If you know what a TARDIS is, have a fear of Weeping Angels, and shudder in fear when you hear a robotic voice shout “Exterminate”, then you’re going to love this interview.

Doctor Who is the long-running British sci-fi television show that has captured the hearts and minds of fans around the world. Even though they filmed the thirteenth series in the middle of the COVID pandemic, they were able to make it through using two valuable resources: SetKeeper’s distribution tools and their talented production coordinator Sandra Cosfeld.

We had the immense pleasure of speaking to Sandra about her experience as a production coordinator, the unique pressures of working on such a beloved show, and how SetKeeper helped her save time and reduce stress during the shoot.

“I always like to approach people and say ‘I don’t want to assume that they’re not doing a good job because they’re not capable of it.’ I think ‘what can I do to help you?’”

How do you manage your time? What tools or tricks do you use?

“A good old-fashioned to-do list is always helpful, whether it’s electronic or handwritten...and sharing the workload as well, communicating with your team, making sure if your to-do list is really long to share and we’ll help out.”

How do you create motivation for yourself and for your team?

“For me personally, I like knowing that I’ve done a job well. I know that when we finish an episode or a particularly tricky bit of the shoot, I get a lot of satisfaction from knowing I’ve done the best I could and made it as easy for other people as I can.

For the team, we try to have a good time while trying to get everything done. When you’ve worked together closely with the team you develop a good rapport. You find time in the day to have a chat and joke around. It keeps performance up as well, adding some personal moments so it’s not just work work work work work.

We very rarely hire people based off a CV - we always ask around and ask my colleagues ‘Hey, have you worked with this person? What are they like?’....You have to like the people you work with.”

What do you do when someone’s performance isn’t where it needs to be, or they aren’t so easy to work with?

“Even if you don’t have much in common or there’s a little friction, you have to find that point of connection that you can connect with them on. Then you can pull them aside and say ‘hey, are you struggling with this?’ I always like to approach people and say “I don’t want to assume that they’re not doing a good job because they’re not capable of it,” I think “what can I do to help you? Do you have too much on your plate? Do we have to share the workload a little bit better? Is there something going on in your personal life that we can help you with?” Because there are so many factors [behind someone’s performance].”

“Confidentiality is a big issue for us [...] We have had issues with stuff getting leaked [...] Being able to go back into SetKeeper and say ‘ok, you don’t have access to those scripts anymore!’...that gives us peace of mind.”

What are the unique pressures of working on such a beloved show?

“We get a lot of fan attention and we have a lot of issues around confidentiality like many high-profile shows; people are after spoilers, people want to spot the cast. Sometimes when we go on location we have to keep certain guest actors a secret if they haven’t been announced yet - kind of smuggle them into the location, just hope and pray no one gets a picture of them! We also make sure that if fans do want to come and watch filming, which is absolutely fine, we make sure they keep a safe distance, that they don’t interfere with the filming, and that they don’t see any confidential material.”

How did the COVID forms you sent from SetKeeper help you?

“It just makes it so easy. At the beginning of the series we were kind of panicking about that...oh my God, how do we keep track of that? But SetKeeper just made it really easy at a glance to see who it’s gone to. It was much more manageable [than I thought it would be]. [I thought] every day it was going to take us an hour to go through the list and check that everyone’s ticking the box. It was brilliant, a real game changer.”

The other thing that’s been incredibly helpful this year was having the documents you can sign online, like our non-disclosure agreement, you helped us set those up right at the start. All of those were done by hand in the past and obviously this year a) we wanted to save paper and b) we didn’t want to stand in front of a hundred people telling them ‘please sign this and try not to breathe on me’. It’s such a game changer for that as well, it’s so much easier. And even for people who aren’t very tech-savvy, they just needed to click two buttons, do their signature...even people who were like ‘oh I don’t know how to sign documents online’ they managed to do it.

Do you have an estimate of how much time you think that saved you?

“I’d say easily 3 to 5 hours because you’re always chasing people down. We have on average about 120, 140 crew including post production and our construction guys and you’re always having to chase them down and giving them multiple forms because they then misplace it.”

How much effort did it take to use SetKeeper? 10 being floating on a cloud, 1 being climbing everest in a wetsuit filled with cement

“7 - the only thing that brought it down was that it took a while to get used to the system.”

We’re incredibly grateful to Sandra for her excellent tips, insights and experience. We’re all looking forward to seeing where the TARDIS takes Doctor Who next!