Meet Adele Biraghi, Film Production Designer

By: Claire Wong ‘23

Director, screenwriter, and producer Adele Biraghi, a graduate student at SCA, speaks on the struggles of production design within the film industry. Adele works to shed some light on the art of production design, which is often overlooked at USC. 

Adele Biraghi is a graduate student at the School of Cinematic Art’s Film & Television Production program. She began her film journey as an undergraduate student at the University of Arts, London where she directed and wrote for film and television. From dystopian horror to critical comedy, she began exploring her passion for writing and directing in a professional industry. Adele won the Platinum Award at the International Film Festival for Woman, Social Issues and Zero Discrimination, Official Selection at the Berlin Flash Film Festival, and many more recognitions during her studies in London. As she continued on with this rigorous career path, she found herself to become gradually more weary and longing for a newfound passion. It was by pure coincidence that she found her passion for production design. She designed her classmate Kyle Stumpp’s film, In Absentia, and instantly fell in love with the creative process; Adele discovered she had a natural skill and joy for production design. 

Production designers are the artists responsible for bringing a set to life. They use a collective of props, textures, and color schemes to cultivate the tone and environment of a film. Adele says production design “really helps sell the design of a movie [that] is aging.” Your set may only be on-screen for a few seconds, but you only have a few short moments to truly capture the viewer and their feelings. Every minute detail adds to the experience that brings the audience into a new world. 

Production design is a key element in filmmaking, yet it continues to be overlooked and taken for granted. “Most people who are not into filmmaking never ever think about the spaces where the action is taking place, and where the props, furniture, textiles, colors and architecture came from,” Adele says, and professors are similar. Many professors “never appreciate or comment on the color scheme, the props and textures, but they tend to mostly give feedback on acting and camera work.” 

She finds that specifically at USC, “most student productions don’t get an appropriate pre-production time, production design is the first element to get sacrificed and students tend to just assemble some generic objects they already own on screen.” The art of production design is instantly lost.

As new technologies are integrated into the film world, production design becomes increasingly neglected. Virtual reality and artificial intelligence are digitally substituting the roles of a production designer.

It is not easy to work in production design because it is an art that is very detail-oriented — it requires great patience and perseverance. Adele says she has spent hours on hours preparing props for a set such as scraping the labels off of over 50 beer bottles for a short scene in a television show and blowing up over a hundred balloons for a 1960s prom set. But Adele loves the process and seeing the impact it can make on a piece in just a short few seconds.

Her most recent production design work is seen in a 546 thesis film titled Teddy Mate. Teddy Mate is a coming-of-age film that follows the story of a young girl and the discovery of her sexuality. The main character explores what it means to be gay in an alternate reality in which everyone is straight and partners are assigned to 6-year-old children in the form of Teddy Bears. The project had a tight budget of $3000 and the crew had to film and dress 16 locations. 

With so many locations with such little money, it was crucial that Adele was very strategic in her sets. Adele used an abundance of colors, props, and symbolic shapes to visually demonstrate a message. She adopted a baby pink and baby blue color palette to represent the strict gender norms of the alternate world. She integrated teddy bear shapes through items such as bags, lamps and posters, to fully immerse the audience into that alternate world. She played with changing textures and colors throughout the piece to demonstrate the shift in plot and character development. Every element was intentionally chosen and added depth to the story. Every piece was chosen with purpose. The most challenging part of this project, Adele says, was making empty spaces “feel lived in but also consistent with our fantasy world on such a small budget, and changing over time […] it takes a huge amount of props and dressing to make a space believable.” 

Adele is working to continuously shed light on the power of production design for those that do not understand it. She takes action very early in the development process, educating directors on the importance of production design and explaining how color and props could greatly enhance the project. It shapes the overall tone and personally connects the audience to an imaginary world. It is not an easy role, but through her personal works and career path, Adele continues to make others aware of the essential role production design plays in the film industry.

Check out Adele’s work here: https://adelebiraghi.wixsite.com/designerportfolio

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