The challenges of working on an international production across multiple countries

Based in a supernatural world, The Innocents is a 7-part Netflix drama series about two teenagers who run away from home and begin a journey of self-discovery.

As Production Coordinator, all departments come to me to let me know their requirements and I make sure they have what they need for the shoot. Then, my job depends a lot on the production type: it’s always very different, you won’t face the same challenges if you’re working on a drama or on a comedy series.

It’s a high-pressure job so you need to stay calm and approachable at all times. Being a Production Coordinator, you have to be prepared for long hours and be very diligent with your work.

“It was logistically quite heavy because we were filming in London, in Yorkshire, in Norway and sometimes simultaneously in different cities.”

A big challenge on The Innocents was that we traveled a lot. As challenging as it was, in the end, we were all very proud of what we achieved. It was also nice to be able to go abroad and experience different countries for over a month. We filmed in some quite remote and glorious countrysides. We went to beautiful naturalistic areas and places I wouldn’t necessary go to on my own and that was a nice part of the job.

Quickly sending out documents through a secure platform

Because The Innocents was an original Netflix’s series, there was a lot of concern about data safety. SetKeeper was really helpful with that.

“We were able to control the level of security for information when watermarking and then sending out very confidential documents like scripts or unit lists to crew members.”

The process of watermarking and distribution used to take a lot of time because you had to send everything individually, which is very time consuming if you have a big crew. SetKeeper made this extremely easy and was an essential tool to have on The Innocents, where everything was on a very tight schedule.

“SetKeeper is the quickest and easiest way to watermark and email out documents to 120 recipients at the same time.”

The email analytics feature was extremely helpful to be able to see who hasn’t received an email. Initially we couldn’t tell whose had bounced back. It also explains what the delivery problem is, if it’s the address that doesn’t exist or the recipient’s inbox that’s full or something else.

My favorite part was pretty much being able to upload our distribution lists on SetKeeper. I always used the customizable templates on SetKeeper to create a new distribution list, so I could easily edit it and therefore speed up the process of getting a call sheet out. I also like the fact that using SetKeeper is a way to support a paperless distribution and do our small part for the environment.

SetKeeper was really helpful with the distribution but I know that it can do much more. Some sections like locations and casting were under-used, and I think we need to push more for other departments to use them so that we can all use one unique platform.