Recent Work Outside of Uni

Over the past week I've worked on two separate jobs - an advert for 'Wagon Wheels' and a music video for 'Biscuit Town' by King Krule [a renowned artist I was once a huge fan of!]. These two jobs involved the following: prop sourcing, set dressing, art directing assistance, set construction, scenic painting and general runner jobs on the day. Below I've spoken briefly about what went on during these days.

The Wagon Wheel Ad: 'Epic Inside'

Working as an assistant to an Art Director, this job was paid and with a company I had previously worked for, 'Blink' - formerly known as 'Colonel Blimp'. They had been asigned to create a Wagon Wheel ad depicting a man taking a bite into the biscuit and subsequently having Western sounds humming from his stomach; to which his friend was equally confused.

On the first day of the job, we visited 'Superhire' to collect all of the props listed, to the approval of the Director, and then made a quick visit to 'Artem' to drop of a smoke machine the Art Director had previously hired - it was at this point I got to have a little look around the workshops.

Above: Some interesting finds at 'Superhire'...

The following day was the shoot and I was on head to dress the entire set for the appropriate scene changes. There was a lot of standing around [7 hours to be exact], but it was my first time working on an ad and it was interesting to see how 10 hours shooting on an ad equalled about a 10th of the screen time a shoot on a short film would produce.

I also learnt the term 'glamour wrapper'; the use of a glorified wrapper for the screen for ultimate perfection. Below you can see the comparison between a usual one and the actor's prop.

The perks of the job included a ridiculous amount of free wagon wheels, of which I ate 10 and could've easily eaten more. I also managed to sneak my face onto the set!

King Krule Music Video: 'Biscuit Town'

So this job came up on the group Facebook page for my course and was an 'expenses paid' kind of thing - which I usually don't volunteer for, but it's King Krule!

As soon as I walked in I thought the coincidence with apartment building construction was strange, but it got even stranger during the briefing where we were shown the storyboard/concept art; the sequence of events were so similar to ours in 'The Story of Cruel Frederick'! An opening shot of a tower block facade, a zoom in through the window into the room, a story unfolds, the character ends up murdered and laying dead on the floor and the camera reverses out of the room, through the window and out to reveal the facade once more! I realised that we definitely had to release our animation A.S.A.P!

First day and I was thrown straight into helping with the construction of a miniature city. With my recent experience in both model buildings and biscuits, I was ready for the job. This simply required measuring out thick sheets of cardboard and cutting out the windows - the MDF pieces had already been cut by this point.

Above: The progress on the day I arrived.

The following two days required assembling the pieces together and painting them using a mixture of paint and sand to give the correct texture. Over that weekend I painted 10 buildings by myself with the base coat - ready for dry brushing and detailing by other members of the team.

Below you can see the progress made during the time I worked with them.