About Joelle Rumbelow
Joelle Rumbelow is a freelance production designer, set decorator, art director for film and television and co-founder of Set The Story. After graduating from a degree in time-based media in 2001, she worked in the film and TV industry as a petty cash buyer, but pivoted to work in art departments and production design after working on Doctor Who. She now works around the world as a freelancer for major industry names, including BBC, Netflix and CBS, and carries out R&D through Set The Story.
I saw a Clwstwr advert calling for people wanting to develop their ideas in a workshop
Coming up with ideas is something I do every day; I concept things and create stories, backstories and worlds. The workshop seemed like something I’d enjoy, even though I didn’t have a core idea that I wanted to investigate at the time, so I applied.
The workshop gave me a chance to think about ways of working
In the decade prior, I returned to university to complete an architecture degree. It led me to work in a different industry for a short period, albeit still being within design. The workflow was much more structured than in TV and film design, where it’s unstructured and sporadic. I found the difference really interesting, so I applied for funding to look into the workflow of art and design departments in TV and film.
When I started in the industry, we didn't use mobile phones for information sharing. Back then, everything was slower; we had the luxury of time. We’d use A-Zs to find our way, I’d go out and about on foot to source things to be used on shoots and we used 35mm cameras to take photographs. We acted as the eyes of the designer, scouting out things then reporting back to them with our findings. Technology has propelled that process.
It's so fast now because everyone's got images, we bounce ideas back on WhatsApp and files are sent around the department so freely. It interested me how that process has changed and evolved in the last twenty years. There've been so many developments in the media and tech industry. However, there's not as much base level research into how the industry works because so many people doing the work, providing services and crafting things within the industry are freelancers and SMEs.
I focused on the craftspeople in the industry, the freelancers and SMEs
In the UK, we tend to praise people at the front end of the production – the designer, actor and the front-end product. Attention is given to the new technologies that studios are introducing, which, while it’s great, leaves the craftspeople out of the loop and risks them being undervalued or forgotten.
I was amongst the people who get overlooked, so I used the access my position gave me to interview other craftspeople in the industry and get their take on the situation. I asked about what these people wanted, what they needed and ways to solve workflow problems around communication, collating information, how to collaborate more effectively and things like that.
The feedback was interesting as it revealed gaps that need filling
From speaking to craftspeople, it seems there aren’t tools that solve workflow issues very well at the moment. Some said that implementing the available tools felt like an additional workload that put extra pressure on work, rather than helping them to be productive. Others pointed out that the development of better workflow systems felt too far from the hands-on physicality of the job. There was quite a big pushback.
We sit alongside the VFX department and the post production department, which have advanced greatly over the last 20 years. But, while there are productions where the designs are VFX or CG heavy, there are still productions that aren’t as CG and VFX heavy. The art department in particular has to progress and keep up with this pace of change. It’s a creative, valuable, important part of the process that mustn't fall behind; fortunately, I could see ways of making things more efficient.
I applied for further Clwstwr funding to create a prototype
I'm quite a hands-on person, so as soon as our funding was approved I jumped straight in and started building. It’s probably because I come from this maker environment where you just do things and see what happens rather than analyse and talk about things before making them.
The plan was to build a prototype app to assist with planning, workflow and communication. We wanted to digitally recreate the idea-sharing that we used to do on paper or a big board in the office. Now that we work remotely and on sets more, we need a digital way to communicate and share those kinds of ideas.
The app has a story-led user interface
It takes the user through the design of the film or TV programme, with all of the assets, information and data sitting behind it. You can navigate through the construction drawings with a drawing log feature, from which you can create a workspace. There, you can add finer details on things like the finishes, the lighting requirements, textures and tones, the furniture, action props and so on, so that you can build up the world set by set, scene by scene.
It involved a lot of coding and required us to build lots of back-end tech
This was quite hard for me as I’m so used to things being visual, front-loaded, polished and easy to use. Fortunately, I have family members who work in programming so I could talk to them about it in order to get my head around it. My brother, who’s a software architect and back-end developer, made it a practical reality. The actual build time was quite short, about three or four months. It’s currently in beta mode.
I know of lots of industry professionals who are interested in using it
We’re trying to improve the user interface so that it’s easier to use; we’ve been so focused on the back-end up to now. As well as concentrating on usability, we’re creating an onboarding training session where we can run through the thought process behind it and the functions of the app, so that people can start using it.
Working on this R&D alongside my other work has revealed wider issues that exist
I’ve realised how far we need to go in the industry in terms of reaching net zero and understanding our green capability in tandem with our budgeting capabilities. I’m currently working on a big American film production that involves lots of large studios moving at fast paces, and it’s made me realise how, without having processes in place, there's so much wastage in what we do. It emphasises how important it is to build a process, planning and this sort of system into the industry so that we can all be more efficient.
I wonder how the ideas behind the prototype could work on an industry level
It’s funny, but I started off thinking about SMEs and individuals in the art department, but this is actually a much wider issue that needs to be addressed. We really do have to change our working practices.
I built in a sustainability report, right at the end of the process, with the hope it could help others. We focused on making design more efficient, but doing the R&D actually made me realise how we need to think beyond this to look at being sustainable too. We’d like to continue this investigation with more R&D, so we’ve set up a limited company called Set The Story which we hope to move things forward with.
To contact Joelle please email: hello@setthestory.com