(written from a Production point of view)
Sara Gardner-Gail is a set production worker who was the set decoration buyer on Star Trek.[1] It was her responsibility to locate and then purchase or rent the set dressing. She previously worked with Star Trek director/producer J.J. Abrams, production designer Scott Chambliss, set decorator Karen Manthey, and many other Trek production crew members as a buyer on Mission: Impossible III (2006).
Gardner graduated from the University of Maryland in Baltimore with a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Video in 1985. Her first work experience in Hollywood came was on Tin Men (1987, featuring Seymour Cassel), on which she coordinated the film's "picture cars" (vehicles that were actually being filmed). She also worked with the picture cars in her next film and was a member of the art department in Hairspray (1988) and Cry-Baby (1990, starring Iggy Pop).
Gardner dressed the sets of such films as The Rocketeer (1991, starring Billy Campbell, and featuring William Boyett, Max Grodénchik, Darryl Henriques, Clint Howard, Ed Lauter, Terry O'Quinn, Paul Sorvino, and Tiny Ron) and Chaplin (1992). Her first credit as a buyer was Dave (1993, starring Frank Langella. She then worked as a buyer on Earth 2, whose regular cast included Clancy Brown.
Since her time on Stuart Baird's Executive Decision (1996, featuring Len Cariou, Ken Jenkins, Andreas Katsulas, Tim Kelleher, Warren Munson, Richard Riehle, Eugene Roche, and Dey Young), Gardner-Gail has worked almost exclusively as a decoration buyer for Hollywood film sets. Set dressings she either bought or purchased can be seen in such films as Contact (1997), Blast from the Past (1999, for which she was also assistant set decorator), Coyote Ugly (2000), Planet of the Apes (2001, featuring Erick Avari, Anne Elizabeth Ramsay, Freda Foh Shen, Cary-Hiroyuki, and David Warner), The Ring (2002, featuring Shannon Cochran and Richard Lineback), The Haunted Mansion (2003, starring Eddie Murphy and Wallace Shawn), and Serenity (2005, featuring Ron Glass).
Including Star Trek and Mission: Impossible III, Gardner-Gail's most recent film projects have all been for Paramount Pictures: Letters from Iwo Jima (2006, featuring Mark Moses), Transformers (2007, written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and featuring Andy Milder, Glenn Morshower, W. Morgan Sheppard, Michael Shamus Wiles, and the voice of Robert Foxworth), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008, featuring Alan Dale and Pavel Lychnikoff).