Edward Rastelli-Lewis kept his head down to progress in order to work in high end TV productions. After several years in independent features, Edward moved across to a TV Drama called “Will”.

Production Coordinator & Production Manager: Two different but complementary roles

A production coordinator worries about the day to day paperwork and ensuring that everything is covered in terms of contracts and making sure that all the relevant paperwork is in place ahead of the time.

The production manager job is about overseeing your overall projects and ensuring that you are aware of everything that is happening daily, before and also the week ahead.
It is about making sure that you are in a position where everything is prepped and ordered to ensure that nothing is missed, and that the directions of the creatives and the director are fulfilled without any issues.

Your work is relevant. You work with all the HDs in each department, which gives you the chance to make sure that you can create opportunities, as well as meeting their requirements. It is about checking that they have budgeted enough in place to do X, Y and Z. It means to ensure that each of these departments has the budget to manage their department and to make sure they have everything they need to do their jobs at their best.

An organized day-to-day work

The first thing I do at the beginning of each day is to check in and speak to all the HOD’s and Supervisor. I want to verify we have everything we need to avoid any unforeseen problems. Then, it’s kind of just continuing with the prepping and planning, going through timesheets, going through the paperwork we are issuing.

“Everything should be in place to ensure the team feels happy and everyone feels supported.”

Everything should be in place to ensure the team feels happy and everyone feels supported. I want to maintain S.O.P (standard operating procedures). Your entire project is about making sure that you can get ahead. You know how and where you could find a solution from the coming days.

“Production is about understanding and trust and how to get the best out of people with what you have. So it really just comes down to people management. As a happy crew is the key to a successful production”

On a set, I always try to be approachable, responsible and forward thinking. The main skills for a production manager is people management.
Production is about how to get the best out of people with what you have.
Production staff tend to be afraid of saying they don't know or don't understand something. But by being honest, people feel that you are someone they can speak to. They can approach you. They know you're not going to lie to them.
Basically it's being human.
You want people to feel they can come to work and enjoy what they do and feel like they have a normal job, although we don't.

“Production makes more sense to me than anything”

I'm at a stage in my career where I've been fortunate to have worked on some extremely big and amazing shows as a production manager. But as always, you just want to keep learning and keep pushing. I'm more of a practical production person. Production makes more sense to me than anything.

His Dark Materials: a challenging production with a lot of heart

We had days where we had double banking units in the same studios but in different stages and somedays different locations. Each unit has at least three hundred people daily. We had double banking days with probably up to 800-900 people across the two units.

I did a show a few years ago called A Discovery of Witches. Where we had two units shooting, one unit shooting Monday to Friday in Venice, one unit shooting Tuesday to Saturday in Cardiff and we were sharing the cast between the two countries.

“Sometimes you need to remember the amazing industry we are working in. You make people's fantasy come true.”

Recently on the set of The North Water, we were shooting in the Arctic. We had our cast and actors on a period 1850's whaling boat with two very small support ships, but what we shot was stunning. But at the same time, the safety surrounding the shoot had to be extremely thought through and planned because we had A-list actors and we were shooting in temperatures between minus 10 and 20 degree weather.

“SetKeeper makes so many tasks a lot easier.”

I've worked with SetKeeper across multiple projects for many years and I’ve seen SetKeeper expand from its early forms to where it is now. I think SetKeeper is great in the fact that it makes a lot of tasks easier.

The impact of COVID-19 on the industry

Cinemas will become more of a specialized thing.I wouldn't be surprised if there were fewer cinemas in 10 years. I think we'll go to more art-house, bespoke small cinemas because people are now more interested in watching shows at a quicker pace.

People want the same scale shows, but shot in a shorter period with a quicker turnaround period because people love watching big shows and binge watching them. They want to watch something epic. We will have to find a way to appease the market and produce higher quality projects in a shorter window.

“It will probably take at least twelve months to get back to the same speed post covid.”

COVID-19 will have a huge impact on the industry. First of all it did ground the film industry. I think there will be more fresh, local crew and a focus on more regional national dramas. I think transporting people and equipment across borders will become a lot more difficult.