How Does the Design of the Prison in Paddington 2 (2017) Convey Character, Story and Visual Concept?
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- qx249
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_14
- Book title
- The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- ISBN
- 9783030360580
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- February
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter analyses the visual design of the film Paddington 2 (2017) through applying Barnwell’s Visual Concept methodology, previously developed in her book The Designer’s Story. Closely scrutinizing the design of the prison in the film, the chapter engages with the under-explored subject area of production design and presents a new methodological approach with which to both construct and deconstruct screen design. Barnwell demonstrates the usefulness of the methodology of Visual Concept analysis in evaluating the production designer’s contribution to film and television production. The methodology works through the five categories the production designer uses to visualise the script: i) space, ii) in and out (boundaries and transitions), iii) light, iv) colour and v) set decoration.
Barnwell’s research on production design, and her conceptualisation of Visual Concept, challenges film studies’ tendency to associate production design analysis with the concept of mise-en-scène. As a result, the production process remains relatively overlooked in the analysis of film and television, a limitation which Barnwell’s research aims to overcome. Mise-en-scène analysis is a key approach in film and screen studies that, in spite of its uses in the description and analysis of visual style, has promoted misunderstandings of the film production process and failed to recognize the role of the production designer and other key personnel in visualizing the script. It assumes that the director is solely responsible for all of these areas. Instead, Barnwell’s analysis makes visible the work of the designer in a clear fashion.
The chapter communicates Barnwell’s methodology to a diverse audience of scholars across disciplines. The handbook it appears in is an interdisciplinary reference for scholars interested in the real and imagined spaces of the prison on screen.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
