It’s not every day that you go from designing homes to creating Sci-Fi movie sets. But for SketchUp veteran and Set Designer Chris Fagan, this was just the career challenge he was looking for. We sat down to learn about his journey to Hollywood, his design process, and how visualization tools are necessary to keep up with the caliber of cinematic products.
The primary function of a professional set designer is generating various types of drawings in support of a larger film production. In my experience as a set designer, I have worked in two different capacities. The first one being conceptual or schematic designs for various sets. These drawings are intended to show the overall visual concept for a movie set. They can also be used to help the production crew make larger stylistic and fiscal decisions about a film. Specifically, whether certain sets are worth the expense of physically building versus trying to find existing locations to shoot on.