Emma Fairley is a Los Angeles-based production designer. She has built sets for music videos by Coldplay, Madonna, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, as well as commercials for some of the world’s best-known brands. Her feature film work includes the award-winning Lords of Chaos, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, filmed in Hungary and Norway and produced by RSA Films, Scott Free, Vice and Twentieth Century Fox. When we met at our studio in Vilnius, she had just wrapped filming in Lithuania, Croatia and Sweden on Clark, the Netflix series starring Bill Skarsgård about the life of the famous bank robber Clark Olofsson.
One idea ran through our whole conversation: a great set is not about good taste. It is about learning how to look, and caring about the story behind every object. In this talk, Emma shares what to study if you want to become a production designer, how she thinks about composition and taste, how a set brings out a character, what it was like working with Madonna and Lady Gaga, and how to get a foot in the door of the film industry.
Let’s dive in.
Learn How to Look
People message Emma on Instagram all the time asking what they should study. Many go straight to architecture. Emma sees the value in it, but also a trap. A deep architectural education often leads you to become a set designer, the person who draws all day. That is a different job. Production design needs a much wider set of tools.
Her advice is to start with art history.
You learn how to look at Southeast Asian art. You study the beginning of civilization to court painters. You get all the history.
Art history trains you to look at something and immediately know its story. Then come the other skills: math to conceptualize space and understand how things are built, color work and paint, and composition.
Two Ways In
Emma sees two paths into the job. If you are a school person, get your education, because a university gives you far more than one skill. If you are not, don’t waste your time. Get in there, do every job in the art department you possibly can, and work for good people.
I worked with really great designers as I was learning, great designers, and god, you learn so much.
She has also worked for people who weren’t good, and learned from that too. Either way, the work is hard. The hours are long, the deadlines are tight, and the expectations are high. You can’t stay in this job unless you really love it.
There Is No Such Thing as Good Taste
Some people join a crew for the first time and already have it. You can see it in how they place a single object. Emma isn’t sure this instinct can be taught, although it can be learned along the way. When it comes naturally, it feels fresh, and it always stands out.
What she doesn’t believe in is good taste as a fixed standard.
There’s no such thing as good taste.
A lavish Versace look with gold everywhere is good taste to someone. So is a calm, minimalist Swedish interior. Taste depends on who is looking. This is exactly why we created the Brand Cards: to help designers and their clients get clear on what they actually mean when they describe a look.
Every Object Belongs to Someone
For Emma, set design starts with a real interest in the character. If the script describes a distraught young woman in her twenties, everything in her apartment has to belong to her.
The ashtray is one that she stole from a hotel when she was staying in Brussels overnight.
Each object has to mean something. Emma works from the script and talks with the director about who the person is. What books are on their shelf? On one film about an assassin, that question became part of building the character. She likes those choices to be surprising. An assassin might well own a book on Monet.
Actors bring a lot to this as well. Even on music videos, big musicians have arrived with their own props for the set: a photo of their mother for the dressing table, small things that will mean something to them while the cameras roll.
Madonna’s Dressing Table
One of those moments happened with Madonna. The team had built a bunker-like bedroom for a personal story of hers, and she had a lot of say in how it looked. On the morning of the shoot she arrived casually, with a few bags and no big entourage, simply there to work. Inside the bags were personal objects for the set, including a pristine Frida Kahlo photograph.
The set was meant to look apocalyptic, which meant dust over everything. Madonna’s answer was simple: just be careful with it. Then she brought out the rest of her things to arrange around the dressing table and the mirror.
And I just thought that’s caring. That’s why all of the work ends up being so iconic.
Her commitment went far beyond the props. At four or five in the morning, with a long night still ahead and an hour’s drive back to Los Angeles, she threw herself face down in the dirt and kept dancing. Her input shaped the work as much as the director’s.
Lady Gaga, in Emma’s experience, is the same: a hard worker. On these sets, the stars work as hard as anyone, and everyone on the crew gets a proper thank you at the end.
So, fortunately, but unfortunately, I have nothing but great things to say.
Just Send the Message
Instagram has made everyone more reachable. Emma gets messages from people in Iran, India and many other places asking where to start. Her advice is always the same.
Find the people in your city who are working, who you admire, and just send them a message.
Her story about Frank shows how far that can go. On a ride to the airport in Los Angeles, her Uber driver told her he was from Uganda. He had studied film in Boston and moved to LA, but he had no contacts in the industry. Emma was about to leave for a holiday and then a film in Hungary. She made him an offer: text me on November 27th, when I’m back, and I’ll hire you.
Her return was pushed to November 29th, so she sent him the new date. He wrote back right away. He had lost his phone, and her number with it. On the morning of the 29th, his text arrived.
Emma hired him for a few small jobs, a couple of days here and there. Then came a Lady Gaga music video, ten long days on set. She never told Frank who the talent was. On the first day, she asked him to stand next to her just as filming began. Lady Gaga walked onto the set.
And he looked at me. He was like, “Is that?” And I’m like, “Yeah.”
Frank promised that one day he would bring Emma to Uganda, where his family would treat her like one of their own and cook her the best dinner ever.
To see more of Emma Fairley’s production design work, visit emmafairley.com.
