Been meaning to post for a while, figured I should really get it done otherwise I'll forget everything I did last week!
As I mentioned in my previous post I was asked to assist the brilliant Nick Palmer on a commercial! I've been on about 4 commercials now and I think this was the best one so far! I feel that I learnt loads last week and was given a lot more responsibility. It was daunting but I think I pulled it off!
Commercials are completely different from films, there's barely any prep time. Just a couple of recce's some designs then I'm asked to meet the designer, given a list of props and some money and sent off the buy everything. I'm then usually kept on during the shoot as stand-by in case anything needs to be bought or changed last minute.
I was on this advert for 4 days altogether. These were all about 10-12+ hour days, it's pretty intense, but 10 hours on a shoot goes so quickly! Monday was prop buying, Tuesday was filming in some kitchens, closeups of pizzas etc. Weds we were at an old RAF base filming some exteriors and 1 interior and then Thursday filming down in Hove in a beach hut.
Nick asked me for help set dressing some empty offices to be turned into student halls of residence. I came up with a few ideas which he seemed to love and just told me to take charge of that set!!?? He didn't even want to know/see what I'd got before hand he just left me to it and came to look at what I'd done once I'd dressed it on the day!!
This is the information I got before hand, I didn't get to see the location until the day;
My thoughts were just fill the walls with photos and posters and random stuff because that's all that was up in my room in halls. Also a couple of pin boards for the corridors fairy lights. We ended up using red rope lights in the corridor which looked awesome! But you won't be able to see that until the ad comes out.
I luckily had a box of old wall stuff from Uni and lovely people from twitter sent me more posters to use.
The location was actually on an old RAF Base where they do loads of filming now. But I was all alone in the really creepy old building! That's part of what I love about working in this industry though, you get to go in buildings you'd never normally be allowed in :)
Here are some photo's of the rooms I dressed. It probably doesn't look like I've done much, but that's the art of Set Decoration, it shouldn't look like you've done anything and should just look like what it is.
On Thursday we were down in Hove filming in a beach hut on the promenade. Nick wanted it to be sort of vintage looking with old deck chairs and stuff. He had bought most of the props for this but I needed to source bunting and other random bits n bobs. I got down there for 9am and we dressed the hut. It looked gorgeous once we'd finished! Really vintage looking. I even upholstered a chair (the front stripy one)..
We didn't finish filming in Hove until about 8pm and then we had to go onto the next location at Beachy Head. I was sent ahead to dress the front of an articulated lorry - old newpapers/tissue boxes etc and we didn't end up finishing til about 10pm but was a brilliant day.
That was basically my week, amazing fun and just makes me know this is what I want to be doing!
I'm excited to do some work on the film and I hope that I will get some more work soon!
