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 retail environment. The quality of scenography varies greatly. While larger teams of specialists often work on a coherent scenography and set design for films and television, larger retail stores and restaurants, the whole affair often takes a much less interesting direction for many smaller local shops and stores. But in the age of instagrammability it has to be instagrammable high quality spatial experiences grow in importance 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 the staging of space. Staging always means, above all, the evocation of certain feelings and a mood in the viewer or experiencer (for lack of a better term) 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. And really, if you think about it the words “scenography” and “staging” tell you all you need to know about their origin domain.

Especially the inclusion of the space above the visitors in a stage 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 if it is shown it almost 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.

Staging leaves the stage

While originally hailing from the world of theater and film the scenographic staging is becoming more important in different industries and this describes a shift in how we prepare a space for curated experiences that have been thought through from the beginning.

You could almost say that staging scenography is upping the ante from mere interior design.

Exhibitions

For exhibitions, it is becoming more and more important to convey their contents with the help of good scenography. In todays multimedia world 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 leading 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 recedes into the background. Here, it is primarily about carefully crafting views into a space that can be shared well on Instagram. These views or vistas aim for reach by being shared thus giving 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 and a few signals point back at the originator.

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.

it has to be instagrammable

Virtual and Augmented Reality

One can now imagine that “staging”, if taken further, inevitably also includes staging in virtual reality space. While scenographers in film and television already use computer technology to bring hitherto unknown worlds 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.

Video Games

While most video games are largely created from scratch starting off of a pristine environment where everything has to be created, I would not traditionally apply the term “scenography” to most videogames.

In the videogame world the terms “Environment Design” or “Level Design” are established and each cover different aspects of the scenography from different angles. But when I think about scenography in the context as I have described it here I think about very atmospheric games with a strong aesthetic design sensibility that spill out of the videogame world into a broader cultural context.

The Hitman series, Deus Ex, Mirrors Edge and Control are four examples for videogames with a strong scenographic design that permeates all aspects of the game. Mirrors Edge sits at the extreme end of the spectrum because it is so cohesively stylized that you cant help but marvel at how they ever pulled that off.

The Hitman series sits at the other end of the spectrum. While it’s levels are very realistic from a visual point of view what sets them apart from a scenographic point of view is the sheer amount of options you have to successfully achieve your mission without ever breaking the immersion.

Outlook

It will be very interesting to see how those different paths, the classical and the new media one, converge in the near future.