Hayley Nebauer was selected to be V&A Artist in Residence 2012-2013, in connection with their major exhibition ‘Hollywood Costume’.  Part of Hayley’s proposal that won her the residency position was to make a science fiction short film in order to demonstrate her hybrid design process in a real film scenario.  As soon as Hayley won the residency, she asked Emma E. Maclennan to come on board as director and producer of the film. 

Hayley had set a specific design brief in her proposal that the film must adhere to: that it should be set in a science fiction setting in which strong environmental winds had heavily influenced society – the way in which people lived and also the development of their culture and aesthetics; the filmmakers must use 2 contrasting historical aesthetics to influence and inform the creation of an original aesthetic for the film and these historical design movements must be 18^th century Rococo and 1930s Streamline Moderne; the script should be written by an up-and-coming writer. Hayley did not want the film to be written specifically for her design brief as that would be the wrong way round to a normal filmmaking scenario, so the challenge for the filmmakers was to use the aesthetic period she had set to create designs that still serviced the story.  With that in mind, Emma sent the film brief to Philip James Booth (omitting the details of which design periods had been chosen) along with the handful of other writers Hayley had sent the brief to.  Philip’s script AIR was the script Hayley and Emma chose to develop into the short film.

Emma and Hayley created a unique sponsorship package to attract potential sponsors in order to fund the film.  They spent a year raising the funds to enable the sets and costumes to be designed and built from scratch, to cover transport and catering costs, and unusual equipment and material requirements.  More information about the sponsors’ involvement with AIR can be found on the Sponsors page.

There were many unusual obstacles when building sets and filming at the V&A – just a couple of examples are: power and fire regulations which led to the film being shot almost exclusively with fluorescent lighting units and not being able to use a smoke machine which proved a unique challenge for DOP Pete Wallington.  The art department were not allowed to use oil-based paints in any of the sets, so along with the challenging design brief, Richard Selway also had to bring his ideas to fruition adhering to these rules.