ISO: Women who work in film art departments & production design

April 28, 2022 2:14 PM

Looking for recommendations for social media accounts of women who work in set/production design!

Looking for Instagram/YouTube/TikTok accounts of:

• Women
• Who work in production & art department of films/tv shows/theater etc.
• Who show what making their work is like

I'm most interested in:

• Costume design
• Prop construction
• Graphic design for props
• Set construction
• Set design

But if they work in a related field I'm extremely interested too. Cosplay is cool and I know there's lots of amazing stuff out there, but I'd really love to see industry experts.

For context, I'm a woman who would like to get into these fields and want to see other women who do it. It's surprisingly difficult! It's mostly Adam Savage and other dudes making star wars props (no shade, I love those as well, I would just like to see women who do it).

The completely ineffective and also kind of creepy-feeling method I've tried has been to look through IMDB of the movies with art direction I really like and scroll through crew til I found the names of any women in the art/production departments and then tried to find if they have social media where they post about their job. No dice, and like, it does feel quite creepy tbh.

Thanks mefi!

posted by moons in june to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Best answer: The Production Designers Collective links to a bunch of production design IG accounts on this page, many of whom are women. They have lots of other resources including interviews, information about apprenticeships, and podcasts.
posted by theory at 2:51 PM on April 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

I am a woman who worked sort-of in this world from 2012 to 2016 (on the photoshop side, not the on-set side). I worked on a daytime TV show creating graphics for the show and part of my job was doing the graphic design for props - we created gag gifts to give out to guests, built props for different segments and special shows, and built fairly elaborate sets for games (like, we built a Wheel of Fortune wheel IIRC). The two people running the art department (actually building the props using our designs, also measuring things and drawing blueprints/schematics so we would have the right dimensions to work from) were also women (though they also worked with a carpenter, who was a man). One is now retired and I don't think the other has an instagram (and I'm in a different job) but if you're interested in my side of things I'd be happy to answer any questions you have - just memail me :)
posted by matcha action at 9:37 PM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Usually, crew can’t leak or publicly share anything about a film while it’s still in production without approval. So, you’re going to see images from films or TV episodes that have wrapped.
You can check out various union websites and magazines.
SDSA
ADG
posted by Ideefixe at 12:17 PM on April 29, 2022 [1 favorite]