Yesterday I got to assist Anna Malhomme De La Roche for a christmas press shoot for Argos! I was part of a team of 11 including set builders, stylists and us assistants.
The set was located in Mercer Studios in Covent Garden on a lovely little street hidden away. I was so excited to work with Anna, I’ve wanted to work with her for a while and I got recommended by Marisa Daly.
I met some really lush girls on set. Anna’s go to girl was Holly (the strongest girl I’ve ever met!) She is pretty awesome! And we both really wanna do the same thing so hopefully quite soon we will planning test shoots! Exciting!
Things did not go to plan at all yesterday! We all arrived at 9am and the delivery guys turned up about 6 hours later than planned! Which resulted in us staying in the studio and working my arses off til after 9pm at night! But I didn’t mind, I was with some really great people and we got the best dinner from this amazing pizza place in Covent Garden! Well worth sticking around for!
My first job was spray painting lights and scissors, got slightly high, then I had to wrap some boxes to look like gifts as you can see above, typical argos colour scheme. I also had to paint lots of plinths!
The studio was divided into loads of sections to accomodate each set i.e girls toys, boys toys, hair and beauty, homeware etc. We had 4 sections for homeware, 2 living room sets, a bedroom and breakfast area.
I got to see Anna style both living room sets and turn these bland rooms into beautifully, antiqued, unargos delights!
The bedroom set I heard was meant to be like the princess and the pea theme… lots of mattresses stacked up! And the breakfast room is going to be used to show off the colour match range of cutlery and kitchen ware in the presentation of a rainbow splashed across a white setting.
Unfortunately I don’t get to see the bedroom and breakfast room sets cos I only got to work with them for 1 day, but I can imagine they wil be amazing.
Assisting is f*cking hard work! And it’s mostly done by women. Every time I do a job I ache for days afterwards, but it feels so good. And when it’s over I get a little sad and remember only the good bits! Working with Anna was the best, she is so fricking cool and it doesn’t feel like I’m her assistant, she asks her assistants what they think or how would we do it and loves feedback. I really like this, because previously my opinion was never asked for or acknowledged. I think this little thing really makes me feel important :)
I’ve missed loads out because if I included everything I’d be 47 by the time I finish. (I’m 24 btw)
Ju
(p.s my pics are absolutely crap cos I rarely had time to snap anything!)
