Department guide · Art, costume, hair and make-up
Art department, costume, hair and make-up, and practical effects.
These are the departments that build the world: production design, art direction, set decoration, props, construction, costume, hair and make-up, prosthetics and practical effects. Between them they employ an enormous number of people and they are the worst served departments on the internet by some margin.
The reason is that the skills are craft skills — drawing, making, sewing, sculpting, painting, dressing — and craft skills are taught by hand. So this points at both: the industry material that explains how the departments work, and the craft material that will teach your hands something.
Where to start
Learn the department, then learn a craft.
01
Learn who does what
Art department hierarchies are confusing from outside: designer, art director, standby art director, set decorator, prop master, buyer, construction. The free role profiles sort this out in an hour and will stop you applying for the wrong job.
02
Then pick one making skill
Sewing, sculpting, model making, scenic painting, mould making, drafting. One, properly, to a standard. A single demonstrable craft skill is worth more to an art department than a general enthusiasm for design.
03
Then learn what the grades are paid
The published guild rate cards tell you what these jobs pay and what the grades are called. Read them before an interview, because this is where people are most often talked into working below rate.
Museums, galleries and archives are the underrated free resource here. Research is a real part of these jobs and the collections are open, free and vastly better than a search engine.
The list
Free, checked, and every one of these links out.
British Film Designers Guild (opens in a new tab) · Free to read · paid membership · UK
The UK body for production designers, art directors and the design crafts, covering everything from features to micro-budget. UK-specific in a discipline where almost all the published material is American.
ScreenSkills — art, costume, hair and make-up profiles (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · a great many grades
This is the department where the job titles are opaque from outside, and where these profiles do the most work. Read them alongside our own Careers A–Z.
ScreenSkills — skills checklists (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · UK grades
Industry-approved lists of what each grade is expected to hold. Print the one for your grade and the one above it.
Bectu — rate cards (opens in a new tab) · Free · published third-party data · anyone being offered a job
Published rates for costume, wardrobe and the design grades. The only way to tell whether an offer is normal, and it is published by the union rather than by us.
Stan Winston School of Character Arts (opens in a new tab) · Paid courses · some free material · practical making
Special-effects make-up, creature design, sculpting, mould making and animatronics, taught on demand and live. The best teaching anywhere on practical making, and the one paid platform in this library where what you get exceeds what the free material suggests.
V&A Collections (opens in a new tab) · Free · over a million objects · costume, props and set dec
Searchable images of period dress, interiors, furniture and objects. This is how research is actually done in this department, and a free museum record beats a search engine every time.
IWM Collections (opens in a new tab) · Free · photographs, objects, film and documents
Over a million items covering uniform, vehicles, interiors and everyday objects across a century of conflict. The first place to go for anything twentieth-century and period-accurate.
The Set-Design Channel (opens in a new tab) · Free · YouTube · art department and set dec
Set design and dressing, which is thinly covered everywhere else. Treat it as one of very few named sources rather than as a complete curriculum.
Decorating Pages (opens in a new tab) · Free · podcast · US practice · set decoration
Conversations with set decorators and designers about the job rather than the results. American, so the grade names differ — read ours alongside it.
British Cinematographer (opens in a new tab) · Free to read online · UK productions
Production articles that name the designer, the build and the practical effects alongside the camera work. The design decisions are often described more precisely in the cinematography press than anywhere in the design press.
Every link here goes to the owner’s own page, in a new tab. How we treat other people’s work · Last checked September 2026.
The BFI and the National Trust publish searchable collections as well. Between the museums you have a free reference library for almost any period, and no login.
Money on it
Materials, mostly
In these departments money is better spent on materials than on tuition, at least at the start. A portfolio of things you have made is the application.
A further education craft course
Carpentry, upholstery, pattern cutting, sculpture, scenic painting, metalwork. The art department hires on a making skill, not on a film degree: a City & Guilds in carpentry is worth more to a construction manager than a media BA.
Paid, often funded
Materials and a workspace
Not a course. This is the department where the barrier is a bench and forty pounds of materials rather than a subscription, and the page should say so.
A real cost
Stan Winston School subscription (opens in a new tab) · Paid · the full library · practical effects and prosthetics
Worth it once you have decided that making things is the job you want. Not before.
The book
One, and it is about process.
| Book | What it is for |
|---|---|
| The Art Direction Handbook for Film — Michael Rizzo | The working reference for the art department’s process and paperwork. Process-heavy, which is exactly what is missing from the free material. |
Where you are
The same list, sorted by what you have already done.
| If this is you | Do this, in this department |
|---|---|
| Never been on a set | Read the profiles until the twenty job titles stop sounding the same. Then pick one making skill. |
| You have a first day | Ask before you move anything. Continuity lives in this department and a dressed set is a document. |
| Building a career | The checklist for your grade, the Bectu card for it, and one making skill taken seriously. |
| Changing department | A demonstrable making skill crosses instantly here. A film CV without one does not. |
| Running a department | The published rates you are hiring inside, the build lead times, and the guild directory productions search. |
The grades
Where to read about each one.
The rest of the department
Costume, hair, make-up, props, set dec and construction, grade by grade, in the Careers A–Z.
Any word on this page you have not met before is in the glossary, in UK terms.
Where the gap gets filled
By making things, and by being on a unit while somebody else does.
Take a local craft course, make things badly until they are good, photograph everything you make, and get onto sets in any capacity so you can watch a standby work.
Our production simulations run with real art department and costume requirements rather than treating them as scenery, so the continuity, the standby work and the resets are part of what is being tested.
Sbarro BTS
To be embedded once uploaded.
