My Week: Clare Brown
The head of production for tomorrow night's Bafta Awards prepares for the arrival of some of the biggest names in the film industry
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Monday
I'm head of production for the Orange British Academy Film Awards that take place on Sunday and that means I oversee every aspect of the production.
Everything from assisting in the production of the ceremony itself, who the presenters should be, advising on scripts, the red carpet, dealing with all our sponsors and the dinner at Grosvenor House. It's a year-round operation but this week we go through every aspect of it to ensure everything's in order. The tickets come in today and we have to check that everyone has a seat and send the tickets out.
Tuesday
Today I spend a lot of time on the Grosvenor House party and dinner that follow the ceremony. We have a look at the flower designs that will be the centrepieces of the tables. We meet the people at Soho House to go through minute by minute of what will happen at the after-party. Each of the distributors of the five best film nominees gets a room at the party. We also finalise music to be played at the party; we have the Saturdays playing. I spend some time on sales so we check that our partners who have bought the programme internationally, like BBC America and Orange France, have everything they need, such as running orders, to pick up the satellite.
Wednesday
We have a huge security and evacuation meeting at the Opera House to make sure everything's OK for Sunday. We're very excited to have Prince William presenting one of the awards this year and so obviously this requires security measures. It's wonderful for the academy to have him there. We've got a great association with the royals and now to have the younger generation coming in is really great. We also have a meeting about getting cars into the piazza on Sunday so we can get everyone in and out OK.
Thursday
We go through the scripts for Sunday, just proofing them and seeing if anything else needs to go into them and check that the writers have got the right tone and that we aren't missing anything. At 9pm I do a walk through with the publicists so they'll know where they need to take the talent on the day.
Friday
I spend this morning with the producer of the ceremony to go through final running orders and the right people presenting the right awards. We've got Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet coming back to present the Best Actress and Best Actor awards, which is fabulous. I've seen all of the nominated films this year. Some I like more than others, but I'd be giving something away if I said who my favourites were! If you're an actress on to a red carpet in February, you're going to be freezing, so we want everything to run as efficiently as it can and we want everyone to arrive upbeat so they have a good time, because that's what it's about.
The Orange British Academy Film Awards are on tomorrow at 9pm on BBC1
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments