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We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.
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The Honest Filmmaker
Doctor Who, Marvel & Mission Impossible - Production Design with Phil Sims
#filmpodcast #missionimpossible #behindthescene
This week on the podcast I talk to Production Designer Phil Sims. Phil started in theatre, worked in music videos before moving onto big budget movies like Skyfall, The Last Jedi, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America The First Avenger, Age of Ultron and the latest series of Doctor Who for Disney and the BBC..
I spoke to Phil about how he got into the industry, we talked about his first big film The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, his work on the Milano spaceship on Guardians of the Galaxy and what it was like working on Mission Impossible Fallout and Dead Reckoning Part 1 and the challenges of integrating big stunts with production design.
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HONEST, OPEN ADVICE ABOUT YOUR FILMMAKING CAREER
Are you about to leave Uni with a filmmaking degree? Or want to change careers and work in a creative industry? We want to give you the tools you need to enter the real world of production or freelancing. Honest and open career advice from people in the business.
We also talk to those in other creative industries to discuss their careers, the potential cross over with film production and practical tips for a successful and fulfilling career.
Join the community: http://www.thehonestfilmmaker.co.uk
[Music] hi Jim here and you're listening to the honest filmmaker podcast career advice from people in the business this week on the podcast I talked to production designer Phil Sims Phil started off working in theater and has gone on to work on some massive Productions like Skyfall The Last Jedi Age of Ultron and two Mission Impossible movies I talked to Phil about how he got into the industry we chatted about his first film Project The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy his work on the gu of the Galaxy movie and also what it was like to work on huge Productions like Mission Impossible and the challenges of integrating stunts into production design enjoy so I'll start where I start with most people can you tell me uh how you started did you go to UNI did you study how did you get into the business yeah I studied um I studied theater design at Central St Martin's in London and uh and and after after doing an art Foundation course um and then then stayed in London I grew up in Derby and studied in Derby prior to that and stayed in London from that point on really and then uh after graduating everything seemed clear in my mind that I wanted to be a theater designer so I uh was lucky enough to win a competition uh from my graduation show and I was entered into another competition at the National Theater um and thought you know this is easy I don't know what the fuss was about everybody told me this was going to be really complicated um i' I'd never I'd been in a theater group so I always wanted to I thought I wanted to be a theater designer but as a kid I was kind of obsessed with making off films and sci-fi films and and sci-fi books and novels and things comics and whatever you so um I didn't really put films together with my career or even TV for sort of four years after leaving College where I sort of had persevered to become a theater designer or an assistant theater designer at least and make models and whatever you for different designers um and then uh some friends of mine from college set up a company to make props and sculpt and and basically earn anything they could uh through creative means to um pay the bills by working on TV shows um and commercials and at the time there were lots of sort of darling and Kindersley DVDs which nobody probably remembers now but they they there were quite a lot of those and we we created a lot of content for those lots of odd dinosaur props and skeletons and skulls and things um and that that developed into art directing music videos you know you kind of you hang around Studios a lot working in little workshops meet lots of different people and it gave us an opportunity to to start art directing music video which was great fun and I did that and had loads of fun doing that for uh probably four or five years um until that came to a natural conclusion and we started to venture into um commercials and TV documentaries and things and it wasn't going to work much beyond that as a company so we parted ways and I had my first opportunity to work with uh Joel Collins and Dan May on hitchiker Guide to the Galaxy as an assistant art director uh I met Frank Walsh there who was the supervising art director and once we'd finished hitchikers my plan was actually to just do one film see how everything had gone see how people did it properly because I felt like I'd been making it up as I went along for the last sort of eight years and go back and apply what I'd learned to commercials and enjoyed it so much on film and enjoyed the fact that relative to being a designer or an art director on commercials I didn't have a lot of responsibility but I was paid pretty well and I could design and draw lots of sort of crazy things um and work with some amazing construction people and just stuck to that really and and then woke up 20 years later and realized I'd been art directing for nearly 20 years or so in film and I'd perhaps like to start designing things again which is sort of brought me full circle to now so then I went back I I did design something in 2016 which was um a black mirror episode again for Joel and went back to supervise Mission Impossible six I think that led into Mission Impossible 7 and Tom and Jerry I think which I supervised and by by the time those sort of movies had elapsed I realized I really did want to try and design something so then I went back to uh well actually Joel came to me again luckily for me and asked me to do Doctor Who so then I designed Doctor Who which is what I've done for the last three years so started off wanting to do theater ended up in commercials then moved into film and just loved film so much what why is why is film why have you not gone back to theater I I think I think honestly the the the what what's taken me a long time to come to terms with is is what I always kind of knew what I was good at and I probably I probably uh was overconfident about what I was good at and one of the things I think you've got to be really good at as a designer and certainly as a theater designer who who is very very isolated and works in uh in isolation quite a lot is you've got to be um you've got to be on the front foot and dynamic and publicize yourself and be be you know very much a self- publicist and I've almost been the opposite of that my whole career to the point perhaps I'm now I don't know but to that are more self-deprecating and those two things weren't natural bedfellows when you've got to pay the bills you know if if you're lucky enough to not have to worry for whatever reason that you have to pay the rent and and all of that and and there aren't many people out there who are in that situation I guess um then you you can you know the jobs can be few and far between and you can kind of remain in inverted commers a theater designer or or a production designer or any kind of designer probably even though you're not producing lots of work uh paid work for money um but as soon as that that sort of career has got to pay the bills and got to pay its way you know you need to look at it long and hard and the truth is theater jobs are I I still love theat to bits um but but the jobs the design jobs were relatively low paid and you know people do do it for the love of it a lot of the time certainly to start off with and uh you know you might earn I think my first theater design job was I had a fee of,500 and it was at least three months work so you know I can't I think I think my rent in London was 280 a month which seems crazy now because it's the rent's extortionate in London now but um yeah so so it was very difficult to make ends meet and you know the three months work in principal was probably more like four or five months work um and you'd need to then layer up jobs so you'd need to work on two three four jobs at the same time which as I understand it you know lots of successful designers successful theater designers have to do and do I've got a couple of friends who was at col with who continued that career but they've they've supplemented their income with other you know whether they're teaching whether they're doing more commercial projects as well as the theater or ballet or Opera projects that they love so uh yeah and I was kind of I kind of reached the conclusion quite quickly that I wasn't going to um earn enough money to buy a house be secure and and so from that point of view I probably sold out you know artistically theater what I did love theater creatively and uh sold out until I realized and I was kind of snobby about theater I thought theater was a very pure way of Designing something for performance having to design something over a that works for an audience over a fixed period of time over an hour or two hours or whatever the performance is and the scenery develops and the costumes develop and everything happens in more or less in front of your eyes obviously you can go off stage but something's got to happen while that's that's going on I thought that was very pure and there was something you know fantastic about that and I was a bit snobby about film and TV in that you know you can edit it so of course you're going to get the best bit because you can just choose the best bit and you point the camera at something very very prescribed more prescribed probably um until I started doing it and realized that it's it's just as hard but it's um a different it's just a different discipline and it's just as reward as well and I I'd love you know film and TV uh for in equal part now to to theater probably because it I I get a real Buzz out of the creativity yeah and also I imagine the camera probably picks up you know it can get really close into stuff can't it and really pick every single detail out of a set and a prop whereas on theater it's kind of bam you sort of see it and things can be a little bit rougher maybe yeah I think so I mean I think I think there's there's a sort of there's a quality of uh theater production probably that is that's led by budget as well but but you are you you are always aware that there is you know that there's the the nearest Point somebody can view your scenery from is or the performance from is I don't know sometimes 10 meters away maybe it's five meters away but but you're talking about you know that sort of separation and up to you know someone setting the gods or you know m not miles away but if it's an arena event or you know whatever not withstanding Arena events now cross over so you have a sort of you usually have a live video feed that's uh that that's there to Gras you up if you get it wrong even if it works in a big sort of wide from a wide point of view um uh and yeah t the trick of TV the thing that the the thing that's hardest I think is you know whatever project you're working on the budget's limited you you have limited resources as big or small as a project might be and the the the trick of it is is working out and being on the same page with everybody else or inviting them to your page when necessary to put the money on screen in the right place and if you've got a detail like you say you know if you've got a if you're shooting someone's a POV of someone's hand opening a lock or a Sci-Fi by widget on a wall or they're using a weapon or a pen or something that you fabricated you're going to see that in so much detail you know arguably more detail than some of the huge sets that you might build so it's it's doing that and and the the danger is that the the hardest thing is not having a blanket approach where you just try to finish everything to the nth degree and forever and ever in every direction because you just nobody has those resources so the trick is is is you know communication and understanding where the money needs to be spent and sometimes like you say it might be on you know designing a new phone or a new a particular mug or a tanker from a period show or a chair a throne and that you've got to have detail in it you know you're going to film somebody uh in a close-up shot a 50 mil shop um and the the chair might be you know 150 mil behind the head and it's going to be in detail so you want it to look believably uh that it's been carved or it's wood or it's cast and it's Marble or whatever it is you know um but yeah but the trick is not making every chair like that or I can imagine every every spot of the scenery yeah yeah um that reminds me of and I'm just double check before I mention this one you didn't work on Force awakens did you no no so have you seen the poster of Ry holding the her stick yeah uh closeup with the Phillips screwdriver there's like a know what there's a philli screw on it so how does that stuff no I've not seen that I've not seen that but if if any um if any of the team that I've been working with for the last three years are watching it'll make them laugh because the number of times I've kind of moaned about Phillip's head screws in sets and and we've worked with an amazing team and they are meticulous about you know hiding them even if it's at worst it's with a blob of black Tac but ideally you use different fixings that aren't posy fixings or Phillips fixings um but the the trouble is you know we we have to make decisions creative decisions right the way down to the wire when we're about to film something and whatever the reason is you know sometimes something's got to be fixed more or less in camera just before they turn over and with with the best will in the world you you don't always have time or you you can't or you don't you don't your plan isn't as good as you hope it is you know you hope your plan's going to be bomb prooof and there won't be a Phillips head screw in sight unless it's a Philips head screw commercial I suppose in which case you're off the hook and maybe that's where we should all go and work you know um but yeah sometimes you know we all we all get caught and and that's the that's the another level of creativity with TV and film is you know the guys on standby the standby art directors and the prop guys have to be vigilant throughout that and that's a whole different whole different skill set you know set I find shoots ostensively quite boring if I'm perfectly honest with you um they start off brilliantly when you see your sets lit and you see the actors inhabit it and you see the shots that people the DP and the director line up with but uh day in day out kind of going over the same scenes and um and maintaining that level of vigil that you've got to you know that that standby that really good standby managed to do is is an art form in itself you know to to be ready on a sort of hair trigger to jump in even though you may have had to do very little for the last two hours is I I find it really hard so yeah there's all of those things um yeah I'm not I'm going to look for that for screw now that sounds great yeah and well the thing is you could also blame the person who did the poster because it's a poster so obviously they could have just Photoshopped it out but I think it just must have just squeaked by and everybody noticed it yeah and if you if you speak to the propm I bet that that that whoever did the poster stuck that stuck that screw in deliberately in Photoshop just to wind everybody up or just to see if people could spot it so maybe maybe there'll be all sorts of ways of looking at it I'm sure um so just to get to break it down uh for people who aren't familiar with working doing your job um what's the difference between a production designer an art director and a supervising art director in the simplest terms you can explain it it it can be about scale so if you have a huge project a huge movie uh sometimes not a huge movie but you know a movie where the the art department is going to be quite a large team and you need a level of Delegation to get the amount of work done and you also need um a relationship and a lot direct line of communication with uh the director and the production team then those jobs are normally right at the top of the the art department and that's the production designer and the supervising art director's role so the the production designer is responsible for the for the uh the look of the show and to maintain that the the show is on bu um it's also the supervising art director's role so the supervising art director is more in the nuts and bolts of that so that the supervisor the supervisor op director will run the budget usually with a construction manager um and lia's closely sometimes manage the budget that overarches uh the props team and the set decoration team that isn't always the case you know on some movies the set decoration team run their own budget and that's a separate a completely separ Department um um and the props team will run their own budget too you know on on a huge kind of Marvel show or Disney show the the amounts of money being spent aren't insignificant and tracking all of those costs requires um teams that understand the specifics of th the requirements of those jobs in those departments so you know you you'll have somebody who's who's ESS sensibly accounting for the props someone who's accounting for the set deck team and for the artart department but but the art the supervising art director and the production designer are usually responsible to production for all of that um even though there will be conversations between production and set decorators and prop Masters independently to manage their budgets and their and their um sets ultimately it's really the production designer's responsibility to to decide how much uh money is spent in set decoration versus construction um versus graphics and and all the other sort of sub departments um an art director an art director's role is um usually to take responsibility for the drawing and the design of sets on on behalf and in collaboration with the designer and the supervisor so on the one hand you'll have a conversation with the supervisor who say how much is it costing it's costing how much we need to reduce costs or um I'm going to need to go and speak to production about that because we don't have those costs approved and it's a new idea that's come up with a in a conversation with a director so we need to um make sure that everybody understands what we're doing and though they sometimes those those processes sometimes involve having to go back to square one and rethink it and sometimes they involve you know more money being um allowed either within the budget of the art department and something else is sacrificed or more money is allowed in this in the whole scheme of the production to facilitate that because it might you know building a bit more set might mean that there are fewer VFX shots um but that wasn't the plan from the onset so it's about that kind of ongoing dialogue and communication with the production team and the accounts team um a lot of art directors in the UK draw so you you'll have a lot of art directors in the UK draw sets and run a team of drafts people uh and ass maybe have an assistant art director or two um in in America the systems a little bit different where art directors don't draw um I'm not sure they draw at all certainly not as prolifically as they do in um in the UK it's not not that it's prolific but it's not as it's not an important part of their job they're a manager and an art an art director is a manager effectively you're managing your middle management you're managing the the set construction you're overseeing a set you might be looking after a stage or two stages or a backlog build um you might have an art director who's looking after several locations where the locations have got to be prepared to look like a um a period Street or you've got to add um you know rocks trees props uh you know Design Elements to a location to being simp with the location and to meet the designers and the director's requirements of that location so for the supervising and the production designer stuff do you if you wanted to do that job do you have to be good with numbers and calculating stuff are you good with that or is that something you had to learn as you went into it or is there someone stood next to you with a calculator going yeah you can have that you can't have that um there there's the short answer is yes it's useful if you're good with numbers um there there will be someone sat with a calculator next to you in most cases even if it's just to cross check your calculations I mean most of our most of our budgets are done through Excel so you know once you've once you've done the job once and you've got a good Excel sheet set up you can blank it at the end of that job and you know reinsert new set names and new set numbers um and and and it becomes kind of formulaic and as I understand it most supervisors would have more or less the same system but they'll have their own way of implementing it you know and their own way of of um presenting costs but yeah it's it's helpful if you can get your head around numbers it's helpful if you've got your head around construction to a level to a to a degree none of them are prerequisites though you know that you can you can become a super like any job really anywhere you can become a supervisor art director or even a designer because you're friends with someone who's you know one step above you in the process or are in a sort of parallel part of the process and I although I was quite sort of dismissive of that and sort of um thought it was all rather unfair at the start of my career I just think go for it now you know however you get a job uh you've still got to stand there and do it you've got to find your way through it and I'd be I'd be telling fibs if I said that it isn't stressful sometimes and you don't have sleepless nights sometimes and you know you've got to you've got to get through everybody's got to get through that however they get through it so I I you know wish everybody the very best however they get the jobs but um for me personally it it's been beneficial to be able to draw um initially you know the only thing I could do really coming out of school was drawing and making models and um you know creatively making props or whatever I turned my hand to um and the learning computer skills came later but I think they're really important to in a modern art Department yeah and so so looking back at your early career so doing your first big movie which I'm assuming was something like hitch's guide what uh what was that experience like and is there anything on screen you recognize as oh I did that that was my thing when you watched it um my my experience was I can't believe we're paid to do this really that that was my takeaway I I genuinely had such a good time um and I got to design spaceships which was a childhood dream it was something I'd kind of talked myself probably talked myself out of ever been able to do on that scale um but the the sets that I art directed were the hogp pod which is a round kind of zods runaround basically um it's like a spherical Ferrari or something um and the Heart of Gold which was the bigger spherical spaceship that Zod um run around the Galaxy with we watched as a family we watched Doctor Who it's first time the kids have watched a series of it loved it and it looks I don't know if I should say this but it looks like it's had a lot of money spent on it like it looks like it's gone up a level I mean were you involved in previous seasons have you got any kind of understanding of has it maybe it's the Disney effect has it suddenly because everything just looks bigger and glossier and fancier the the show did have more money than than it had had previously and um and I mean from a point of view but it didn't have it didn't have massive movie money you know it didn't have Star Wars Episode 9 money or Star Wars episode 7 or Star Wars Episode anything money really even four five and six back in the day relative to the rate of inflation we didn't have those budgets either so um but we had a more handsome budget than we'd had previously the the the show it had previously I'd not worked on it prior to the um the star Beast which was the first of the uh new specials and but yeah we we we're cheating a bit it's not very fair you know it to to compare sets and um production values side by side is a little bit unfair in some cases although I did get the fear of few you know I looked at some Matt Smith and uh the early David Tenant stuff and uh and some of the jod wh stuff recently and you you watching episode this is pretty good you know I don't know how they did this on the money that's Bonkers so if people are able to look at hours and go okay well they've done really good on the money that would be great I think there is an assumption that we've just had a huge um injection of cash from Disney and it's it wasn't it's not really like that it you know it's better it was enough to do it was enough to do what we did which hopefully looked great and everybody loved so that that's kind of the point but um could we have spent more oh yes I'm sure you could have um so then talking about the biggest the big big stuff you've done so Mission Impossible what's that like and how do you how do you even do a project like that as and integrate all stunts and things that obviously hav impact on production what how does it work a big production like that I don't know it's like it's like an out of body experience and I look back on it thinking how did we do that I don't know um I mean I I didn't design the mission Impossibles I was a supervising art director on on on uh Mission Six and mission 7 uh and there were different designers for both episodes so Peter Wenham designed episode 6 and uh Gary Freeman designed seven and he's designing eight now they still maybe they finished they're nearly finished I think they're kind of still working on it um both of whom are brilliant brilliant to work for so so the first thing I would say is you've got to have a brilliant team you do have to have a bunch of people who are experienced and talented and get it and have a have a even if even if you don't have an understanding of what you're getting into because I don't think any of us did with Mission Impossible you recognize it as early as possible to be able to make the best plan and that sounds a bit cryptic probably but mission is made in a a very creative way where well currently it's made in a very creative way I don't know how it's always been made but it's made in a very creative way where um you don't really start off with a script a hard script there's a notion there's an idea there's a feeling there's usually an idea or in experience of the two episodes two movies I've worked on there's an idea of the uh certain stunts that that will be prominent or you know there'll be like tent pole stunts for the show and you know for Mission Six that was a helicopter stunt that that Tom was going to fly by himself and for Mission seven we were going to throw Drive uh eject uh an actual locomotive off a cliff um for real so they they were they were two of our starting points they were two of our sort of they were known in that there was an ambition to do both but they weren't known in terms of how that happened and how it broke down and how the the different roles that were required were were put into place none of that was known at the beginning and certainly how Bigg a part they were in the show wasn't really known and how story-wise and plot-wise they were going to be wrapped up and entwined and linked together and all of that we didn't really know that either so um they're quite they were scary I can't pretend Mission Impossible six was was a scary process for me to be asked very early on to provide a budget for a show that you didn't actually have a script for is different you know it's quite interesting and of course you can't uh you can't really do it with any accuracy um all you can do is draw on the experience you have how much you know because that there is a kind of broadly I suppose certainly with you know like Marvel shows and shows we've become accustomed to in recent years there's a they're almost like operas you know there's a First Act second act third Act and the third act probably won't be cheap and the um and you don't always know what the third Act is going to be even on a movie with a script you know you might have a notion of the third act but it's not finalized or it gets Rewritten and that's part of the ongoing process but you've at least got two acts to really get your teeth stuck into um but with Mission that's not the case so with Mission Six for instance the the the the goal initially or the directive was to find as many cool looking locations as we could and and then you know the designer creatively then kind of looks at locations with a view to you know every film you've ever seen and and also the films you'd like to see you know the things you would love to see the things that you think would be dramatic and Brilliant and huge and then you know pitch those to um the production team and see how that works and see which ones get traction and see which don't and then you know on the back of those conversations um the the writers or the director or DPS Tom will have ideas about what would be cool you know what would be great what's not been seen what's what would be exciting or dramatic and that then leads to another idea but but you know from as you can understand from the process I'm talking about it's quite slow you know that it's quite it's quite a slow process to go through when you're you're sitting within a conventional Film Production timeline but but you've got to find the script you've got to find it almost it's not improvisation but the closest I could imagine in a way is that you're you know when when theater pieces are improvised and or or or movies are improvised and then the the you know the bits that work and the relationships that work and the characters that develop and all that kind of thing is is drawn upon well missions kind of made like that but but there are huge kickass expensive stunts punctuated through the process and often you you you know as as a filmmaker you you you kind of know there are shortcuts you kind of understand when you read a script that well that's probably a closeup so we might not need a huge piece of scenery that's that's probably wide so there's an argument it's going to be visual effects at some point because there'll be a tradeoff financially that it's more it's it's cheaper to do it in visual effects or more expedient um Mission doesn't have many of those conversations there's there's a reluctance to commit to visual effects um certainly early in the process so the idea is that if you film it for real and you get it for real and Tom's in the frame the audience will be with you and they'll be right alongside and believe it and and be engaged in the in the movie and and although I would have argued that may be not the case when I started I think I think there's something in it I mean whether it's coste effective and whether it's you know the the most prudent way to make movies I don't know I mean I guess if it was everybody would be doing it and they're not so it might not be the case but there is an energy that comes from it and there's a kind of um something some part of the process is captured in the in in the the sort of edit that that's put together and I I can't deny that you know after being through the process and seeing the final product it uh they definitely have something there's something to be said for that um but but yeah but but it's difficult you know we we went to Paris on Mission Six to shoot the Parisian Elements which we' we managed to use all of our prep time to work out you know what was required and where we were going to be and which locations looked cool and how big and how long we could have the locations for you know we could go to the Grand pet everybody loved the grand pet that was brilliant but then we could only have the grand P for a total of something like 14 days uh obviously the production would have loved to shoot every single day that we were in there but of course you can't because you've got to get out of it and leave the place as you found it you've got to get into to it and install any sets and special effects and stunt rigs that you're going to need for the stunts required you know the ambition was to create the stunts for real on the roof of the grand pet so we have to ask all of those questions even though you know in your your your filmmaker brain is sort of saying you're never going to do that you you are never going to do that the the French authorities will never allow that and then of course you end up building a roof on the back lot in leavon so we can do those stunts and that sort of thing but but asking that question every stage of the process does elicit the unexpected sometimes and it does mean that every now and then someone says yeah that's okay you can do that and and we all sort of go up at each other for a bit and I didn't expect them to say that and then you get on with it and process it you know they're they're kind of fierce you know Tom's passion is fierce not not in a not in a nasty way but he's he's just passionate about the work that he does and uh and he's a real motivational Force to get to make things happen sometimes the unexpected happens and sometimes it doesn't and you default your experience and end up making things the way you thought you might make it months ago but with the with the added information of of specifically what what's required you know whereas at the beginning you you really did you were just guessing at it you know yeah so they're they're tricky Mission imposses are tricky yeah that sounds like headache I think they're tricky yeah but yeah like you say uh on paper that sounds horrendous not knowing what's happening and just going we're going to do these big stunts and then we're going to do that make the budget for it that sounds horrendous we like you say that there's there is that Tom Cruz effect that just seems to happen and when you watch them they're so energetic and so big that I guess like you say the Magic's there I hope you enjoyed that episode if you'd like to hear from more industry professionals how they got into the business and how you can do the same or you just want to listen to some cool stories from movie sets around the world then please do subscribe to the honest filmmaker podcast[Music]
