Domiciles Gameshow End of Year Production

Domiciles Set Construction Intro

Over the year over the various modules worked on this production covering tasks including:

• Research
• Sketch Ideation
• Concept Art
• Miniature Modelmaking
• Set Construction
• Multiple Location Recce
• Forming a Hierarchy of Production Roles
• Sourcing Props and Set Decoration
• Sourcing Lighting and Effects
• Making Props
• Liaising with Suppliers
• Set Construction
• Painting

Storyline Script and Treatment

The basic storylines start with 3 migrants in the home office immigration department awaiting an interview for their visa status then one, Javier falls asleep and wakes in a dream trapped in a outrageously racist xenophobic gameshow where the prize is a visa but the whole think is rigged to give the contestants little to no chance of winning like a kangaroo court.

Very much the kind of thing one may expect on a right-wing propaganda channel such as Fox, GB news or a dictatorship Shannel such as could be seen in Russia, Hungary, Belarus, North Korea, China etc

Basically, like a cat and mouse game of cruelty for the bullying far right host based on the likes of Pritti Patel and Suella Braverman in the UK or Marjorie Taylor Greene , (or a fan of the TV show The Boys think Firecracker) to get a kick out of offering false hope to the contestants just to enjoy seeing them suffer.

This is till the smart and canny Javier outsmarts her and turns the tables on her. 

Concept Model

My Concept Model

It was for this script and production that I conceived, designed and built my miniature set model for the game show scene where we all got to make a model to compete to have the directors chose which model concept to be constructed full size for the set for the gameshow scene.

You can see my concept model, with the design, construction development in detail and the many stages of construction clicking on the ifull module report I got a distinction for left and my webpage to the right. 

It was for this script and production that I conceived, designed and built my miniature set model for the game show scene where we all got to make a model to compete to have the directors chose which model concept to be constructed full size for the set for the gameshow scene.

You can see mine and the design and construction development in detail and the many stages of construction clicking on the icon on the right here and the full module report I got a distinction for left. 

Director's Chosen Concept Models to Build Full Size

The chosen concept model was not mine. The Directors chose the concept model of a fellow student called Harriet Waller as most genereic 70s gameshow and the directors said they liked a colour scheme from another student Chyana as Harriet's was too red.

I cannot claim the design of the set, but I did a huge amount of the set painting and construction, staying hours after others went home and pushed strongly for the plan to have the swirling decorative parts of the set to be outsourced to a company to be laser cut. This was for two reasons:

 1) As the set would be difficult to get right and there was a high risk of breakage.

 2) Time. We were where up against limited and the students who were assigned for construction were weeks behind. and rarely there We were also down an additional 2 students who were not turning up nor communicating.

In fact, 95% or more of the construction was done be a core of students notably the

• Prop Master - Jonah.
• Assistant Prop Master - James.
• Set Decorator - Harriet.
• Assistant Set Decorator and Petty Cash Buyer - Kate.
• Production Designer - Clair for the Gameshow scene and myself.

I constructed a white card model to help with set decoration.

Home Office Scene

Whilst I got the role of Production Designer for the Home Office scene and did lots of location reconnaissance, my role was made impossible by having no budget forcing use of a classroom in the college and very limited set decoration which I was given little control over. The student set decorator Harriet was in charge of that.

• I constructed a white card model to help with set decoration.

• I also distressed a ticket machine for use as set decoration.

I also distressed a ticket machine for use as set decoration.

Domiciles Set Construction

Gameshow Logo Sign

Harriet the set decorator designed the sign and Jonas props master set up the CAD files and laser cut the letterings. After that I did the majority of the work on the gameshow sign. This started with connecting the material and learning how to safely transport the thin plywood safety on a car roof rack.

The first task was trimming the top layer of the backing plate which was done with a track saw by the owner of the tool our tutor. I then set about working out the layout measurements from Harriet’s scale model to try and scale up the positioning of the letters.

To cut the rounded corners I was told to use something with a similar diameter and looked around trying dustbin lids, pain pots and the cage off a fun unsuccessfully.

I decided to make a compass by drilling holes on a thin wood strip.

This was then jig sawed which left chips in the surface. I wet down the surface to help the filler stick to the wood before sanding down.

The gameshow’s production designer and petty cash buyers tried to keep the budget low by skipping primer and white spray paint layers, but that proved to do the opposite wasting £12 worth of gold spray paint as it was too thin to be any use showing the wood grain.

I used my own primer and white paint to build a base layer and convinced them to purchase more gold paint.

Multiple layers of red paint were roller painted onto the top plate and sides.

I used the strips cut from the top sheet to align the letters.

Various methods to bond the layers and letters were looked at such as main guns, screws and gluing.

The problem was how to compress things. The decision was made to do the base plates first. Glue and set them before doing the same with the letters as seemed less risky.

I first tried clamps following bad advice from one of the poor performing construction crew, but they only held the close proximity of the clamps, else where the layers were separate so I made a press with other sheets and every heavy object I could find including tables, compressors, fire extinguishers.

These are the photos of the construction.

Podiums Construction

The construction crew (Who had constructed the podium up to the stage that can be seen in the first 3 photos, the basic shape, but was still pretty rough and needed a lot of filling and sanding.

 The construction crew kept saying they would complete the podiums in a few hours or end of day the day, a few weeks back so when they were not turning up effectively I and others took over a large part of the construction. Others students including the petty cash buyer, set dec assistant, story board artist, assistant prop maker and set decorator also got incomed adding the canopy, initial painting and shelf.

I worked on refining, smoothing and trimming the windows to fit the scare mechanisms and build the detailing arch on the front.

My mitre saw wan used for initial cuts for the arch them trimmed and top curved on the belt sander.

This was done with the amazing Fein Multi Master multi tool, which could have a wide variety of tool attachments at different angles. These could cut, trim, sand, shave, plunge saw, get into nooks and crannies. I touched up the paint, recoloured the inner frame and then handed it to others to make the shelf.



Superglue and accelerator were used to fix loose parts.

Backdrop Swirls

With the construction crew proving them selves unreliable and us running out of time, when it was mentioned Group A (We were group B) had sections of their set out sourced to be laser cut there was a meeting to decide if we should reply on the construction crew to get them cut accurately and assembled or spend what was effectively over half our remaining budget on getting most of the set, all the swirls laser cut on 5mm plywood in a couple of days. The cost was over £800.

I pushed hard to get the vote to side on the outsource as felt we could not rely on the construction crew and well as it would be risky for us to as very big, complex, fragile and needed perfect large semi-circular circles. Given we were running out of time to me it seems a clear cut and shut decision.

There were financial issues and problems with the purchase having to go through official channels as too big for the petty cash and credit card procedure.

When the delivery came in, I marked or looked for marks for we could identify the parts and make sure they were grouped together.

 This was very much a group effort and due to the size and thinness these were very fragile so whilst light we really needed several of us to lift and transport most of the parts.

The volume of part surface area made this a group effort, with all the regular core groups getting involved with the painting starting with a white undercoat. As can be seen from the photos we needed every patch of floor and table space.

Many paint layers were needed on the top and sides, especially the yellow so this was organised into a production line pattern. I usually stayed on the premises to continue the painting alone for an extra 2 hours plus each of the weekdays for a couple of weeks to try and get the painting done.

These were nail gunned together.

Holes were drilled for the decorative coloured lighting which had RGB lighting behind and plastic spheres on the front to represent the bulbs.

Spacer Construction and Drilling Rig

To add depth to the set, hold the swirls away from the back walls and allow us to drape the gold, foil tassel curtains under them we needed spacer blocks and I took this responsibility to make a high volume of these which all had to be an identical length.

• For safety these were held in place with a push stick
• This in effect was a mass manufacturing production line task with quality control.
• The parts were made from 2 x 2 inch or 5cm x 5cm x 95mm in length pieces of pine.
• The basic manufacture method was:
• Mark lengths with a 5mm gap for the sawing, dividing the material into 100mm lengths.
• Using a mitre chop saw to roughly cut the lengths.
• Using the belt sander to trim to a precise length to match the original length part to a tolerance of less than a mm.
• I calibrated this with an engineer’s square.
• These were painted black to hide them in the shadows
• The centre was then marked on the ends with a cross to guide the positioning of an automatic centre punch.
• I then made a rig on the pillar drill to hold the spacers place where they could be rapidly slid in and out to the correct position each time.
• Once set up I could drill 8 pieces a minute, first with a counter sink drill bit then a 6mm drill bit.
• The purpose for the holes was guide screws when assembling the set.
• 106 of these were built.
• Other students, I think led by James the Assistant prop maker then determined where to place these looking at the set plans and measuring the swirls.
• I did not see how they marked where to drill the holes in the flats for the screws.
• Whilst there were has the long screws in the flats this was dangerous. These protruded several inches, more than enough to seriously slice someone open, take out an eye, rip a throat or inflict multiple stab wounds if someone fell against them so the spaces had to be adder rapidly.
• Once the spacers had been added, the swirls could start to be added along with the gold strips.
  

Set Assembly

With the parts build and painted we them started to assemble the gameshow set. Group A let us use their flat in return for using some of our Set decoration like the Home Office sign.

The flats were then painted black.

This was very much a group effort as we needed multi people to elevate the flats till secure with supports and weights.

More so the swirls needed multiple people handling them dur to their size, floppiness and fragility and the fact they had cost us so much of out budget and we had neither time nor money to replace parts or do major repairs.

The gold foil tassel curtains were made like combs sticking the strips to cold sticky tape, then stick up in layers.

The swirls having been staple gunned had the pins protrude from behind and this had resulted in lots of scratches and dents that needed touching up paint.

This was don’t up to the last few minutes when the filming started.

Again, the construction crew had started the host platform before the core crew had to take over to get the job done and painted.

We had hoped to black vinyl the whole floor but as out of budget we had to do streaks instead.



I had try to fix a connecting piece to the left of the arch host gate and did compete it but the directors had started to film as opposed to rehearse without telling us so we were stuck with a gap for continuity.