Controlled Assemblage

Controlling and arranging the visually complex can often be very rewarding.

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You might breathe a sigh of relief when you know you have as much time as you need, and the resources needed, to create an elaborate scene, rather than anxiously trying to snatch one from real life. Well, yes and no, because large-set studio photography starts from nothing – a blank space which you, the photographer, have to compose. There’s no serendipity, no lucky breaks, and if the result’s messy, you have only yourself to blame. There are many ways of constructing a set for photography, but one of them has the target of making a kind of visual ‘list’. It might be Fabergé cigarette boxes, the full range of products from a manufacturing client or, in this instance, movie props and artefacts created by Industrial Light and Magic.

ILM, as it’s generally known, was set up by George Lucas, as a special effects facility to create the original Star Wars movie back in the 1970s. This was before digital was prominent in filmmaking, and much of ILM’s early work was about model building, prosthetics, costumes and animatronics (mechanically ope