Purpose

• Through practical and theoretical lessons, you will extend your notions of classical set designing to the advertising field, strengthening the imagination of the student through the experiments on group work that take place in the laboratory, the analysis of the work already done, up to the creation of the proposed set-advertising subject.
• This course will explain to you the materials and the techniques to rebuild or modify Still Life objects, that can give the suitable bases for complex mock-up applications.

Programme of the course

1. Theoretical section:
   • Introduction to the subject, knowledge of the students.
   • How to reduce three-dimensional objects to scale.
   • Basic knowledge of the perspective applied to the cinematographic field.
   • Theory of the field.
   • Knowledge of building materials, different varnishes and useful instruments to work on sets or mock-up.
2. Practical section:
   1. Brief project and construction of simple sets for Still Life work (on the proposed subject).
   2. Group project and construction of complex sets (on the proposed subject).
   3. Project and individual or group construction of a complex set (on the proposed subject).
   4. Useful information to give the necessary cognitive support for building complex sets, for example about articles of model-making already existing on the market; knowledge of the manufacturing industries, the articles in the catalogue and out of the catalogue; knowledge of the degree of difficulty in producing them and their practical applications.
   5. Vision of the main and most significant sets produced by the John Kaverdash School on film and of the models helpful to create them, with production costs and time that will give a real image of the professional world.
   6. Economic analysis at the beginning of every professional theoretical project, dwelling upon the cost of the materials and the production time.
   7. Hints of the production potentialities, the quality of the demand (order), analysis of the effective potential skills of each person and practical individual advice.
   8. Group project to create a simple mock-up application (on the subject directly chosen by the student).
   9. Economic analysis at the beginning of every professional theoretical project, dwelling upon the cost of the materials and the production time.
   10. Hints of the production potentialities, the quality of the demand (order), analysis of the effective potential skills of each person and practical individual advice.
   11. Collaboration with a group project that will involve all the students of the course and final photograph.

Further information:

• The materials helpful to project and produce the work will be paid by the students.
• The strictly individual work instruments, such as pencils, squares, notebooks, cutters, and spatulas will be bought directly by the student and they will be part of its work equipment.
• We want to lay emphasis on the fact that the course aims at being a useful support for advertising and/or Still Life photographs, but it is not a course of photography. For this reason, we will treat the specific subjects necessary to give to every student a "three-dimensional mentality".
• The final objective is the possibility of giving a shape to the image in your mind, and getting the necessary knowledge to produce them three-dimensionally (a set or an object to reproduce).
• During the lessons we will deliver some work forms that the student will fill in, step by step, with the list of the materials, their working and the time spent, as well as the concerning notes. The aim of these forms is to follow the evolution of the student and create an archive with the descriptions of the work done.
• The chapters that illustrate the course are not necessarily applied chronologically to the course, as the its objective is giving a global vision of the potentialities applied to this new branch. For this reason, the experimentation linked to the practical laboratory activity is fundamental, and the teachers will decide the time and the importance of a subject compared to the other.
• To conclude, besides giving a good support for those who already work in Still Life or in general in the advertising world, the course aims at giving plastic and modelling knowledge together with a "three-dimensional mentality".
• The final objective is giving a shape to the images of the student's mind and getting the necessary knowledge to produce an object or a set.