Visit from top set designer John Harding

28 March 2019

We were fortunate to have John Harding visit St Peter’s for three days. John has worked on sets for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Avatar, King Kong and many more.

John spoke to students about his career path through teaching and into theatre. He shared his focus on his love of design in all fields, his resilience and experiences working on projects that are world renown.

“New Zealand punches above its weight in the film industry with a 'can do' attitude," he said. He identified our isolation in NZ is our gift, as we cannot hire stately homes or period costumes. We can however, explore materials, experiment, be creative and innovative in a myriad of ways to create, costumes, sets, and cutting edge digital effects and programmes shared across the world.

While John was here he worked with Faith Thomas, Head of Department Art, on the set for our upcoming production Bonnie and Clyde. They painted some of the set, including the car.

John has had a versatile and varied career. He's one of the country's most respected theatre designers, film and television designers, art director and character and costume designer.

His professional theatre career began at the Mercury Theatre in Auckland as a resident designer. His love of theatre has remained with him and his recent highlights include working on the outstanding production of Chicago, the set for New Zealand's Musical Theatre Consortium's West Side Story, and Mamma Mia!

Using our Bonnie and Clyde set as an example, John said it was important to keep things simple and work with what you have. For example, our set is painted with only thee colours, but all three tie in with the theme of the play. He emphasized the story and how it is told is much more important than the props, especially when starting out.

When working on set design and costume design, John would think: "What do these characters have available to them?" for example the natives in King Kong, they didn't have many resources, so their costumes are made entirely of human hair. If the costumes are designed with what the characters would've had available, another layer is added to the story.

He encouraged students to film anything, just start somewhere. "Get your phone out, have a play with the angles. Just shoot stuff, and you will learn what works and what doesn't," he said.

After his talk, John walked around the Bonnie and Clyde set with keen students, generously sharing new techniques and insights.

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