Giant Filming Day

Possibly sat through the biggest filming day of my entire career. 10+ core vast members, 80 supporting artists, period costumes, stunt rigging and on a massive hand-built set. I was sat 100 meters away at my desk throughout though, making coffees for cast and booking couriers for emergency costume pieces. Every now and then when I'm walking to and from set, I stop and drink it all in. I say hello to the crew and they ask how I'm doing, when that happens it feels like I belong.

Amend Hell

Rarely sat at my desk for longer than 10 minutes without having to get up and run some errands. Funnily enough I didn't need to make that many coffees for people though, a crewate usurped my throne by making oat milk hot chocolates which got everyone buzzing. Tis a fad though, they'll all come crawling back to my brewed goodness. A wad of script amends hit us like a ton of bricks however and they changed a lot of our pre-laid plans. I ended up working fairly late while we tried to unpick it all. Good way to spend the Bank Holiday - working past Summer Sunset.

Denim or Duck Egg?

For the past 8 years I've been holding onto hlpld clothes, promising myself that I'd wear them when I'd do some painting. Now I have a very full closet full of ugly clothes that I have no intention of wearing. Well today I finally honored the promise to myself and donned some old jeans and a shirt and dove into the world of decorating.

Rebecca and I bought a lot of paint early this morning (we stumbled into a bank holiday sale too so we accidentally saved a substantial bit of cash). We washed and sanded walls and begun decorating our living room. Got a brilliant white plus an off white looking mighty fine on our walls and ceiling. We prepped our feature wall and spent a fair bit of money in a pot of specially mixed paint. We put one test streak onto the wall and Rebecca felt sick to her stomach when she saw what it looked like. Our denim blue was clearly more duck egg... The next 15 minutes were spent stressing and calling up customer services to see if we could return the paint. In that time, the paint dried and revealed itself to be a much more agreeable shade of blue. Crisis averted. Still a lot of work to be done, but we're super pleased with what we did today - just can't wait for it all to be beautiful and back to normal.

Moonstruck

Despite being bleary eyed for most of the morning, one thought kept me going: I would get to see the Moon today. Bristol Cathedral were hosting The Museum of the Moon, a roaming art exhibition with a miniature, perfectly scaled down Moon. Walking into the Cathedral and seeing it there was a bizarre sight indeed, but it was enchanting. 

My excitement to see it was well documented to Rebecca, but after getting a few pictures I started feeling a bit nauseous. Something about seeing the Moon that close to my face must have really upset my sense of reality because after a while it made me a little sick when I looked at it directly. I'm normally a pretty hardy fella, so I don't know why is disagreed with me so... Still had a great time though!

Crankiness Emerges

The weekend loomed, but Friday stood in the way like a final boss fight to end the week. Try as I might, I never got a chance to sit at my desk for long today, I was tugged away to run an errand or do an odd job. Atmosphere amidst the unit was one of weary crankiness, learning that we'd now have to work next Saturday wasn't a popular decision, especially on relatively short notice. Despite being tired, I still managed to find the headspace to play some games with the boys this evening, advancing the story for our tabletop adventure a little bit further. Dan's acting as our storyteller once again and he's doing an incredible job setting the scene and making me forget about having to work a 6 day week next week.

Chummy with Catering

The best people to make friends with on a film set is the caterers. My team was a man down today so I spent more time than usual grabbing food for people, each time I made sure to chat with the caterers - I think we bonded. I got an extra helping of food this morning as a result and they were willing to do a lot of favours for me. It was a big day at the studio backlot, lot of extras and horses around the place while we shot the 'bustling townfolk' scenes. It all looks incredible though, out art department hit a home run with their set building.

Stolen Staplers

The beginning and end of my day was marred by some speedbumps. I got in early this morning to provide a stapler to bind all our paperwork as, inexplicably, all the truck staplers were stolen by the other unit. Then tonight I was held at work by the callsheet, it transpired that a member of the crew had been double booked between both units and there were lengthy chats about who needed this person more. In the middle of the day though, just when my team seemed battered and beaten, I went out to buy chocolate bars for everyone (the nice kind too). Morale instantly lifted. Just work hard and keep people smiling, that's a good perspective to have in this industry.