, such as worn walls or stains, are painted in at this stage.
• Props — sources and tracks the objects actors handle and the objects seen on screen. During the shoot, the props team keeps them in place and in continuity on set.
• Set decorator and set dressers — fill the space with furniture, curtains, frames and everyday items so it looks like somewhere the character actually lives.
• Greens — handles plants, trees and grass. Larger productions have a separate greens team; on smaller ones, set dressing often covers it.

Team structure and titles vary with the size of the production and the country. On a short film or a small production, one production designer often handles props and dressing too. What matters is not the titles but that every job, building, sourcing, dressing and on-set care, is clearly assigned to someone.

The art department’s first deliverable is not a drawing but a direction. What kind of home does this character live in? Is it tidy or cluttered? How do the spaces change as the story moves on? You settle this with the director and the cinematographer, then collect it into concept material that other departments can take in at a glance.

• Mood board — a single board of photos and images that show the feeling you want. It turns what everyone imagined differently from words into one shared picture.
• Color palette — a list of colors to use and avoid for the film or for each space. Match it with costume, makeup and lighting so actors neither disappear into the background nor clash with it.
• Concept per space — for each key location, gather reference images, a rough floor plan sketch and the key props. This is the basis for deciding whether to build a set or adapt a location.

1. 01Read the scriptRead it once for the story. On the second pass, mark the location, the visible objects and anything a character touches in every scene.
2. 02Pull elements per sceneWrite what each scene needs in the props and set dressing columns of the script breakdown. Don’t miss objects that only come up in passing in the dialogue.
3. 03Group them into an art listMerge the same object across scenes into one item and organize items by location. Numbering each item makes it easy to call for on set.
4. 04Choose sourcing and ownerFor each item, note whether you will buy it, build it, rent it or use the actor’s own, and who prepares it by when.
5. 05Track prep statusUpdate each item from not started to in progress to ready and check it against the shooting schedule. Finish the items for the earliest scenes first.