After what can only be described as a rollercoaster of year, we will be closing for the Christmas Holidays from Friday 18thDecember and will reopen on Monday 4th January 2021.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our extras, the AD’s, the costume, hair, make up, locations and every other department who dealt with us for their spirit, passion and drive that got us all back to work this year.
While 2020 started off like any other year, it certainly isn’t ending that way. In January we were starting work on Bloodlands and Stranger With a Camera, and the following months brought us Frank of Ireland and the return of Line of Duty. Normal! A normal year…. Right?
Well, no. The virus which shall not be named descended upon the world, and everything stopped. Sometimes it felt like nothing would ever start again. But, after months of lockdown, we came back in July to start prepping for the return of the Viking feature film The Northman.
And with that, we were off! We thought availability would be sparse, we thought extras numbers would be low, and we thought at any minute it may all shut down and we would go back into lockdown. Boy were we wrong! Line of Duty started back up, the drama Awakening filmed, the CBBC series Flatmates returned, along with several other low budget independent features and commercial jobs. Everyone was very keen to get back to work, and availability checks were better than ever. Not only that but there was far more work to go around than we had anticipated. Every production made it work in their own way through extensive COVID checks, social distancing, and heightened safety and sanitation procedures. It was definitely a lot more work for everyone in our office, on productions, and for all of our extras, but the payoff made it very worthwhile.
It was tough, as the industry as a while tried to find our way, we had to adapt and learn a whole set of new questions to ask. With each hurdle we gained more knowledge and we also learnt so much from our extras, who embraced this new way of working with the enthusiasm that we had missed for so long.
After such a tough year, we are so happy we were able to reunite old friends, help our extras earn some extra cash, and give people a break from the mundanity of lockdown. It wasn’t always easy, but we are so proud, and we hope all of you that worked with us are too.
We are incredibly grateful for the extra effort you all put in and it certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed. We absolutely could not have done this without you. Roll on 2021!
The Extras Dept. Team.