Constructing – and Destroying – a Decor by Order of the Construction Manager - Text 2
Paper hangers, painters, metalworkers, props managers, specialists in decorative staff, carpenters, etc.: all work well before shooting starts, and continue to prepare successive decors set out in the shooting plan right up to the “after-shooting service” stage of putting the location back in order. These highly specialized professionals, whose titles may at first sight appear “non-cinematic,” put their know-how to use for cinema. It is not a question of constructing a building or an apartment interior in order to live there, but to reproduce its surface, its appearance, and thus to create an illusion by constantly keeping foremost in mind questions of deadlines and budgets, as well as the safety of the filming crews who will later occupy the site and spread out their lighting or sound recording equipment on it. In concrete terms, constructing a decor involves the preparatory work, in which models, whether drawn, digital or three-dimensional, finally come to life to scale after the necessary adaptations to the practical constraints of the location – it is impossible, for example, to drill the slightest hole in a house classified as a historic monument.
