It is the sort of problem more familiar from the Chelsea Flower Show than the Royal Albert Hall up the road — how to create a Japanese water garden that can, and will, be seen by thousands of people. For David Roger, however, it’s just part of the job.
In this case, that job, as a professional set designer for film, television and theatre, has involved the latest Albert Hall production of Madam Butterfly by the Opera Factory with his long-time collaborator, the director David Freeman. And the most spectacular feature of the set is the water garden, in the middle of which sits Madam Butterfly’s house.
“We have 55,000 litres of water, which is kept in four large tanks under the stage and is drained and recycled each day, with a complicated cleaning process to make sure it is on a safety level with drinking water and no bugs and bacteria grow under the lights.
“Little paddles tucked under the walkways create ripples that propel the floating candles across the lake during the love duet and a special ice machine produces low-lying mist to create the impression their world is dissolving in a haze of romance.”
Mr Roger doubts that another building would have allowed such a design. “The water is very heavy and most buildings would collapse under the weight, but Queen Victoria intended this to be the people’s auditorium and it was built to withstand almost anything.”
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Set designers create the overall look of a theatre, television or film production. In film and TV, they are often known as production designers, in the theatre as stage designers. In live performance, unlike in film and television, the set designer is usually also responsible for the costumes and Mr Roger says that almost all of the fabrics used in Madam Butterfly have come from Japan and date from the relevant period.
Although some venues create their own productions and have in-house design departments, set designers usually are employed by theatre and opera companies that sell their productions to performance spaces. According to The Society of British Theatre Designers, most are trained in some form of performance or theatre design — and it offers information on relevant courses on its website. Fees paid to junior design staff should be a minimum of £2,400 per production and can rise to about £100,000 for set and costume designers on bigger operas and international pieces.
Few set designers who have learnt their craft in live performance cross over into television production design; even fewer do so as successfully as Mr Roger, who trained with the English National Opera. He got the opportunity when some directors he had worked with in the theatre made the move and invited him to join them. His recreation of Miss Havisham’s decaying house for the 2011 production of Great Expectations earned him a clutch of awards, including a Bafta, and he has spent much of the past three years working on the BBC’s seven-part adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s novel, which will air in May.
In his long career, Mr Roger has had to deal with drama both in front of the camera and behind it. He remembers one incident when he was filming a Ray Winston thriller in Istanbul. “A bomb went off in the British embassy and we were suddenly uninsurable. We had 24 hours in which to decamp to Malta and recreate Turkey there. All I’d managed to take with me were a hookah pipe and Turkish flag.”