What is production worldbuilding?
Production worldbuilding is the work of making everything a scene implies exist on the day and agree with itself: the physical things that are found, the printed things that are made, and the screens that play on cue.
It is the name Scenergia gives to the job its three products do together, for film, television and commercials.
Who it is for
Production designers, art directors, set decorators, prop masters and graphic designers for film, and the production companies that hire them.
The problem it solves
A script invents a world in a few lines. Supplying it is three kinds of work, done by different people, with different tools, on different days. Props and vehicles are sourced. Documents, packaging and signage are designed and printed. Phones and screens are prepared for the take.
Nothing connects the three, so the invented world drifts. The company on the letter has a different spelling on the van. The founding year changes between the sign and the invoice. The phone shows a name nobody else in the story uses.
How it works
- Break the script down. List what each scene asks for, sorted into what is found, what is made and what is on a screen.
- Write the world down once. One production file holds the title, year, country, town, the firm at the centre of the story, places, cast, and how strict the period has to be.
- Find, make and cue from that record. The prop list, the printed sheets and the screen cues all take their names and dates from the same place.
- Keep it in register. Through resets, the second unit and pickup days, the world is checked against the file, and the file is the only thing anyone edits.
The three layers
Found
Some of the world already exists and has to be found: a van, a desk, a street.
Made
Some of it has never existed and has to be made: the letterhead, the calendar, the label on the drawer.
On glass
And some of it now lives on glass: the message that arrives, the call that will not stop ringing.
Scene 42 of an invented film, drawn as three plates. Skenic is the physical world, Chronotype is the printed world, Mombie is the digital world.
How it differs from other production work
Production design decides what the world looks like. Production management tracks the schedule, the budget and the crew. Production worldbuilding sits between them: it gets the designed world supplied, and keeps it consistent across the physical, printed and digital layers.
When it is used
- An invented company or brand appears on more than one surface: a sign, a document, a vehicle, a screen.
- The story is set in a real decade, and every printed piece has to be period-correct.
- A phone or a screen carries the plot, and has to play live in front of the lens.
- A commercial needs brands and packaging that do not exist, because real ones cannot be shown.
Scenergia builds the tools for it, and does it for productions as a service.