On the day of the arrival, I already knew where we were going to shoot and where there were parking space because I had already been to the location with the Directors before. From when I got in, I was immediately shown the production office which was situated behind the theatre where I collected my headset to keep in contact with other AD's. All the crew were busy preparing to set up the theatre shots, I was shown where all the departments were and taken to the base where we were holding all the Extras. Nieves managed to find some time to show me where the actors would be holding where if needed, I would go and top up the refreshments or escort the actors to and from set.
This weekend my task and role is to look after the extras. As I walked into the base, there were already extras who had arrived early. Luckily our assistant had all the extras details and started ticking them off as they came to sign in. My first task was to sign in the rest of the extras and count them up. I had some help with another AD and an experienced assistant. We were expecting about 60 extras to come to the shoot.
We also had to get all the women through to the hair and make up department as quick as possible so everyone was looking glamorous for the camera.
Keeping Liam (art Department) from walking in on set (2015)
The wait was long for the extras as they had to wait for certain scenes to be shot with actors before being wanted for the audience shots, but when the time came, we escorted them over to the theatre. As I was not in the shot, the rest of the day, I was locking down the front of the theatre so people do not walk in whilst shooting the audience and keeping people outside the theatre quiet.
The same procedure was required for locking down the set.
Hotel Stay
It's the first time I have worked with a night away from home. I had a gym bag with a nights stay of clothes. I finally found out where I was staying and I was booked a room with most of the crew and the production team. When arriving the hotel, I checked myself in. I was told to come back downstairs as Juan the production assistant had ordered pizza for dinner for everyone.
My own room for the night (2015)
As this was my first experience living away from home with the hotel fully paid for, I started thinking about my future. The feeling I had when I walked in my room, was that I was proud that I had made an effort to work hard on this production to deserve all of this. I felt I could live like this in the future with work paying for me to stay at locations and having food and expenses paid for. Ontop of this, in a real situation I would be paid wages. So, in the long term, working for a production would pay my living and extra for the job.
This was the first time I would spend with the whole team overnight together over dinner. It was such a surreal experience spending a night with so many people that you just knew and seeing them in a relaxed environment because work was over for the day. I had fun chatting away with the other AD's playing logic games. Most of us didn't stay up too late as we knew we had to get up early for work in the morning.
As I went upstairs for bed, I set my alarm so I could wake up on time to get ready for work.
Day 2
The second day was spent doing the same tasks as the day before.
The problem today was that the extras were waiting half a day to go into the theatre to shoot when they were given a 9am time to come in. Just before we were about to shoot the audience shots people wanted to leave. I needed to find out what was going on and to hold them as long as possible.
I radioed in and managed to find out that we were behind schedule. I did not want to tell the extras this because I did not want them to leave. All they wanted to know was the time that they were going to be needed. If I told them a time some extras would leave and may not come back or some may leave and be back too late for the shoot because I could not tell them a definite time. I needed to keep them together without getting frustrated.
I made an announcement that they were about to go in shortly and it wasn't long to go. I told them how important they are to our shots because we needed them to fill up our seats as an audience.
After the refreshing announcement they managed to find themselves some entertainment which I found was quite hilarious.
Extras keeping themselves entertained (2015)
I tried to mingle and talk to the extras to keep their minds off the time and to keep them happy, making sure they have enough refreshments.
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