Scenography

The creation of scenographic spaces is an art that can transport to another world

Scenography is a word that we don’t come across very often in everyday life. Yet we are always exposed to it when we watch a film, watch television or enter a shop. The quality of scenography varies greatly. And while larger teams of specialists often work on coherent scenography for films and television, the whole thing takes a much less interesting direction for many shops and stores. But in the age of instagrammability high quality experiences and their design become ever more important for brands and locations. And a good scenography plays a vital role in that.

The staging of space

Scenography is the field of activity that is primarily concerned with staging of space. Staging always means, above all, the evocation of certain feelings and a mood in the viewer of a film or the visitor of an exhibition. The aim is to reduce the distance between the viewer and the medium “space”, even if there is still a screen in between.

Good staging is primarily about creating a coherent, self-contained world. When you are in that world, you feel like you are really there.

Especially the inclusion of the space above the visitors in the production often leads to a stronger coherence, but is connected with great effort and not least with great costs, which is why it is often dispensed with. In film and television, too, the ceiling is often not shown, and this only happens when a room really needs to be shown in its overwhelming size. But even in “two-axis stagings” (When the ceiling is not shown.) there is already a lot of potential for an immersive design of the room.

Exhibitions

For exhibitions, it is becoming more and more interesting to convey their contents with the help of good scenography. In todays multimedia world where we are inundated with imagery everywhere we go more and more museums are breaking away from the traditional understanding that it would be enough to simply put a few exhibits in a room and the exhibition would be finished. Instead, museums have stepped up their game when it comes to scenography which even lead to some blockbuster exhibitions where visitors where left asking if they are visiting for the exhibited artifacts or the exhibition scenography itself.

Staging for Instagram

When staging on Instagram, the information, knowledge and emotion conveyed by a scenography is in the background. Here, it is primarily about creating views within a space that can be shared well on Instagram. The number of “shareable views” (into the staged environment) is variable, but in most cases, scenographers often limit themselves to just one view due to space constraints. These views or vistas aim to be shared and thus give the respective client a large presence on social media. Many productions provide a handful of central hashtags for this purpose, so that this happens as bundled as possible. The effects of this design direction can then be seen at larger events such as the Salone del Mobile, the Art Basel or the Venice Biennale etc.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

One can now imagine that “staging”, if taken further, inevitably also includes staging in virtual space. While scenographers in film and television already use computer technology to make new, hitherto unknown worlds almost true to reality, the immersion of virtual reality takes this feeling to a new level. While VR and AR are not yet in the mainstream, videogames already are and there scenography plays a vital part as well. It will be very interesting to see how those different paths, the classical and the new media one, converge in the near future.