A Life in the Day of a Production Coordinator

by Isabelle Corr, Production Coordinator, Deserts and Grasslands

I’m sure a lot of you are now getting bored with reading about the fabulous places that all the crew get to visit and would love to know how the rest of the crew left behind in the office pass their days? .. It might not be very exciting but it might make you feel better!

Being the Production Coordinator (PC) for the Human Planet Deserts and Grasslands team means I’ve certainly got my work cut out!  So what exactly do I do all day? …. Well, apart from contracting the freelance cameramen, sound recordists, rope access experts, general  foreign fixers etc,  there’s the  health and safety on location to organise, the varied travel arrangements for both crew and kit, insurances for crew and kit,  complicated insurance claims, scheduling and budgeting  (that’s telling my team what they can and can’t afford to do).

I have also had on occasion to:-

Organise special insurance for horses in Namibia in case they get eaten by hyenas during the night! (apparently a common occurrence)

Approve expenses for a 4×4 tyre that was eaten by a Lion while the researcher was sitting in the vehicle

Organise the last minute shipment of a replacement Varicam camera to the Masai Mara in Kenya.  We were told of the broken camera by the crew mid morning and managed to get the replacement on that evening’s flight to Nairobi!

So who can I thank for making that work for us?

Well, let’s start with Sam at Visual Impact or Dave at Films@59 who get me replacement kit in record time.  Then, once I have my hands on the camera, I send the serial numbers to BBC shipping.  Julie in the Bristol post room organises a courier to pick up the camera and take it straight to BBC shipping in Hayes.  Once there, Geoff arranges the essential kit list for UK and Kenyan customs.  The camera is then put on the next flight from Heathrow to Nairobi.  Luckily for us, this time there was an internal flight to one of the landing strips in the Mara the following morning. Our Kenyan Fixer was able to pick up the camera, get it though Kenyan customs super quick and the crew got their replacement camera just in time to catch an exciting lion hunt!

Some of the challenges of the job are less predictable.  Today I have been in discussion with the accommodation provider in North Africa, who tells me that he has spent some of the deposit money I sent him at great expense through Western Union on new “western-style toilets” for the crew so they won’t have to use the existing “hole in the ground”.  I told him that the crew were well used to slumming it on location and certainly did not need the excessive comfort of western-style “sitting down” toilets.  But it was too late, they have already been plumbed in!

So the sad fact is, the PCs on Human Planet are always too busy preparing for the next shoot and sorting out things going wrong on location to be able to go on a shoot themselves.  Although they do keep promising that I will leave the Broom Cupboard one day!  So maybe my next blog will be far more interesting than these moanings from the office.. I bet you can’t wait!