The TV & film industry is a tough one to break into, but not too tough for Dave Blass, production designer for top TV shows, like “The Boys,” “Preacher,” “Constantine,” and “ER.” Like many others before him, Dave got a foot in the door working for the famous Roger Corman’s Concorde Studios. He learned how to work under tight timelines and even tighter budgets.
He’s moved up in his career and is now responsible for the look of a show. From designing sets and finding the right location, to working closely with the visual effects team to create digitally animated worlds, Dave builds worlds for TV every day. With a little help from SketchUp he is able to create crazy, complicated sets in a matter of days.
What’s your expertise in the film & TV industry? Do you develop sets for TV shows and film? Is there a difference in workflows?
I have been working mainly in television for the last decade. In television, the “showrunner” or executive producer is really the visionary, unlike in film where it is the director. On most TV shows, each episode is directed by a different person. Also in films, you usually have the script before starting the process. In TV, we often get the script only a few weeks before we are shooting an individual episode; so, the pace is vastly accelerated. In films, you usually start with a script and design sets for what is listed in the script. Because of that, there are fewer “what-ifs” in film. Conversely, in TV, when you are designing what we call a “permanent set” - for example, a generic police squad room, generic hospital ward, or the main character’s home - you are designing the set based on the scripts and information you have available to you. You have no idea what else could potentially happen in that set. Will there be a fire? Will something explode? Where will the bathroom be? Where are the other bedrooms that aren’t in the script? This gets us into the “World Building” aspect of TV set design. This is where you end up designing a lot more of the world than just what the scene is in the script. This allows you to pass off the designs to the writers so that they can write to what you have created, rather than write something that can’t be designed or won’t fit on the soundstage.
