Courses

Aoibhe Rice

Hi, I am Aoibhe Rice and I am specialising in Production Design for Stage and screen. The world of film and theatre has always called to me, and being able to create worlds and engage with audiences beyond being the performer has become a passion. Although theatre has my heart, and where my interest in design originated from, I aspire to work as an art director in film. Through lots of sketching, scale models and digital 3d modelling I communicate my ideas using a range of materials, SketchUp and AutoCAD.

Storyboards

The Rue Morgue 1:50 white card model side 1, murder apartment far left

The Rue Morgue 1:50 white card model side 2

living room/kitchen construction drawings

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

For my final year Major project, I chose to adapt Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder in the Rue Morgue. Previous adaptations lost the dark humour that permeates the story and so I wanted to make sure the mood of the film would be able to support that humour without diminishing the darker storyline. Set in 1950's Paris, two young men become fascinated with the bizarre murder of two women in their apartment, and set out to solve it. Pulling inspiration from directors such as Fritz Lang, Wes Anderson and Jacques Tati, I wanted to create a world with striking visuals that combined real life locations, studio builds and scale models.

dissertation PDF

Dissertation: A Stranger at Home: The depiction of uncanny children in American horror cinema 1956-1980

For my dissertation, I examined the depiction of evil children in American horror films, between the years
of 1956 to 1980 through three case studies; The Bad Seed (1956), The Exorcist (1973) and The Shining (1980).
By looking at how the cultural and historical factors impacted American society, I explored how the children in these films are formed through the prevailing fears of American society and used as a tool for social critique. Working with Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalytical theory of the Uncanny, I dove into what makes these children unsettling and thus, why they are so effective in representing American fears on screen.

dissertation PDF