Output details

Ken Adam designs the movies : James Bond and beyond

Although the production designer on a film is the person most responsible for transforming the words in the screenplay into the images on the screen—in close consultation with the director and cinematographer, and supported by the art department he/she has assembled—there have been surprisingly few studies written about the role of this particular kind of designer. Whether the film is shot on the street or on a studio soundstage, the production designer has decisively shaped the visual outcome—and yet most critical/scholarly debate has been about the role of directors, actors, writers and most recently cinematographers. This book, which makes detailed use of Ken Adam’s unpublished personal archive of concept sketches, roughs, set and prop drawings, storyboards and set photographs, explores the whole cycle of one designer’s contribution, step by step, from initial concept to what finally appears on the screen. It focuses in particular on design-work for director Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove, 1963; Barry Lyndon, 1975); on seven James Bond films (from Dr. No, 1962 to Moonraker, 1979); and on the changing structure of the industry from the studio era (Adam entered it in 1947), via independent production companies to the era of C.G.I. (Adam designed Goldeneye, a computer game, in 2003-4). The book aims to be a design guide, an archival sourcebook and a critical/historical account of an influential designer’s/design manager’s career—to help redress the historiographical imbalance. Words by Christopher Frayling; images by Ken Adam.