There’s
an old concept in the film business that no one person is responsible for the
completion of a movie. Of course there are arguments to that theory but anyone
who has ever been on a film set or any kind of shoot knows that it takes many
more people than the person who says “Action” to get the project off the ground
and into the movie theatres.
Once
you step onto a shooting stage, whether it’s in a Hollywood studio or on
location out in the desert somewhere, you’ll see someone operating the camera,
people setting up lights and reflectors, several sound people, a director, a
makeup person, and among many other people contributing their part to making
the movie, there will also be an art director. This position is one of the
important behind the scenes jobs that can’t be overlooked. The art director,
especially on commercials and independent films is responsible for the overall
look of the film, the visual identity of the project as a whole.
Jake
Wilkens, from The Great White North, or Canada as some folks call it, is a very
talented and much in demand young art director. He loves what he does and
started out working on the construction team building sets for a horror movie.
The production designer apparently liked his work and promoted him to assistant
art director and the rest is history. Wait a minute…that’s simply not enough.
Okay, then, here’s a little more. Jake became fully interested in the job of
art direction when he realized on that particular shoot that there was a lot
more going on in each scene than just the acting and the camera work. He found
himself seeing, for the first time, the smallest details on each set and in
each shot, and then he started to appreciate each frame of film for what it
really contained. He realized that everything in the frame was meant to be
there and was placed in its exact spot on purpose – by the art director.
He
always liked movies but more as entertainment than as an art form. Once he observed
all the things that went into designing and dressing a set, he recognized the art and the creativity in the field of
art direction and knew that working on films and commercials was what he wanted
to do as a career. He also decided to move to Los Angeles to be at the
epicenter of filmmaking in the Western world and immersed himself in the
essentials of Entertainment Studies at UCLA. After that he began getting jobs
as an art director. Of course, his curiosity got the best of him and he also
started working as a cinematographer, writer and director, eventually making
his own film, “Wanderer,” which won high praise and was warmly welcomed at
several well known international film festivals.
We
are going to be keeping our eye on Jake Wilkens. We certainly want to see what
he’s going to do next.
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