Áine Hargaden
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a play written by Bertolt Brecht that I transposed from 1930's Chicago into modern day Chicago. In my version, Arturo Ui is a seedy businessman climbing the corporate ladder of Chicago’s business district. He blackmails Dogsborough, a local politician, and skyrockets to the top floor offices of the Chicago skyline. He sacrifices friendship, loyalty and trust for a CEO position with the aim of being top dog. The primary space that I designed is an illegal gambling ring set in an abandoned office building. The focus of the design is to feel like a panoptican. As Arturo's paranoia grows, he begins to see eyes in the windows, tv screens and buildings surrounding him.
The Blueshirts docudrama is a documentary that I designed with co-production designer with Saskia Miller. It was a collaborative project with the third year of the Television course. The project was centred around the results of the Irish general election in 1933 and the tension surrounding the uprisal of the Blueshirts, a fascist organisation led by Eoin O’Duffy. In the interest of dramatisation and theatricality, as well as a somewhat satirical approach to depicting the Irish government, the resulting design consisted of a deconstructed theatre set. The audience is aware that these are actors on a set, suggesting the fragility and facade-like state of the Irish government at the time.
Flystrike is an original stop-motion animation that I scripted, created a shot list, and drew concept art for. The visuals are intended to be striking and capture the essence of the short film, which were compiled together for a pitch deck.
My thesis explored the visual storytelling in live-action adaptations of comic books in both film and television. I believe that when assessed by the typical criteria for impactful visual storytelling in film, the nuance of the mise-en-scène in adaptations become muddled and unclear. This thesis proposed that in order to analyse the visual storytelling of comic to live-action adaptations, it's imperative to assess said adaptations within the context of their every form of media.
Three case studies were chosen: One Piece (2023), created by Steven Maeda and Matt Owens, Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), directed by Guillermo del Toro, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010), directed by Edgar Wright. The analysis was structured by listing the key components of what makes a comic to live-action adaptation visually successful were laid out through the set design and cinematography. The components were summarised into three factors: the essence of world design, cartooning, and comic panel interpretation. The framework for choosing these components for the analysis was built on the writings of theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Tom Gunning and Liam Burke. I investigated the cultural and temporal nature of each case study in order to analyse the design choices made in each production.
I am a graduate of Production Design (BA Design for Film). Over the duration of the past four years, I have honed my skills in research, technical drawing, construction, graphic design, storyboarding, miniature model creation and 3D modelling. I have developed proficiency in a range of software, such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate, AutoCAD, Twinmotion, SketchUp and V-Ray. Multiple collaborative projects with the Film and Television courses over the years have allowed me to gain experience in working on a set.
