Prejudicial Narratives: Building Tomorrow's World Today

Abstract

Film production requires world building: the power to visualise and bring to life narrative through a film's total environment. This is often entirely speculative, imagining alternative or future worlds. Here, Alex McDowell, acclaimed British production designer, producer and Professor at the University of Southern California (USC) describes his world‐building, narrative approach to production design, which he consolidated in the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report (2002) that envisioned Washington DC in the year 2050. The possibilities of this storytelling technique are demonstrated by its transference into real‐life projects, such as the immersive model that his production company, 5D GlobalStudio, developed for Al Baydha, a Bedouin village in Saudi Arabia.