Work experience/ Portfolio visit 1.

A new ITV period drama [my favourite] was being filmed in the North West and i pushed and begged to go along and meet the production designer and the art department team. I started the day by showing some of my work and talking about my interests. I discovered quite quickly that the art department was under pressure and working to a tight schedule and that going through all my work was time consuming. I offered to help instead and they happily accepted. After reading the script and forming an idea of what the production was about, i was asked to do some cleaning of the props ready for the set dressing. Luckily for me an urgent request for ten sets of blind to be made quickly gave me the opportunity to offer my sewing skills and show some initiative. They were pleased with the end results and this spiked an interest into my skills, accomplishes and what i hoping to do after my degree finishes. In return i asked about each of their job roles, the hours and the route to take in order to become a production designer or an Art director myself. I discovered that getting your foot in the door is half the battle and being willing to start at the bottom and work long hours for little pay. This information has not deterred me but instead made me realise just how much i want to work in the Art production side of TV/Film industry. The feedback i received was that i was more than capable of working within this area and being a team player [i needed to know this]. This in turn has given me some confidence in the direction i am taken and the whole experience over the couple of days has helped me realise i have more skills than i realised. Life experiences are just as important as my creativeness and being ready to jump in and get involved is a quality needed in such a fast paced industry. As for my own work, i have a varied portfolio of surface design knowledge, photography and illustration. Technical drawings and collating interior and exterior settings are something i need to work on and add to my collection of skills and techniques.