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Mélanie Chiriacescu

Hi I am Melanie. I am a Production Designer, based in Ireland, originally from Switzerland. I have a passion for writing and creating with the intention of enabling people to escape reality. For this reason I have decided to pursue a career in the Entertainment Industry. I enjoy working on a set with people who are passionate and hope to be able to do that in the future. I have always been particularly passionate about music and I would love to be able to work in the music industry as a Production Designer.

For my final project I have decided to design a stage for an album as if the album was to be performed live in a stadium. The album I chose is called "Mono" by RM. It is an album in Korean made by a Korean artist. To create my design, I researched the city of Seoul and included elements of it in the projections and on the stage. My main focus was to try to find the soul of the city and have elements of it in my design. I also wanted the possible audience to travel and feel the album as the artist performs. The stage needed to support the narrative of the lyrics and provide a visual experience without drowning the singer. Each song is storyboarded with four images. I only included one image to represent each song in my exhibition. This is the overall design of the stage.

This is the design for the first song of the album called "Tokyo". This song is the introduction song so the artist is meant to appear on stage. The transparent bubble slowly drops until it reaches the stage and the artist comes up from under the stage as the smoke creates an element of surprise. As the bubble slowly lifts up, the artist appears in front of the audience. The idea for this song is to play with lights and smoke to create anticipation.

The second song is called "Seoul". The listener travels around the city in that song and the lyrics tell a story. I decided to use elements of the city, such as the written words that appear on one bridge. The lyrics of the song with a video of the artist appears on the front screens. The idea for this song is to give a sense of travel.

The third song is called "Moonchild". It talks about finding peace in loneliness and happiness in pain. The artist refers to himself as the child of the moon, someone who feels alive at night. I wanted to focus on something more calm by bringing dancers on stage. The two small stages welcome one dancer each, both holding a ribbon made of coloured LED. The dancers on the main stage would perform a traditional Korean dance. The screens and the light give a sense of night to refer to the moon.

"Badbye" is the bridge of the album. I wanted to use this song as an opportunity for the artist to travel to the front stage. This song is the climax of the album, its breaking point and this is represented by a storm being projected on the screens. The front screens revolve to add movement to the song.

The next song is called "Uhgood". It is the calm after the storm. To represent this song I decided to use the cycle of the seasons by the use of fake snow and rain. The front screens project the image of a tree through the seasons.

"Everythingoes" is the most positive song on the album. No matter what happens there is good in the bad and bad in the good. This song is about finding freedom in life. To portray this, I used paper airplanes and origami birds. On this image, the paper airplanes fall into an hourglass and turn into sand. I also added two contemporary dancers on stage dancing around the artist.

The final song is called "Forever Rain". Since it is the final song I decided to focus on lights and firework as the artist walks back to the main stage to exit. The song summarises the entire album and it was important for me to bring a sense of closure for the audience.

This is a storyboard of the entire project made into a short film to see how the design evolves throughout each songs.

Set design for concert

For this project I have decided to design a stage for a concert. My design was based on an album called “Mono” by RM. It is made of seven songs in total and I made a different design for each one of them. The album is a very introspective album that analyses our relatonship to the city we live in, how we interact with others and the world around us, and how to find peace amid the chaos that life can bring sometimes.
The idea was to offer a visual experience to an audience that supports the narrative of the album and adds an atmosphere to it. Going to a concert is a mix of different experiences such as visual, social and auditory, but what stays with us forever is what we felt and in order to feel it again, we have to re-visit our memories. With my design I wanted to offer an event that will allow people to make memories that they could go back to and relive a time when they felt alive with no worries other than enjoying a performance and living in the moment.

Representation of women in the James Bond franchise from 1962 to 1974

For sixty years now the James Bond franchise has been one of the highest grossing franchise in the history of cinema gethering millions of viewers with each new movies. As people know today the franchise has a history of problematic depictions, racism and stereotypes. One of the famous character that came out of this franchise is "the Bond girl." The “Bond Girl” is viewed as an archetype. It is a beautiful woman that Bond interacts with but is the depiction of this woman realistic of full of stereotypes?
In my research I decided to focus on the James Bond films made during the second wave on feminism. I picked three movies that mirror society and the changes feminism was creating for women. As seen in the dissertation, the franchise has used feminism demands to its advantage. It attracted a broader audience while maintaining patriarcal gender stereotypes and gender relationships.
After doing an in depth analysis of different scenes from each movies it becomes obvious that the James Bond franchise has not evolved with its time but instead pushed back on different ideas and created a version of feminism that advantages men.

Production Design

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