Set Decorator

What they do

Once construction has built an empty box, the set decorator makes it a place someone lives. They read the script for what each character owns, then source it: prop houses, antique dealers, auctions, hire companies, fabric suppliers and a great deal of driving. They produce a dressing plan per set, order the hire, manage a buyer and a leadman who runs the swing gang of set dressers, and are on the stage as the set is dressed, moving a chair four inches because a camera position needs it and adding the third layer of clutter that makes a kitchen believable. Practical lamps are theirs, which puts them in constant conversation with the gaffer, since a lamp that looks right and a lamp that can be dimmed and rigged are not always the same object. They also own continuity of dressing: a set that shoots over three weeks must return to the same state every morning, which is a photographic record and a discipline rather than a memory. In the United States set decorators are represented in IATSE Local 44 and organised professionally through the Set Decorators Society of America. The unglamorous half of the job is returns, damages and the hire budget.

What they decide

The calls that belong to this role and no other.

• Every object inside a set and where it sits
• Furniture, drapery, artwork, floor coverings and the layers of clutter
• Practical lamps and their placement, coordinated with the gaffer
• The hire and purchase budget for set dressing, and what is returned
• Dressing continuity across a set's shooting days

Principles of the craft

• Dress for a person, not for a period: the layer that convinces is the specific object this character would own, in the state they would keep it, not the correct decade of sofa.
• Three layers make a room: the furniture that defines the space, the objects that show its use, and the small mess on top that shows it was used today.
• Dress to camera, then dress for the whole room: what is in the lens must work, and enough of the rest must work that the director can turn around without a two-hour reset.
• Practicals are lighting instruments: choose lamps for what they can do with a dimmer and a bulb swap as well as for how they look, because the gaffer will otherwise replace them.
• Photograph everything before the first take: dressing continuity over a three-week set is a filing system, not a recollection.

Common mistakes

• Dressing only the area in the first camera position, so the reverse angle costs an hour
• Buying to the period rather than to the character, producing a set that is accurate and dead
• Choosing practicals that cannot be dimmed or rigged, which the electrical department then swaps out
• No photographic record of the dressed set, so continuity drifts across the shooting days
• The competent version: a magnificently detailed set whose density leaves the operator nowhere to put the camera

How to learn it

Exercises and routes in, not a reading list.

• Dress one corner of a room for three different characters using only objects you can find in the building. Photograph each on the same lens. The exercise is about specificity.
• Dress a set with the furniture layer only, shoot it, add the use layer, shoot it, then add the daily-mess layer and shoot again. Compare the three frames.
• Take a dressed room, photograph it thoroughly, then have someone move fifteen things. Restore it from your photographs and time yourself.
• Swap the bulb in a practical lamp for three different colour temperatures and shoot the same frame. Then talk to anyone who lights for a living about what you just learned.