Where The Hell Have I Been?

So I know I've been kinda absent from the blogging world of late, but with good reason; I've been on an amazing working streak for the last couple of months. And while it completely and utterly exhausted me both physically and mentally, it was well worth it.

I'll try to pick up where I left off.

So after I ran around like a lunatic organizing my test shoots, I then got offered some work from stylist Lenya Jones as a costume assistant and standby on the feature film, Short Beach. The production had already been running 4 weeks prior to my involvement, which meant that I came in in the last 2 weeks of filming. And I must say in all honesty, it was a bitter/sweet experience.

I haven't done very much film work at all, so it was a great experience in that I learnt A LOT - like general film jargon, what all the positions were that involve making a film, how they all interact with each other, how set dynamics work, and just what the general run of the day entailed.

My role involved doing 2 different things. The first being costume assistant. Now this is very similar to fashion, in that it sounds much more glamorous than it actually is. As Short Beach is a teen drama set at a high school, it involved a lot of washing, drying and ironing of school shirts, and dressing the cast and extras - how excitement! The second part of my job, standby, involved being on set with my kit, standing behind the monitor and making sure the costumes were unmarked and sitting properly in shot.

Now, the drawback (in my humble opinion) in doing film, is that - and this is the perfect way to describe it - they rush you to wait. It is sooo frickin' frustrating to get all the way to the location (which was in Cronulla beach for half of the time that I was there) and rush to do something, then stand around (or in my case sit in the wardrobe van) doing literally nothing for 4 hours, and then having to rush off to do something else.

And the hours are pretty crazy. I definitely have a new found respect for people working in film/tv. Every day was a 12 hour day, and half of them were night shoots. This was topped off by the last night of filming at the beach when I left my house at 4:30pm on Friday afternoon, and got home at 6:30am the following Saturday morning. Although I did have some pretty wicked red bull highs.

All in all, I don't think film is my favorite thing to do - it's just not as fast-pace as fashion, and it doesn't really have anything to do with fashion, which is what I love!

But a huge lesson I've learnt is to take whatever opportunities come your way, and run with them!