Series Development Decks
Four series, pitched and designed before a single frame was shot.
- Role
- Creative Producer · Deck & Treatment Design · Visual Research · Poster Design
- Year
- 2019–present
- Series
- She's Gone with Water · Nasab: First Class · The Rebels · Last Days of the Wind
- Format
- Development decks for broadcast drama
What a deck does
Before a channel commits a budget, a development deck has to make everyone see the finished show: the story, the camera, the colour of each era, the sets and the wardrobe. I designed these decks and built their visual treatments. On She’s Gone with Water I was also creative producer.
The four series
Creative Producer · Deck & Treatment. Three women in three eras of Kuwait (the 1920s, the 1940s and today) whose stories of love defeated by tradition are woven into one timeline.
- Structure
Three eras, one climax
Each arc keeps its own era; all three meet in a single tragic ending.
- Camera
Operatic and moving
Wide shots of mud houses and cityscapes; a large-format Steadicam that never stops.
- Colour
A grade for each era
1920s high contrast and warm, 1940s soft and very warm, 2020s high contrast and cold.
Deck & Treatment Design. Nasab: First Class follows police, detectives and a psychology professor hunting a Kuwaiti con artist who sold fake watches and jewellery to aristocrats and celebrities.
- Look
Glamour, open and bright
Modern Kuwait as a shining, breathable world the characters are almost too perfect for.
- Titles
A man without a face
The opening is built from newspaper articles about a criminal no one can identify.
- Design
Couture on white
High-end couture against high-ceilinged white and grey sets, so the luxury stands out.
Deck & Treatment Design. A biographical drama about a rebellious thinker and writer, told in a documentary-like style with an emphasis on drama.
- Style
Documentary drama
Steadicam throughout and light from windows and lamps, for realism in the spirit of The Crown.
- Colour
Uniform, then pop
The greys, beiges and burgundies of 1980s offices, broken by deliberate pop-up colours.
- Titles
Inked snapshots
A 2D opening of drawn moments from a life of journeys, scored with Arabic orchestration.
Deck & Treatment Design. A family caught in the first days of the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, told as black comedy that never mocks the tragedy, in the tradition of Life Is Beautiful.
- Tone
Between drama and comedy
Warmth, fear and humour at once, carried by one family's journey across the desert.
- Sets
Built, with a surreal edge
Most locations are built for control, with a hint of surrealism over real geography.
- Colour
Desert and uniform
Warm earth tones from the desert against the fabrics and uniforms of the time.
