Anna Rhodes is a Production Designer and Art Director for Film, Commercial, Music Video, Events and Stills. She is based in London, but has worked globally, including Mexico, Chile, Tokyo, Seoul and Europe. Her long list of clients include Steve McQueen, Kanye West, One Direction, Kylie Minogue, Virgin, Absolut, Nike and Net-A-Porter.

Anna and Production Design Digest host, Kelly Sinclair Smith, discuss her career journey, designing shoots abroad, building successful director relationships, developing colour palettes and how her background in graphic design helped shape her into the production designer that she is today.

In this episode with Anna Rhodes we cover:

• What lead Anna to pursue a career in Production Design
• What her degree in Graphic Design taught her about developing colour palettes and how it influences her approach to designing
• Anna’s creative process - how she preps a job from start to finish
• How to create stand-out mood boards, and the importance of using carefully considered references to develop initial set designs
• Her go-to sources for inspiration
• What it is like to design a music video for Kanye West, directed by the iconic film director, Steve McQueen
• Her passion for designing music videos and what it is about doing them that she enjoys most
• Anna’s research that went into designing and building (not one, but two!) entire New York street sets that take us back to 1985. We go into detail about all the different artists that Absolut have used for their advertising campaigns, and how she had to show the passing of time by re-decorating the streets to represent every decade from 1985 to current day
• We examine the importance of developing a mutual level of trust with directors
• She discusses her “series of micro-failures”, what she learnt from them, and how ultimately it made her a better designer
• And much more!

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Show Links:

• Toys (1992) IMDB | Production Design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti
• Ferdinando Scarfiotti’s IMDB

Follow Our Guest:

• Anna Rhodes’ Website
• Anna Rhodes’ IMDB
• Anna Rhodes’ Instagram
• Anna Rhodes is represented by Wizzo & Co

Follow Kelly Sinclair Smith:

• kellysinclairsmith.com
• IMDB
• Instagram
• Kelly Sinclair Smith is represented by Vision Artists

Original Score by Joe Davies