Design de produção e caracterização de personagens: estudo de caso sobre a série True Detective

Abstract

Cinema uses a variety of tools to tell a story and engage the viewer. Among these tools, the production design is responsible for creating the story’s fictional universe. Through the work of the art department, sets and costumes are planned and created in order to contextualize the story and convey messages to the viewer. This work is evident not only in movies but also in television series, which are gaining notoriety from the public and the critics. Nonetheless, we note a paucity of studies that rationalize, in a productive way, the importance of production design within the television universe. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the work of production designer Alex DiGerlando in the award-winning first season of the True Detective series, produced by the Home Box Office (HBO) channel in 2014. We sought to understand how the series sets, with focus on the residences, contribute to the construction of the character’s identity, as well as to the consequent assimilation of these identities by the spectators. The methodology used for the development of this study is based on a literary review in books, dissertations and theses, as well as in scientific articles on production design, on television theories, as well as on narrative and character construction. In addition, we will interview the professional Alex DiGerlando in order to verify how the story transcription from the script to the physical world happens, and how some of the choices from the art department of the series occurred. We realized that all first season’s sets were created with thoroughness. The great level of detail in the sets helped the construction of the scenes, corroborated the character’s universe and, consequently, contributed to the process of the plot’s internalization by the viewer.