Working On A Big Budget TV Series - A Day in My Life
My alarm goes off at 05:00, and I reluctantly get up, switch it off and make my bed. Making your bed first thing every morning is a great way to start a productive day, if you start by completing this quick and easy task, it sets you up for the rest of the tasks & to-do’s ahead of you.
I get changed into my gym gear, fill up my 1L water bottle, and head out to the gym. I find that if I leave going to the gym until after work, it ends up taking over my entire evening and I don’t get any downtime/anything else done. I also find that if I work out first thing, I start my day feeling energised and positive that my workout’s done instead of dreading it after a full day’s work, so that makes the early starts totally worth it to me.
I’m working with fabulous PT, and owner of Athena Athletics, Susie McConnell, who I see once a month (to track progress / correct form / advice on certain exercises) and who has designed me a great workout routine & (non-restrictive) diet plan. My workouts mainly consist of lifting free-weights and usually take me around 45 mins - 1hr to complete, I usually leave the gym between 6:15 - 6:30.
When I get home, I make myself a protein shake and get showered / ready for the day. I usually set out my clothes for work/packed lunch the day before to save myself a bit of time, and to avoid the Lizzie-Maguire-Movie-style outfits montage.
If I have time, I like to set a timer for 5 minutes to read my book whilst I finish my shake, one of my new year’s aspirations was to read more in 2022 and even setting a timer for 10, 5 or even 2 minutes is a great way to try and solidify the new habit.
I leave the house around 7:15 and head into work, I usually arrive at around 7:50 - 8ish (the joys of M1 morning traffic) to get set up & make a coffee before I check my emails and check what’s happening today on the daily diary.
The Daily Diary is a document sent out & updated every evening by production, and it details any meetings, location scouts, as well as crew travel and new starts. As digital assets coordinator, I have to keep an eye on any art dept meetings I may be requested to prep for, as well as any new starts that might need access to the art dept server.
The next thing I do is check the ‘Drop Folders’ on the server, this is where the concept artists & art directors upload or ‘drop’ their latest work to be filed and backed up by me. Depending what / if everyone has dropped files for me, it can take 2 minutes, or the whole morning.
Another way I like to back up each artist’s / art directors’ work is to create and update an ‘Art Catalogue’ for each of them, this is a keynote presentation that I drop everything they upload into the server (with the coinciding file name as a caption). I find this incredibly useful should a file be accidentally deleted or misplaced in the server.
On long jobs sometimes old versions of construction drawings are necessary again and the art director who designed it has maybe wrapped at this point. This is when I’m asked to find them, and to avoid an entire afternoon of digging through ‘Archive’ folders, I can find it by going into their art catalogue and exporting the image.
At lunchtime there’s a little group of us (me, some graphic designers, some draftspeople, art dept assistants, just whoever’s going) that walk down to the Spar / cafe’s at the bottom of the road.
The Spar near my office has an amazing salad bar that I love to get lunch from, (when I haven’t been organised and packed myself one) but unless I’m super busy and working over lunch, I always like to join the ‘shop walk’ to chat and get away from my desk.
Today the first drawings were issued. In the art dept a ‘drawing’ is an architectural-style design for a set, and when it’s ‘issued’ this means that the drawing has been approved for distribution (by the production designer, supervising art director, director and producers) and sent to the Construction Dept so they can begin building the set. The art department assistants print physical copies and hand deliver them to the different dept heads, and I ensure that the issued drawing is filed correctly by set name / number in the ‘issued’ and ‘sets’ folders on the server (and add it to the artist’s catalogue)
I leave the office at 18:30 and usually get home at about 7, I eat my dinner as soon as I come in, and then I work on my blog/socials, do personal admin and pre-pack my lunch for tomorrow.
I like to do my evening skincare and get into my PJ’s relatively early, and watch some TV (I’m living for Emily in Paris, Selling Sunset and The Vampire Diaries at the minute), or if it’s already at the 9pm mark I just get straight into bed with my book.
One of my New Year’s Aspirations was to try to read a book a month, and I’m currently reading Dark Star: A Biography of Vivien Leigh, which I was gifted by my mum for Christmas. We share a love of Old Hollywood and golden age film stars (she read lots of the Old Hollywood Star’s biographies years ago) and I’m absolutely loving it.
I’m trying to implement reading before bed (to replace sitting on my phone before bed) as I find that I feel more relaxed and get a much better night’s sleep when I do, I usually aim to put my light out before 10 or 10:30ish so I can be well rested for the next day!
I hope this helps you further understand what my job as a digital assets coordinator on big-budget fiction usually entails, and a little bit of my lifestyle / self-care outside of the office!
Until next time,
Stacey Xx
DISCLAIMER: This was an example of one good, motivated day I had this week. Please all be assured that there are plenty of mornings that I have to skip the gym and panic-rush into work with no makeup on due to my over-enthusiasm with the ‘snooze’ button, don’t join in on the lunchtime walk to eat a pot noodle by myself because it’s raining, have a massive Chinese takeaway and sit on my phone watching TikToks until 1am.
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