Arcadis: Bystander (Sunny Bahia)

A WINDOW INTO THE CORPORATE LIFE

I have been keen to get some work experience and coincidentally Sunny reached out to me with a Production Assistant job. The shoot was a series of training films (on racism, sexual harassment, etc.) for an architect company, Arcadis. 

My first task was to reach out to all of the actors Sunny had shortlisted from Mandy. I phoned around 50 people – a total of 60 something calls in one day – to find out their availability for an in person audition. This was a great exercise in phoning people and communication skills... two things that have previously made me a bit nervous. On the following day, I sent everyone their audition time and the information. 

At the end of the week I attended the two days of auditions (around 60 auditions in total), and I got to sit in on them on the second day. It was a great opportunity to see how professional auditions are run and how the Director (Sunny) and Producer (Steve) approach the process and people. I fetched lunch (and had mine paid for whoop), liaised with the auditionees, and read in for various roles. The team is great and took every opportunity to teach me. The offices are also very high tech (located in Bank) – I enjoyed this as a fun outing; however, it has cemented my notion that I am not a corporate girl. I definitely am in the right industry for me. After auditions I did one half day to send the rejection emails out to the auditionees. 

The three day shoot was great. There were a few crew members that I knew from the AQA job and it was nice to catch up. Everyone was very kind and respectful. I mostly took care of the cast and crew, kept the location organised, and monitored lunch. The first day was fairly relaxed – I was also included as an extra in spare moments. It briefly snowed outside, which was great for my morale. On the Saturday, we had a larger cast and extras, and I spent the whole day running around (I had 27k steps by the time I got home). The Sunday was more relaxed and I again appeared as an extra; however, breakfast / lunch did not arrive until noon, so I did spend the morning trying to find out what had happened to our delivery. We had lots of excess food and I did a drop off at Salvation Army on the Saturday. 

On Sunday we finished with a scene outside. It was pouring rain but we got some great footage and it was cool to watch the set ups. I wore high vis and directed traffic around the crew and car. 

The footage I saw on the monitor looks beautiful – like a high end drama. I can't wait to watch the training films when they finish (which is definitely a first).