We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Monique Dias. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Monique below.
Monique, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Talk to us about building a team – did you hire quickly, how’d you recruit the first few team members? Any interesting lessons?
I am a Production Designer for film and television, which means I oversee the look of the environment of a story. I read about a character on the page and then ideate what their surroundings would be, both from a practical standpoint and from a symbolic standpoint. This job allows me to oversee a collection of experts who specialize in architecture, construction, graphics, decoration, drapery, practical lighting and props.
On every job, I personally hire anywhere from 4-10 people who then go on to hire dozens more to flesh out their teams. The job lasts as long as it takes to capture a story – typically anywhere from 1 month to 6 months. And, when you’re working, you see your coworkers more than any other person in your life. Film days are 12 hours on average, and you work anywhere from 5-7 days each week. That’s a LOT of time to spend with strangers. So, when it comes to building my art team, I take it extremely seriously. I want to surround myself with talented, passionate experts who know more than me and who love their job. I want them to take my framework of design and add flesh to it and bring it to life. I want people who care about the story we are telling and the people we are realizing. And I want to enjoy their company, since I’m spending upwards of 60 hours a week creating with them.
I have been working in this industry for over a decade, and it has taken me about that long to find the team that works best for me. I’ve worked with a lot of wonderful people whom, eventually, we went our separate ways – maybe because of a career change on their part, or they found their way onto another team, or because I needed someone who better fit my needs. Building a team can sometimes feel a lot like dating and you find yourself saying, “you’re wonderful, but I think our goals just don’t align well enough. I need to find someone new.” But when you find someone who just effortlessly clicks into place, not only with yourself, but the other teammates, it’s magic.
My first teammate was my now-decorator Esmeralda. When we first met, she was an Art PA fresh out of college. She did a really good job on the project we worked on together, and she was willing to work on the low paying gigs that I got, so we ended up doing several projects together. As my jobs grew in scale, so did her role. She dabbled for awhile as my Art Director, until she realized she wanted more creative control. So we moved her into Set Decoration. She was a Set Dresser and a Leadman for awhile until, one day, she said she wanted to lead the department and decorate. So, on the next job, I placed her there. She has been my Set Decorator ever since and has also become one of my best friends (as I said, we spent a lot of time together this past decade). Every step along that transition was just that – a step. She would try a role on one project and actively decide what she liked and disliked about it. We continued adjusting that role every time a new job came along until she found her perfect fit. Eventually, it just clicked right into place.
Another regular on my team is my Art Director, Jess. She came into my world suddenly and clicked in instantly. I had been working with several Art Directors over the years, some who were very talented, but none that felt like an extension of my own brain. I needed someone who thought like me and worked like me and, most importantly, took some of the burden of managing off my shoulders so I could focus on creating. Esmeralda was intimate with my woes and so, when she worked with Jess on a film, she knew right away that Jess was the person I had been looking for. I’m very grateful to have found her.
The regular positions continue to fill up and they all come in a similar manner. I think about and communicate with my team what I am looking for, ask them what they need and we discuss what is working and what isn’t. We then either interview people or keep an eye out for talent between jobs or get great recommendations. But it all comes down to paying attention, knowing what you want and working together as a team to find it.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a Production Designer for film. Growing up I was a very shy kid and I spent a lot of time entertaining myself by either reading books or drawing. I was very good in school, but my parents thought I was weak socially and so they tried to find an extracurricular activity that I could latch onto and blossom in. After several different failed attempts, I finally came across theater. I took several classes at my local community theater and I absolutely loved it. I got involved in Drama Club and took several theater classes throughout high school. I think I was able to overcome my shyness through acting and performance because I wasn’t playing myself – I was playing someone else. So if my character was silly or did something embarrassing, I personally didn’t have to feel that way. It was just make believe.
During this time I also began drawing floor plans and exteriors of buildings. I got very interested in architecture and design. I was definitely that kid who would rearrange my room at 1 am and would have a different theme of decor every 6 months. I would sew my own curtains or cut up old clothes to make pillow covers, paint my own artwork to change out of frames and buy stuff at the dollar store or TJ Maxx to make things feel different. It was a great creative outlet for me.
Finally, I became very interested in movies. I would rent movies from the library and go to the theater with my friends whenever I could. When I got my first real job, I would go to Target on Tuesdays (new movie release day) and buy the discounted new releases of DVDs so I could see absolutely everything and anything that came out.
By the time I got to college, all of these interests merged together in my mind and I realized I wanted to major in filmmaking. So I applied to the BFA program, got in, and finally, touched my first camera. My college film program had us take classes with the same 20 people for 2.5 years, so we all became very close and worked on each others projects. I quickly found interest in both Production Design and Assistant Directing. When I graduated I applied to The American Film Institute in Los Angeles for Production Design and the DGA Trainee Program in New York City. I ultimately got into both, and I found myself significantly more excited about AFI, so that was that. It was Production Design for me from there on out.
My undergrad degree taught me the basics of filmmaking and it taught me how to tell stories and play. Graduate school was a crash course in the tangible bits of Production Design. I learned basic construction and how sets were built. I learned about set extensions and VFX. We learned how to draft and 3D model and use photoshop and create keyframes. We learned how to research stories and find inspiration to use as jumping off points in our design. And, above all, we learned how to collaborate with the 5 other disciplines and techniques for communicating our ideas. It was a jam packed two years that I am so grateful to have done.
Post graduate school, I began working on indie projects for next to nothing. I remember splitting a day rate with someone – $75 a day for 12 hours a day (or about $5.36 an hour pre tax). I enjoyed the work but I felt like I had more to learn. I wanted to be apart of a bigger art department and see what “real” shows were like, so I found my way onto “Modern Family” and was an art PA with them for a season. I learned a LOT during that time and it definitely added a missing side to my formal education.
At the end of that year, I applied to the ADG’s Trainee Program – a program that, if selected, would fast track you to becoming an Assistant Art Director by being an art PA on a show. Because of the portfolio I built in school, mixed with the fact that I had already spent a season as an art PA, they allowed me to bypass the program and I was welcomed right into the union. After being ecstatic about the acceptance, I quickly realized that I didn’t feel ready to be in that role, eventually climbing up to Art Director and then Production Designer, always on a big project. I felt like I needed to learn more about how to be a Production Designer, how to collaborate with other departments, how to develop my own voice outside of the safe umbrella of an art department. So I decided to leave Modern Family and start Production Designing again.
I got a mix of indie projects and new media union shows at first. With every job I got better and better, I learned more and more, and my budget and crew grew and grew. I still have a long way to go but nowadays, I’m definitely happy where I’m at. When I first started as a student, I remember renting set dec from Universal Prop House. Occasionally I would take the golf cart onto the backlot to pick out furniture from The Barn, and I’d think “man, I can’t wait to design something that shoots here, on a real lot, with real soundstages.” I’ve been back to Universal many times and have worked there in many capacities, until it finally happened in 2022. I got season 2 of GRAND CREW, an NBC show shooting on the Universal lot. On the first day, I hopped into MY personal golf cart and took a lap around the lot, thinking about how I finally made it.
—-
Regarding what makes me stand out and what I have to offer clients, I think it has to do with my journey. I am a filmmaker first and foremost at heart, and a designer second. What I mean by this is that I didn’t come to this craft because I’m overly fond of beautiful aesthetics and if I wasn’t a production designer, I would choose a different role in the storytelling world. Because of this fact, I think a lot more about character, story thematics, symbolism and mood. I’m not afraid to make a set look tacky or ugly if thats what the character calls for, and I don’t make design decisions based on my personal aesthetic taste. For example, I’m not a personal fan of 1960s aesthetics, and yet I’ve had zero problem creating a burnt orange, funky lounge for my most recent project, a Curtis Mayfield documentary. I don’t bring my own ego into my work, I don’t always need to be right and, above all, I put the project first – both the story we are telling and the lives of the crew who are working on it. I’m here to facilitate and create great art. And, above all, I know that filmmaking is a team sport, which is what I love most about it.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I don’t have a compelling backstory to this, but the most important lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that no one truly knows what they are doing. Most of the time, people who seem like they have the answers are just confidant in the way they deliver. I mean this more in regards to creative decisions (I’m not implying that my construction coordinator is guessing as to how to safely build a set). The point of this lesson is that all of our creative voices matter, are valid and are correct in their own ways. And it is our job to convince our peers of that (or listen to their opinions and follow the course they have set). Once you realize that, creativity gets back to being a playful game and the opportunities expand infinitely. All of a sudden, you realize you can do anything you set your mind to.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist used to be the art itself – making something that entertained people or educated them or drew out emotional responses and made you feel alive.
Now, the most rewarding thing is similar, but internal. I feel the most reward when our filmmaking team achieves something so insane or difficult that we barely believed we could do it. And then the thing is done or the moment is passed, and we stand back and are in awe that not only did it, but we did it well. It’s very humbling and inspiring to watch others achieve beyond their perceived limits.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.moniquedias.com
- Instagram: esmo_duo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monique-d-9a7259235/
- Other: ADG Profile: https://adg.org/directory/5645-monique-dias/ IMDb Profile: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3962527/
Image Credits
No credits necessary. Please note that 4 of the photos are before and afters (so they should be organized like a set).