The Film + TV Charity works behind the scenes of the UK film, TV and cinema industry, offering financial, practical and emotional support to crew. They have a 24/7 support line to give free and confidential advice (phone / email / online chat) and can also advise on legal, human resources or career issues.
A non profit Community Interest Company set up with the sole aim of improving the mental wellbeing of music and film crew in the UK.
They provide training for crew to manage mental health on productions and also publish regular podcasts.
Most of the larger production companies now provide a contact number for their HR department on the callsheet and provide mandatory anti discrimination and harassment training. Check the callsheet and unit list for details.
The following books have been recommended by our members:
Draughting:
Drawing the Line - David McHenry
If you’re wanting to learn the basics of draughting or even if you just want a refresher this book is perfect.
Every page is carefully drawn by hand, there’s no super long paragraphs that you have to wade through
just lovely diagrams with concise notes. Dare I say if you’re starting out and you’ve only got to buy 1 book
this would be it.
Period Houses and their Details - Colin Amery
Super useful reference text compiling loads of historic technical drawings alongside photographs of the buildings and details they cover. Deals with 17th and 18th century British architecture, looking particularly at the details of doorways, ironwork, paneling, chimney-pieces and staircases
Three Centuries of Architectural Craftsmanship - Colin Amery
Similar to the above ‘Period Houses and their Details’ but expands to cover a much wider range of building types including examples from the 17th, 18th and 19th century, again UK examples.
Model Making:
The Handbook of Model-making for Set Designers - Colin Winslow
If you are stuck and don’t know where to start when it comes to model making this book is a nice little place to begin, it covers tools, materials and techniques and even goes through creating entire full colour models which is surplus to requirement where we will probably just be doing white card stuff but interesting read regardless. Can get a bit wordy but the pictures/diagrams are clear.
Other:
Perspective Magazine - ADG
Run by the Art Directors Guild a great magazine that does tonnes of interesting articles covering all sorts of films/television being made. Maybe it’s just my inner nerd talking but it’s a great read. It’s silly money to actually subscribe/receive physical copies of this but the ADG upload digital copies that are free to view on their website.
