All work and.. all play

Working as assistant director this semester on the ICTV show, Campus Retreat has been a really great experience. I feel like I naturally picked up the positions responsibilities because of all the time I have spent on set on other productions. You are basically the director's right hand (wo)man; you take on all the practical responsibilities so they can focus on the creative aspects.

Some of the main responsibilities include:

• Making the call sheets for our Tuesday and Saturday shoots
• Scheduling how long it will take to shoot scenes, episodes etc. 
• On set - ensuring everyone is being productive and working efficiently
• On set - keeping everyone focused so we're on time with the planned schedule
• Safety - minimizing dangerous situations so no one gets hurt

It's not the most fun job to have since you are always the one telling people to quiet down and stop goofing around, yet it rewarding because it's an important job. With practice you find the perfect ying-yang balance of basically still allowing people to have a fun, enjoyable experience while also pushing them to get our work done. You have to be extremely organized while planning and on set. My productivity on set definitely depends on how prepared I am before hand. At the end of the night it's an awesome feeling when people are so relieved we ended on time or even early... I just want to take a bow. 

(ALSO OUR FIRST 2 EPISODES ARE ON ICTV.ORG - GO WATCH)

Speaking of assistant directors, I was so pleased with Elena's work on Stopover City. She really pushed us constantly, reworking the schedule, planning our food breaks, and was on top of her game 100%. It really helped me focus on blocking, rehearsing and working with the actors and making sure I liked the shots Josh composed. It was really great to take on the role of director. At times I felt like my head was spinning, thinking about 100 different things at once but I had an amazing hard working crew that had my back. The actors were all such sweethearts and were amazing to work with as well. It was almost surreal to finally have my own crew. (My FF1 group consisted of 3 people, to do all the work of many, many more.) I'm really happy with how we all worked on set together and am very excited to see it all come together in post. We already have a rough cut which I'm dying to get my hands on. 

I LOVED DIRECTING!