Filming - Day Two

I have arrived home from London after my first weekend of filming and upon reflection so far it has been both a long but enjoyable experience.

I spent most of yesterday's filming on standby actually on set instead of at the make-up station base and ended up doing a lot of the make-up looks there, this was slightly more challenging as I had to carry all of the products with me in my make-up belt and if I didn't have a certain product on hand I had to walk quite far to retrieve it which ultimately ate into filming time. Although I guess this is much like how it would be in the industry, whereby the make-up team are there on standby on set in case they are needed, this can be quite tedious and involves a lot of standing and waiting around. Through this process so far I've learnt that a clean and organised make-up station and make-up belt will make your time filming so much easier, so a tip that I would pass on to any other students working in the same position is to use your spare time wisely by keeping an organised and clean work station so that you are always prepared for any last minute changes.  

As well as my one assistant from Saturday's filming, they also brought in two other assistants who came in to watch me apply a zombie make-up in preparation for their time on set in the outbreak scene (30 zombies) next weekend. This weekend will be the busiest day of filming whereby I will be allocating each member of my team a different aspect of the make-up to complete whereby we have a conveyor belt system in place. I'll

 This project is the first time that I've worked with an assistant and at times it has been difficult to communicate with her. As I am the head make-up artist I was given a budget at the beginning of the process whereby I devised a make-up list within the budget and then with confirmation from the producer I purchased those products. However my assistant brought her own products with her and insisted on using them instead of the ones purchased by the budget, I felt through this that I had less control over what she was actually doing and with one of the zombie make-ups she completed I really wasn't happy with a head wound that she'd created, it was far to big and wasn't realistic to a wound at all. As I wanted to keep peace between the crew, I didn't mention my frustration and I made the decision to remove it and start again, which in hindsight I'm glad that I did, I feel confident with my communication skills, however being authoritative isn't one of my strongest points.

The whole team of both cast and crew are so enthusiastic about the project and having such a positive attitude and also good communication between everyone made the process much easier for me and I feel I have fitted into the team well. Although there was good communication, at times I found that I was told to start make-up looks far too early, with the zombie make-ups in particular this became frustrating as by the time they were needed on set sometimes an hour later the make-up looked worn and the blood around their mouths had gone dry, this resulted in constant top ups and sometimes having to do the whole looks again, this became a huge obstacles for me as by now I was completing a zombie look in just 15 minutes with then 45 minutes to spare.

At the end of the first weekend of filming I needed to check all of the make-up stock and it appeared that I'd underestimated the amount of blood needed for the whole filming process. I knew next weekend was our busiest weekend of filming and the weekend that I would need the most products. I spoke to the director about my concerns and with money remaining in the budget we decided to order another 1L of Charles Fox blood - this product is such good quality and is both safe in the mouth and washable from clothing.

Through this first weekend of filming I've learnt a lot about how to be the most organised and prepared that I can be and with this I can now prepare for another weekend of solid filming. I am happy with how the project is running so far and I feel at ease within the team, I am now looking forward to continuing with the project.

I've been taken plenty of photographs throughout for both evidence of my work and also for continuity purposes -