Production Design
& Art Direction
The Border's Wolf
Graduation Project
In this section, I would like to use my graduation project as a case study of my work in the Art Department.
The Border's Wolf is an arabic action film, shot in Riyadh, KSA, with the sponsorship from Nebras Films. Here is a rough timeline to understand the scope of our work.
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The pre-production phase took three months, from October 2023 to January 2024.
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Production took up another 2 months, starting from January 2024 to March 2024, with a total of 2 weeks of shooting.
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Post-production summed up to 3 more months, completing the final cut by end of May.
In this project I was the head of Art Department, overlooking everything from sets to costumes to props and to make up. I was leading a team of 8 and together we have created the work which you will see through out this page.
Pre-Production
Here are some of the basic visualization and organization outputs I have created for this project. Some to navigate the props departement, some to establish the look of a location and the look of the over all movie. These are only some of the elements from the pre-production phase, since many can not be disclosed.
Sets
In these sections you will immerse into the numerous sets created for Border's Wolf, both indoor and outdoor. My area of work included designing the look (see pre-production) dressing the sets, supervising construction, buying the props and furniture and over looking continuity during the shoots.
Main Set - Tariq's Apartement
Gun Storage Set
Jail Set
Action Cars
For this project we had three action cars: a bus and 2 jeeps.
The challange came when one of the jeeps arrived, being of a bright blue color, something that didn't match with our desert militery palette at all. We had 8 hours before shooting and the stakes were high, after brainstorming with the team, I urgently came up with a solution to spray paint the jeep in a beige protective coat, the advantage of a coat was that it could be easily removed afterwads. On top of that, to add some nice detail, we wrapped major parts of the car with military cloth (like we did with the second, black jeep), attaching it using special tape. As a result, the vehicle ended up looking very good.
In the interior of the bus, dust and sand was used to give a worn feel, as well as easily washable fake blood and broken glass imitation using acrylic sheets.
Costumes
My work in costumes for this project was mainly focused around the military theme.
I took it in steps: first collecting references for directors approval, then picking the fabrics for ally and enemy soldiers, supervising the tailoring and acquiring the necessary accessories. It was crucial for this project to make sure the uniforms are believable, yet are not similar to ones of any country.
