Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1184216
1 6 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0 E D I T O R ' S N O T E Vagabonds of Design B Y D A V I D M O R O N G , E D I T O R A recurring motif of articles submitted by Production Designers in the past few issues is the experience of going to a strange place, where they have never worked before, and creating a fi lm with a completely new and unfamiliar crew in another country. In this issue this is seen in the productions of both Jojo Rabbit, with Ra Vincent working in the Czech Republic, and Noelle, with Maher Ahmad venturing off to Vancouver, and in the last issue, designer Franco Carbone also had this experience with Rambo: Last Blood, working in both Bulgaria and Spain. An Art Department is both a well-oiled machine and a family, and although to some extent it is reinvented on each project, designers tend to want to hold together an established team, taking advantage of the knowledge, skill and shorthand that is developed over the course of a project (or series of projects). It is one thing to go off the trampled production path to fi nd a specifi c environment, Craig Lathrop did exactly this in The Lighthouse, taking on the challenge of a build on a remote inhospitable coast with a local crew. The experience of two diff erent projects creating Arizona in both Sofi a, Bulgaria and Vancouver paints a slightly more surreal production experience. The combination of expanding production facilities around the world, and incentives that reward using local talent rather than bringing in crew, make it more and more likely Production Designers will fi nd themselves in a new place, with an unfamiliar crew, having to blend their skills and expectations with local practices. The comforting element to these stories is that the designers were all ultimately impressed, sometimes to their own surprise, with the talent and ability of these distant crews.