Dreamscapes by design: how Fan Yu builds emotional worlds for film

There are production designers who decorate a frame. Then there are production designers who quietly alter the emotional gravity of an entire story.

For Fan Yu, space is never passive. A corridor can carry grief. A basement apartment can quietly reveal generational pressure. A window can become a metaphor for longing before a single line of dialogue is spoken.

That philosophy runs through Yu’s work across film, theatre, immersive experiences, and live performance. Trained originally as an architect before pivoting into production design and scenic design, Yu approaches environments not simply as visual containers, but as emotional systems — spaces layered with memory, psychology, tension, and dream logic.

“I’ve always loved films where there is a central set, especially a home, that feels like it has been passed down through generations,” Yu explains. “A home can hold so much sentimental value — all the memories, history, and emotional weight inside it.”

That sensitivity to emotional architecture began early. Raised in Hangzhou, China — a city Yu describes as carrying “the coexistence of the old and the new” — the future production designer grew up surrounded by spaces saturated with history and atmosphere.

At the same time, Yu’s father worked in commercial filmmaking, exposing him to the mechanics behind visual storytelling from an unusually young age.

“My father worked in commercial film in my hometown, so from a young age I understood that images are constructed,” Yu says. “I saw that what looks effortless on screen often comes from very deliberate decisions.”

That distinction matters because Yu’s work does not chase realism in the strictest sense. Instead, it exists in the slippery emotional territory between memory and reality — where spaces become psychological extensions of the characters inhabiting them.

The Fellini effect

Like many visually driven filmmakers and designers, Yu points to Federico Fellini as a foundational influence. But rather than simply admiring Fellini’s spectacle, Yu became fascinated by the way cinema could fracture reality itself.

Specifically, it was 8½ that changed everything.

“The finale sequence — the moment when the boundary between life, memory, performance, fantasy, and cinema completely breaks down,” Yu says. “Suddenly the film is not just showing a story; it is revealing the machinery of imagination and creation.”

Yu became deeply interested in Fellini’s visual language: scaffolding, theatricality, circus imagery, heightened reality.

“I think that kind of heightened reality is something only cinema can do in such a powerful way,” Yu says. “It is not realistic in a literal sense, but emotionally it feels very true.”

That idea — emotional truth over literal realism — now sits at the center of Yu’s practice.

Before moving into film and theatre, Yu trained formally in architecture, earning a Bachelor of Architecture in China before later pursuing an MFA in Design for Stage and Film at New York University.

Yet architecture alone eventually felt too rigid.

“Production design gave me the freedom to not always ‘make sense,’” Yu explains. “In architecture, a space has to function in real life. But in production design, especially for film, the space only needs to make emotional and visual sense for the frame, the scene, and the moment.”

That freedom unlocked something larger.

“The limitations of architecture can be overwritten by artistic instinct,” Yu says. “Production design allows me to build spaces that are not only functional, but psychological.”

Building spaces that remember

A recurring idea throughout Yu’s work is memory — not simply narrative memory, but architectural memory. Rooms that feel inhabited by time itself.

That philosophy was sharpened by Gaston Bachelard’s seminal text The Poetics of Space, which Yu encountered during architecture studies.

“The Poetics of Space really shaped how I think about intimate spaces and time,” Yu says. “Sometimes the smallest object in a room can carry the deepest story.”

Bachelard’s influence appears repeatedly in Yu’s creative vocabulary: corners, drawers, thresholds, hidden spaces, compressed interiors, emotionally loaded objects.

“I pay a lot of attention to things like corners, thresholds, reflections, narrow passages, blocked sightlines, and objects that feel emotionally loaded,” Yu says. “Sometimes a room feels charged because of what is missing.”

That subtle psychological pressure is central to Yu’s understanding of production design.

“I think tension makes a space psychologically charged,” Yu says. “It can be the tension between comfort and discomfort, beauty and decay, openness and confinement.”

Importantly, Yu’s approach avoids over-designed spectacle for spectacle’s sake. The work remains grounded in character behavior and emotional specificity.

“For me, world building is about creating a life, not just a look,” Yu says. “A believable world has habits and history.”

That distinction separates Yu’s work from purely aesthetic production design trends flooding social media. These are not Pinterest-ready sets disconnected from narrative. They are environments designed to reveal pressure points in human behavior.

The emotional realism of ‘Pedigree’

One of the clearest examples of Yu’s design philosophy can be seen in Pedigree, the acclaimed short film that earned selections at the Palm Springs International ShortFest, Brooklyn Film Festival, and HollyShorts Film Festival.

Yu served as production designer on the film, which centers on an Asian-American family navigating survival and aspiration in Flushing, Queens.

Rather than leaning into generalized visual shorthand, Yu focused intensely on specificity.

“For Pedigree, I wanted the home to feel very specific and lived-in,” Yu explains. “I did not want the apartment to feel like a generic stereotype of an Asian-American home.”

The production transformed an empty basement in Bayside into the family’s apartment. Yu approached the environment through daily behavior: cooking routines, storage habits, emotional gathering points, worn objects, subtle evidence of survival.

“The father carries a lot of real-life pressure, so his world needed to feel practical, and shaped by survival,” Yu says. “At the same time, the daughter is growing up and becoming an adult.”

Yu became especially interested in balancing claustrophobia with tenderness.

“Even in a cramped basement apartment, there can still be warmth, humor and care,” Yu says. “That balance was very important to me.”

The emotional realism of the film resonated strongly on the festival circuit.

“For me, it showed that a very specific family world can still connect with a larger audience,” Yu says. “When the details are honest, they can become universal.”

That philosophy also reflects a larger shift happening across contemporary production design. Increasingly, audiences are responding not to polished perfection, but to worlds that feel textured, flawed, and emotionally inhabited.

Yu understands that instinctively.

Designing rebellion

Yu’s fascination with psychological space naturally extends toward stories about rebellion, identity, and transformation.

One project currently occupying much of Yu’s creative energy is a stage adaptation of Dead Poets Society in China, planned for major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu, with a premiere at Beijing Poly Theatre.

Yu’s interpretation avoids creating a straightforward academic environment. Instead, the production explores spatial control itself.

“The school represents discipline and authority, so I want the space to feel like a structure the characters are living under, with no exit,” Yu says.

But within that oppressive system, the world gradually begins to fracture.

“When that happens, the world begins to crack open,” Yu says. “New passageways are revealed to the characters, and also to the audience.”

The contrast between institutional interiors and liberating exterior spaces became central to the visual language.

“The outside world — the woods — becomes a place where the characters can breathe differently,” Yu says. “Where the characters discover another way to exist.”

That idea of spaces reshaping consciousness fascinates Yu.

“I am always attracted to stories where the inner change of a character can reshape the world around them,” Yu says.

A designer thinking beyond the frame

Part of what makes Yu’s work distinctive is the ability to move fluidly between mediums. Film, theatre, immersive environments, and concert productions all require fundamentally different approaches to spatial storytelling.

“For film, I think a lot about the frame,” Yu says. “For theatre, I think more about the whole stage picture and transitions.”

Immersive work changes the equation entirely.

“For immersive work and live performance, the audience’s body becomes part of the experience,” Yu says. “They are not just looking at the design; they are inside it.”

That physicality has influenced Yu’s understanding of rhythm and audience psychology.

“In immersive experiences and concert productions, the audience is surrounded by the world,” Yu says. “It is a 360-degree way of thinking.”

Yu currently collaborates with Jason Ardizzone-West Studio and Team Loudbox on immersive productions and large-scale visual experiences.

These projects demand a broader form of scenography.

“The flow of the show has to be designed almost like a journey,” Yu explains. “Visual metaphors, repeated images, movement, light, sound, and spatial rhythm all have to come together live.”

That multidisciplinary flexibility increasingly defines the modern production designer. Audiences no longer experience visual storytelling exclusively through film screens. Narrative environments now exist inside installations, concerts, branded experiences, theatre productions, streaming content, and immersive events.

Yu appears particularly well-positioned for that future because the work is rooted not in trend-chasing aesthetics, but in emotional architecture.

Constraints as creative fuel

Production design often lives under intense constraints: limited budgets, difficult locations, technical compromises, impossible schedules.

Yu sees those restrictions differently.

“Challenges excite me because they often lead to more inventive design solutions,” Yu says.

One recurring example involves obstructed sightlines within locations.

“At first, a wall, column, doorway, or piece of architecture blocking the view can feel like a problem,” Yu says. “But those obstacles force me to think more creatively.”

Rather than removing those imperfections, Yu often integrates them into the storytelling itself.

“I can use those visual barriers as a storytelling tool,” Yu says. “To conceal something and then reveal it.”

That instinct reflects Yu’s architectural training, where spatial logic and structural relationships remain foundational.

“Architecture gave me a foundational understanding of scale, proportion, and spatial logic,” Yu says. “I use that foundation as a starting point, and then I allow myself to work more freely.”

Yu’s work ultimately lives in that tension between structure and instinct.

Beyond decoration

Yu is candid about what many people misunderstand regarding production design.

“I think many people may see production design as decoration,” Yu says. “But for me, design is storytelling.”

That philosophy explains why Yu prefers early collaboration with directors, long before visual references or aesthetic treatments become finalized.

“The best collaboration happens when the director and designer are talking about meaning, not just style,” Yu says.

That relationship allows design to actively shape narrative construction itself.

“Sometimes a space can help clarify a scene or even reveal something about the character,” Yu says.

Yu’s architectural background also gives an unusual advantage during production.

“My background in architecture and interior design gives me a strong command of space, structure, proportion, texture, and material,” Yu explains. “It also makes me assertive and precise in my design decisions.”

At the same time, Yu rejects rigid stylistic branding.

“I think my voice is less about repeating one visual style and more about how I approach the story,” Yu says.

Instead, the throughline is emotional excavation.

“What does this space remember?” Yu asks. “What emotion does it hold?”

Dream logic and the future

When discussing cinematic influences, Yu lights up while describing The Hourglass Sanatorium.

“It feels like the film is unfolding through a psyche,” Yu says. “Almost like a stream of consciousness.”

That fluidity — where time, memory, place, and consciousness merge — is exactly the kind of storytelling Yu hopes the industry explores more aggressively.

“I would love for the industry to explore more stories where space and time are allowed to become psychological,” Yu says. “Where the design is not just illustrating a world, but helping create the logic of the world itself.”

It is a striking articulation of what production design can become when freed from pure realism. Not wallpaper. Not background. Not aesthetic filler.

A narrative engine.

For Yu, the goal is not simply visual admiration. It is transformation.

“I want the experience to almost feel like a round trip into and back from a dreamscape,” Yu says. “The audience temporarily escapes the real world, enters a heightened reality, and then returns to their own life slightly changed.”

That philosophy may explain why Yu’s work lingers after the frame ends. The environments do not simply look beautiful. They feel remembered.

Relevant links:

Fan Yu’s site

​Palm Springs International ShortFest​ • Brooklyn Film Festival​ • HollyShorts Film Festival​ • New York University Tisch School of the Arts​