My job roles in surrey - Belle designer (swindle)

My role as the designer was to make sure that all the actors had the right props and costumes that they needed for the duration of the filming process as well as being in charge of the set design. Although I did not face many problems in my job role during the filming process I found the pre-production stage the most difficult. I had to go through the script with the director and write down what props were needed for each scene as well as what each actor would be wearing in different scenes.as we had not been given a budget we had to find the best resources we could with the money we had. I told each character what outfits they would be needing to bring and for what scene. When we got to the location it was a lot different to how we would imagine it would look like and envisioned in the script, the space within the house was very small, cramped and cluttered, but we had to make the most of what we had to work with and slightly adapt the script to fit in with what we could do with the set up. The most difficult scene to set up was the break in scene; it took a very long time to set up due to the fact that we had to clear a lot of the furniture out of the room to make it look less like someone’s living room. We had planned to use a green laser and small mirrors so that the light bounced off them and created a laser maze around the diamond in the middle, but we found it very difficult to position all the mirrors correctly, even if it was a couple of millimetres out the laser light would not hit it correctly, so once all the mirrors were positioned we had to make sure that no one moved the sofas or mirrors. The setup of the diamond was presented extremely well, we had it positioned on top of three small pillars and a satin cushion with the 6 pressure pads around it, in the dark with the fire flaming behind it gave it a beautiful overall effect. Overall there was not a lot of problems in the prop and costume department, all the people were wearing the correct clothing that they needed and we had a lot of props that looked really good when they were all set up correctly. Being in surrey was a great experience as it gave us a feel for what a real industry shoot would be like, our team all worked well together and although we were faced with a few problems through the duration of the trip we overcame it and found a way to get all the footage we needed in the way we wanted as well as meeting the schedule deadlines.