Exclusive: Gabriel Concept Art and AU Interview

Production designer Victor Lam talks fake blood, cheap effects tips and breaking into the industry.

As the Australian theatrical debut inches closer and closer towards release on November 15, the floodgates of information are starting to creak open. We recently spoke with the very humble Victor Lam, an accomplished production designer who helmed the set design and props used in the film. He gave us an exclusive look at some of his storyboard art and some of the cooler props from the film.

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IGN AU: Hey Victor, so you're the storyboard artist and production designer on Gabriel?

Victor Lam: Actually, I was more the production designer - I did a few boards for the film but that wasn't my title. My role more entailed overseeing every design aspect of the film, making sure that from a props point of view, location point of view and a costume point of view, I oversee. I mean, costume is definitely not my department - that was Lisa Warpole and she did a fantastic job.

So it was more about an overall 'feel' for the film; making sure that it sits with Shane's direction and making sure that colour-wise, tonally it actually fits as well. My work from the beginning is to make sure the editors don't have to do too much work in grading. There's only so much you can do with grading, and if it's not in the right colour palate, then it's going to look wrong altogether anyway.

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IGN AU: That's a pretty massive undertaking - what did you study to get to where you are, and what are you currently up to?

Victor Lam: I actually came out of a TAFE course doing entertainment and events design. It was probably a lesser course in the industry compared with NIDA or AFTRS. What happened was, I actually went down to Melbourne and production-designed my first film, which built me up before Gabriel and made me go, 'right, I can do this'. The actual design side was very short; I got hired about a month before the actual production. It was really good though, because Shane and I hit it off very quickly and he had a lot of good common concepts. It was more that we arrived at a point that we loved now and then we just had to execute it, rather than going back and forth and figure out what we liked.

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IGN AU: That's interesting, because the shooting was done on and off over a couple of years, due to the monumental task of budgeting a film like this independently. Were you still designing throughout the two-year long shoot?

Victor Lam: I was on-hand throughout the whole three months of principle photography while also there for preproduction. We had a very small art department - six people; I mean, in the normal film world, six people is nothing for an art department. Everybody was all-hands-on-deck, everybody had to do everything, pretty much.

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IGN AU: What kinds of limitations did Shane put on you? How did he help shape the designs?

Victor Lam: Well, we were always very budget-conscious, because we had a very minimal budget. What we were trying to do was, we had to get the 'feel' right. How we came about actually getting the exact object and things - there were certain things that Shane said, 'we have to, have to, have to get these things.' And we got those things. As long as we were willing to get certain things, he was very much willing to give [in] on others. He is very much willing to negotiate.

One of the things he has to do is sign off on everything. For example, one of the final scenes in the film was one of the ones he didn't sign off on - he was just like, 'go and do it'. It was kind of freaky because, well, is he going to like it? [laughs] And he showed up and was like, yeah, this is exactly what we wanted. It was a really, really, big relief that we got what he wanted.

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