Isabella in lights

Year 9 student Isabella R. was invited to spend the day on a film set on Wednesday 28 September to gain some valuable work experience. Well done to Isabella on taking on such an exhilarating and eye-opening experience – here’s what she had to say about her experience:

“On 28 September while all my class mates were at school in a Physics lesson, I was moving a dog statue out of a food market with a makeup artist, and helping to ensure that a local Chinese food stall sold out of produce completely; I was on set acting in a teaser film for one of the most expensive places to live in the world; the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair and Belgravia, London…

My parents run a film production company called BenBen films and I've been extremely interested in the film industry since I was very young. The company is based at home, so when I can I try to wheedle myself into jobs, on set or watching someone do a voiceover, for example. Most of the time I wander around open-mouthed and sneakily take photos of crew members' fancy T-shirts from the Cannes Film Festival.

So I felt very lucky indeed to be invited to participate in the teaser film for the Grosvenor Estate. On set, there was one DOP (Director of Photography – or ‘camera man’, but I prefer DOP as there is no female equivalent of camera man!), two camera assistants, the director (my dad), two other actors, a runner and a makeup artist. My job was to ‘smile like it was the last day I'd ever have teeth’ and ‘act as if I’d never seen a tree’ – sort of. I walked happily through South Audley Street arm in arm with my (fictional) boyfriend, Fadlan. We filmed with a Sony FS7 pole cam with prime lenses during a moving camera shot, going from a CU (close up) to a W (wide).

Afterwards, I tagged along to another filming location in a food market. I had lunch with the crew and we had many interesting and thought-provoking discussions about how to eat our way through the produce from the Chinese food stall; what food to eat first, what food to eat last, what food everyone was having...

Next my (fictional) Nanna, a runner and I went on a very stressful detour to buy a hard-drive from a shop in Covent Garden, in order to back up all the filming we had done that day. The runner and I ran upstairs in the Apple Store to get the hard-drive, while ‘Nanna’ decided to ask a shop assistant downstairs whether they sold flip-flops...

It was a tiring and stressful day, but also an eye-opening and exciting experience. As exhausting as it was, I felt so unexplainably happy being able to do what I love and I wished I could do it for the rest of my life. I worked so hard and learnt so much from the day of shooting that I went to bed at 5.30pm that evening!”