Creative Awakenings Vol. 6: Theme Parks & Production Design

Writing by Edith Manfred. Graphic by Ana Vergara Garcia.

Growing up, my dad had a YouTube playlist for my siblings and me called “Dad TV”. Whenever we claimed we were bored, he would sit us down and show us the best videos he thought the internet had to offer, either educational or just plain cool, which spanned everything from his favorite SNLs to OK Go music videos. Like many children of my generation, OK Go music videos were a monumental creative awakening. The combination of fun music and exhilaratingly complex videos kept my butt firmly seated on the couch while my siblings and I watched the videos for hours on end. 

While on the surface these videos were fun and confusingly interesting, the deeper reality was that they introduced my child brain to the concept of production design. Watching these videos was the earliest memory I have of realizing that behind every movie and YouTube video I watched was a set that wasn’t the real world. Design is a part of literally everything we do all day, every day, and in a funny way, these OK Go videos helped to show me that. The complex tricks they accomplished with a Rube Goldberg machine and the slow-motion use of smoke bombs all helped show the ways a well-designed set can elevate a story. 

For SCAD Production Design senior (and District Copy Editor!) Julia Lane, storytelling has always been something she has been interested in. Growing up, her family were big theme park people and through that exposure, she got the dream of working for Disney as an Imagineer. After coming to SCAD she realized that there was a different way of getting involved in that world that was less mathematical and more artistically focused on storytelling – production design. 

The immersive experience and entertainment industry is wide-reaching and with that scope comes endless creative possibilities. Julia had originally ruled out the film industry after realizing that she was not an actor, writer or director. But through production design, she found a different route into that world and many others. Many people don’t realize that production design can include theme parks, film and TV, theater and so much more. All of these environments need talented creatives to interpret the stories and design worlds around them. 

After SCAD, Julia is open to many different avenues with her creative career and feels excited about the next steps, whatever those may be. Being exposed to many different industry professionals at SCAD has helped her to branch out from early dreams and see that there’s so much ahead. Julia said, “I have an entire career ahead of me, it’s not something that has to happen the second after I get my diploma”.

Everyone’s creative awakenings are different and for fellow SCAD production design senior Isa Khanani-Moosa, that awakening culminated in artistic realizations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Growing up in Texas, his medically-driven family never placed a large emphasis on art, but their love for travel exposed Isa to the power of culture in creativity. He always loved to travel and was on the STEM route into public health… and then the pandemic struck. Stuck inside for months, Isa had a perspective shift on what he wanted to do with this life and realized that production design was a culmination of everything he was creatively interested in. 

For Isa’s whole life, he had a wild imagination that took things to the fullest and grandest scale. When people described things, he always pictured them in the biggest aspects possible, envisioning environments dramatically and artistically. Production design does just that – it takes the imagined reality and turns it into an environment for art. 

Within their industry, production designers are known as the “jack of all trades” as they have to be knowledgeable in both the design aspects and technical aspects of countless mediums. They can’t just focus on being a good designer, they have to focus on the communication of their designs. Designers like Isa have to work closely with fabricators, producers, directors and countless others to combine a myriad of people’s ideas and visions into one reality. They’re almost like an architect, planning and executing an exacting idea. 

Beyond SCAD, Isa hopes to make waves in the live entertainment world and work in fields like theater, fashion runway shows, event design, concerts, etc. Working towards an end goal – the event – is motivational and tangible, adding a human element to his work. Until then, he’ll be working on his senior thesis.

Production design is something that we all are aware of in some capacity, but often don’t notice nearly often enough. These jack-of-all-trades inform all of our entertainment and creative awakenings without us even realizing it. For everything from OK Go music videos to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stage design, production design is inescapable and fascinating.