Mindbreaker

"Mindbreaker" is my graduation project, in which I participated as a Production Designer. It was the first project where I managed the production design from start to finish, also taking care of costumes and set dressing. Because of low budget of 200£ I faced many challenges in terms of getting specific furniture and props. One of the locations required a complete dressing as it was empty and needed several furniture pieces and decorations. Because of the overall dark and grimy aesthetic I was going for, it was relatively easy to find needed props and furniture for free. The action of the film takes place in the near future, but at the same time it represents the poverty and neglect of society, where the topic of drugs and addiction was never properly addressed and the hope for the good future is far gone. Therefore it was important to show through production design the futuristic time period but at the same time the poverty and careless lifestyle of the people of that society. I managed to achieve that by analysing what potential trends in fashion, home decor and technology could appear in the future world and which social class could afford those specific trends as well as how it would affect their behaviour and lifestyle. At the end I went for a decision to include pieces from the past,"retro" pieces such as cassette players, flip phones, square TV boxes etc, as not only it could nicely represent the trend for reusing and going back to past trends, but also state how by that time in the future it will be the only things people could afford as the new technology would be very inaccessible for people of lower class and would most likely be considered as "trash". I included those ideas in costumes and set dressing as well.

During the project I also worked together with my coursemate on creating the cassette logo design, posters and several newspaper cover pages.