WORKING LIVES
BBC/Grenville Horner
Clockwise: An Episodes set constructed in Surrey; The League of Gentlemen local shop; and pre-production sketch for the pub in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky
Production designer
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mmy and RTS award- winning production designer Grenville Horner has been adding style to television programmes for the past four decades. Most recently, he brought his quirky aesthetic to Adult Material, Channel 4’s drama set in the porn industry. What is the production designer’s job? Visualising the script and creating a world for the story to take place in. I set the mood and the tone for the look. The production designer is responsible for everything you see on screen, from a
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table dressing to the choice of landscape and everything in between: rooms, vehicles, special effects and stunts. So, everything starts with the script? I have to be excited by a script – with a lot of scripts I don’t get past the first five pages. Sometimes, though, projects come up like Channel 4’s drama The End of the F***ing World. I read a synopsis by the director and thought it was fantastic. When are you brought on board? I’m pretty much one of the first people employed. Normally, it is the director who chooses the production designer
but sometimes I’m employed even before the director. What’s your first step? Initially, I produce a series of images – they could be paintings, stills or sketches I’ve made. These are not designs for the programmes, but they establish its mood. For Adult Material, the hub of the piece is [porn star] Jolene’s family home, so I put some images together for the type of house I thought she might live in and also for the [porn] studio. Who do you work with closely? The production designer heads the art
