James Ashley was the sole member of the art department for the graduation film "Saturday Morning". As production designer, his responsibilities included character designs, costumes, props, and set design. Some of his key designs included the costumes for characters Farley, Frank Winters, and BoyBoy. He also designed and built the set for the flashback corridor scene. Within his budget of around £2000, Ashley was able to complete all of the art department work for the film.

1. SATURDAY MORNING
PORTFOLIO
James Ashley - Production Designer

2. MY ROLE
I was the Production Designer for the graduation film:
‘Saturday Morning’. Despite the film being one of the most
ambitious films in terms of art department, for my film
production course’s year, it didn’t receive much attention.
Consequently, I was the only member of the art department.

3. PRE-PRODUCTION

4. SCRIPT BREAK DOWN
own the original script and made my props list and costume list fro

5. CHARACTER MOOD BOARDS
as for the three central character’s costumes. Several of the chara

6. FARLEY

7. The Dress
Farley is meant to be the femme fatale character of old
, a production designer from another graduation film, to try and nail down the look of ‘The Wo

9. he high leg slit for a thigh holster rather than for the theme. The director wasn’t sure if Farle

10. Make Up Inspiration

11. For a while we were fairly set on giving Farley a shoulder holster for her p
have a clutch to keep her gun in
instead.
The Holster

12. The Gun
I quickly decided that the gun Farley carried
should match with her 1920’s esq character design.
For this I picked out a snub nosed crome revolver.
I managed to find someone who could source me
a prop one for free during the shoot. It was
non-working but came under the heading of
Realistic Imitation Firearm (RIF). This meant we
needed police permission whenever we were filming
with it.

13. FRANK WINTERS

14. Frank’s Coat
Frank is a pirate/naval officer themed villain, I wanted to
capture
that through his clothing in a strong way. I looked at run
down moleskin coats, but decided they were too grimy for
him, he is a narcissist, he doesn’t want to look too scruffy.
I started looking at naval officer coats. But finally settled
on a Russian naval captain’s coat as I felt it suited the final
casting more.

15. The Eye Patch
eye patch myself using faux leather and a fancy dress eye patch as the base. The eye patch didn’t come

16. The Boots
is costume. When the actor had been cast I was able to find out he had his own pai

17. Unused Ideas
the idea of giving Frank a gothic t-shirt under his naval trench coat at one point, but quickly scratched it as it didn’t fit t
he gold ear Frank had in the original script as we had decided the ear was too tricky to make. The idea was vetoed a

18. Final Costume
Here is a concept I made with photoshop
for Frank’s final costume. This was made
after the actor Mark Caven. I thought the
actor’s features would compliment this
costume more than the original more classic
british sea captain’s coat.
The red waistcoat compliments the grey,
showing Frank’s more flamboyant side, hidden
behind murky grey morality.
For Frank’s pistol I decided to use a RIF Colt
1911. The pistol is of an very old design but is
still in use by governments round the world
today. I felt this would be the perfect pistol to
suit Frank’s needs. A big loud gun to suit his
loud personality, old but still working in good
condition.

19. BOYBOY

20. The Hat and T Shirt
and hat we picked. However we removed the anchor on the hat as it looked too sparkly when it arrived. T

21. The Trousers
There were no specifications on trousers from the director
so at first I opted for a military feel, to suggest more of a past
for BoyBoy. However towards the end of pre-production, I felt
that non of the options were working with the upper half.
I decided to go back to the noire style roots and get some
brown pinstripe trousers with classic brown braces to
compliment them.

22. The Mask
ugh several options, we finally settled back on our original idea, which was a three hole balaclava. I feel this better su

23. Final Costume
Here is the final costume design for BoyBoy that
I put together with photoshop. The trouser’s style
were inspired by game art for a character in a
Batman game. I felt it was appropriate to use it as a
base for the picture as the game’s look was very much
what the world of our film was meant to look like.
I did this design before casting and it was one of the
few costumes I didn’t feel the need to redesign based
on the casting.

24. Waitresses
Spree production design. This is due to me knowing absolutely nothing about dress

25. Additional Costume Design Details
such as hand drawn sketches, can be found in the physical hand

26. BUILDS
of the project I’ve had several pieces I’ve had to plan to build or b

27. MAD EYES SIGN
The picture shows a design I
mocked up on photo shop of
the proposed Mad Eyes Diner
sign that I was going to have to
build. Before I could draw up
measurements the plan was
scraped as they wanted
Farley’s character to enter
through the back door of the
restaurant instead. However I
had planned to make it with
plywood, LEDs and a neon bulb
that we were going to have to
get made custom. The paint
was to be more faded and
cracked in the physical design.

28. LAIR CORRIDOR SET
For the flashback scene involving a corridor and blast doors,
I had to design and build a set.
With the help of the camera department we built it from uni
resources. Though we ordered our own MDF for the blast
doors as the flats at uni are too worn to be flat enough. I
contacted the fine art department of uni and asked if they’d
be able to cut the MDF panels to the shape needed for the
blast doors and they agreed. Once that was done I covered
the doors in several layers of Hammerite fake metal paint to
give it a worn metal effect. Unfortunately you couldn’t make
this out in the final cut.

29. Dressing the Corridor
expensive. Inside we had a skull I borrowed the from fine art department of uni, a lamp stand that I dri

30. I also got two plastic plumbing pipes and screwed them to one of
the walls. I then made a hole in one of them to make it look like it
had burst and ran a smoke machine through it from the top so
smoke would billow out in a cloud. The effect worked well though
you can only see it for a second in the final edit. See here pictured
behind the actress as she rounds the corner.

31. Final Set
I feel the final set came
out very well considering
non of us building it had
ever been trained in set
building. My only gripe is
that the side walls were
creased and full of air
bubbles under the wall
paper we put down, due
to the nature of the flats
underneath. I wish we
had bought more MDF
flats of our own to use
but we would have gone
over our budget. Overall I
think the set works for it’s
8 second screen time.
Additional design details
can be found in the
physical hand in folder.

32. I made sure to leave a gap between the blast doors as the gaffa wanted to have a red light shining
through the gap

33. BUDGETS AND BREAKDOWNS
ch breakdown. However, the overall budget was not handled by me as my w

34. BUDGET
Taking into account the whole art
design for the film. I estimated that
I would need around £2000 of our
overall budget to complete the film.
After having a short talk with the
producer he granted me almost
that exact amount.
Due to the work load of trying to do
costume, props and set dressing
all by myself, the production
manager Kethry was selected by
the producer to do budget
handling.
I regularly ran numbers by her in
person when I was selecting props
and costume items. I was always
well within budget.
Overall I finished my job with plenty
of budget to go, how much of it
there was however, I do not know
as it quickly got shifted to support
other departments. The number
running was subcontracted out to
the production manager so I didn’t
handle them myself.

35. Costume and Script breakdowns can be found on the blog undern