User Reviews

Fascinating glimpse into the work an art director is supposed to do on any motion picture assigned to him. We get some quick looks at mostly Twentieth Century Fox films (IN OLD CHICAGO, LAURA, JANE EYRE), where sets had to be designed beforehand and much planning went into every aspect of the art director's job.

His first job is to analyze the script and decide what backgrounds will be needed. He needs to tailor his designs to fit the mood and taste of the story and the station in life of the people who are the central characters. When it is a period film, extensive research must be done so that all the sets will be as authentic as possible.

Interesting commentary gives a fairly good idea of what the art director's task is and how he must work to fill those requirements.

ALTHOUGH MANY OF those in a typical audience would consider this to be somewhat b-o-r-I-n-g, there is much to recommend it. Rather than having the usual comedy short or musical variety being presented in order to "warm-up" the audience, this short film serves in giving us all (everyone) the opportunity to go behind the scenes (backstage, if you will) and see how an unknown name and face give us what we all take for granted in designing the look and therefore the success and mood of the scenes that make up our movies.

IN ITS CRDITS it lists the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences as the production company and Darryl F. Zanuck's 20th Century-Fox as being the distributor of the short. Being a production of an industry inside group, the movie would certainly run the risk of being sappy, maudlin and overly self-congratulatory (ever see the Oscars show?). But these pitfalls are avoided and the result turns out to be much better than one would expect.

IN THE FINAL analysis, what we have here is a cinematic lesson in one reel; which makes one appreciative of those who provide the nuts &m bo0lts of the picture business. They rarely get any recognition, a shortcoming that the film does its best in attempting to correct.

The Art Director (1949)

** (out of 4)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) produced a number of these shorts, which were shown back in the day to explain to people what certain job titles meant. This one here takes a look at the job of an art director. We get a behind the scenes look at the day to day operations of an art director as we learn that he must have very good knowledge of the locations that the movie is set, the setting or time frame that the film is going for and of course he must also work with the director and cinematographer. We're told that working with the director is most important when it comes to building the sets because the art director must know what size model might be needed and whether a complete set should be built. Overall there's certainly nothing too special about this 7-minute short but I'm sure it was quite helpful back in the day when some people might not have known what all these jobs were. When viewing this today it's mainly of interest as a bit of history on how studios educated people in 1949.