CREW SPOTLIGHT: ‘Sweet As’ production designer, Emma Fletcher
Western Australian production designer Emma Fletcher has worked across a wide array of local and national projects (including How to Please a Woman and Rosehaven). She chats to Screenwest about her career and her work on WA feature, Sweet As.
Western Australian production designer Emma Fletcher has been working in art department for two decades, designing homegrown features How to Please a Woman and A Few Less Men, along with ABC series The Heights, Itch and series one and two of Rosehaven.
In 2022, she travelled to Tasmania to design new Amazon Original comedy series Deadloch, with over ten fellow WA practitioners working across the series’ art, costume and makeup departments, including costume designer Lien See Leong and makeup artist Kate Anderson.
Recently, Emma served as production designer on Jub Clerc’s debut feature Sweet As, filmed in WA’s Pilbara region. The coming-of-age road movie follows troubled 16-year-old Murra, who is thrown an unusual lifeline and joins a group of teens on a photo safari for at-risk kids. The film was awarded the NETPAC Award at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and the Generation Kplus Crystal Bear at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.
We chatted with Emma about her work on Sweet As, working with her fellow WA crew members over east, and her advice for emerging production designers.
What originally drew you to production design and how did you get started in the WA industry?
I wish I could say that I always knew I wanted to make films and that I spent the 80s and 90s consuming Star Wars, Stand by Me and the Alien films – but I didn’t! I did a broad design degree at Curtin and in 1998 (my third year) my lecturer asked me if I wanted to do some work experience on Fast Tracks, a Barron TV series that Clayton Jauncey was designing. I found my tribe!
I did exhibition design for a few years and then asked Clay for a job. I tried to bluff my way through a casual graphics position on The Shark Net having never used photoshop or a Mac before. Then I started designing short films while running on Susie Campbell’s Foreign Exchange. I did graphics on the infamous “German job”, Rapture of the Deep, and then found myself art directing for Clay. The rest is history and I am eternally grateful.
Can you talk us through your design process on Sweet As? How did you bring Murra’s world to life?
I have worked on projects with Jub, Liz [Kearney, producer] and James [Grandison, co-producer] for at least 15 years and knew that Jub had this incredibly special story to tell. Jub’s mum, Aunty Sylvia had been an important part of some previous film projects I had been involved with and her spirit was strong while we worked on Sweet As.
I always approach designing a project in the same way. It is about distilling the characters and story world down into emotion and atmosphere. For me, it is about immersing myself into the environment, the history and finding the layers. I normally surround myself with more reference material (beauty and beautiful ugliness) than I know what to do with.
Having worked in the Pilbara and the Kimberley before I was able to build a visual bible of textures, signage, light and shadow and work out what makes Murra’s world unique. The WA film industry often requires us to travel long distances, away from family and friends and for months on end – the flip side of that is that we inhabit these unique moments and experience the vast beauty of WA.
As we were working regionally on Sweet As, we wanted to involve the communities of Port Hedland and South Hedland in the film. Jub and I went out to YIC (Youth Involvement Council), an organisation for at-risk kids, to talk to them about the project. They ended up doing a series of drawings centering on what it means to be from the Pilbara and to live on country. I incorporated each of the drawings into a collage of their art and photos I had taken of Country. This large scale image was printed and I spent hours applying the graphic to the picture vehicle bus, surrounded by the chickens that enjoyed hanging out at the production office amongst Lien See Leong’s costume racks and art finishing station.

Covering the picture vehicle on Sweet As. © Emma Fletcher
You’ve designed a wide range of projects, from detailed studio sets on The Heights to Sweet As, which follows characters journeying across the Pilbara. Is your approach to both the same, and are there specific advantages and disadvantages to working in studio spaces vs wide landscapes?
My design approach to The Heights was the same as it was for Sweet As which was the same for the WWI project The War That Changed Us. The scope of work, budget and crew capacity is the variable. The Designer (and Art Director) work to a budget, a time frame and to a creative brief. One must get all three right for a successful shoot and a successful career. Transparency and dialogue and an understanding of what one is making, ensure this success. The Heights was specifically conceived to be a studio project – a fast paced, character driven, long running series. The Heights was a gift.
The wildly exciting part of designing a studio set is that one has absolute control of what is in front of the camera. And while expectation needs to match the budget, the level of character thought has to be more extensive… the luxury of choosing architecture, colour palette and the deep dive into the characters’ inner lives. We were blessed with finding our exterior locations a stone throw from the ABC studio and then had complete creative freedom to develop these interiors within the studio.
You also designed the brand new Amazon series Deadloch, working in Tasmania alongside a slew of talented WA practitioners. What was it like working with some of your regular WA collaborators outside of WA, and why do you think our local crew are so highly regarded across Australia?
Anyone who knows me knows that I am fiercely proud of being from WA – and that Tasmania is my home away from home. This was the 4th project I have done out of Hobart (following The Kettering Incident and the first two series of Rosehaven) and the WAFIA (West Australia Film Industry Asset) was well represented! The Art Department and Lien See Leong’s Costume Department were filled with talented Western Australian crew. Kate Anderson did Prosthetics and ex-WA Tim Goodacre (Gaffer) and Mark McCumber (Best Boy) were in the lighting team. At our peak there were 12 WA crew onboard.
I must be honest and say it was a gruelling six months through locked state borders, a Tassie winter, super strict covid plans and eight hours worth of ambitious television. We survived and all our hard work can currently be viewed on Amazon Prime. I try to surround oneself with people who give a damn. This coupled with our work ethic, our ability to laugh and muck in together does bode well on and off set. A lot of us have grown up together (Tim was an art department runner, nearly 20 years ago) and we take pride in each other’s work and achievements.
What has been a career highlight thus far?
This industry is a way of life and therefore the lens with which one views it matters. It asks for adaptive resilience, fortitude and sometimes non-negotiable stamina. At times I am just glad I survive it! And then suddenly there is the addictive thriving through the sheer magnitude of achievement, the incredible hidden places ones goes and all the people one meets.
In real terms, Lockie Leonard was formative, Mad Bastards was life changing, The Heights was all-encompassing and the Professional Film Crew of WA endeavours to keep us moving forward. Receiving a Natalie Miller Fellowship mentorship with Owen Paterson (PD of Matrix) was an honour and heading to Berlinale this year with Sweet As and the Production Designers Collective was icing on the cake.
Lastly, what advice would you give to emerging production designers in Western Australia?
I believe it is all about acts of faith and endeavouring to be useful. Faith that the work will come, faith in other people and faith in one’s ability to solve problems. I tell students that my first design on a short film came through a sound recordist and my first feature design credit was a recommendation from a safety officer. Say yes. Keep in touch. No one ever has all the answers. Be willing to do anything you ask someone else to do.

WA crew members in Hobart during the filming of Deadloch. © Emma Fletcher
Sweet As is currently screening in cinemas around Australia. Session times available here. Deadloch is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video here.
Contact Screenwest
T: +61 8 6169 2100
E: info@screenwest.com.au
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with Screenwest.