on in case there’s a zip at the back, like there is in my fat-suit. Needless to say they have to see you with no clothes on and are as a consequence always very discreet, kind people who are good at hiding a shocked expression.
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16. A Two-Shot: Oddly enough, this describes any shot that has two people in it. Or two piglets even.
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17. Pick Up: This is when we haven’t quite managed to finish a scene and we need a few more shots to complete it. These shots are called pick-ups.
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18. Singles: A shot of one person. Or one piglet.
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19. Props Artists: Our props department is run by Peter Hallam. He and his team must find every single thing that is used by the actors and place it on set. Props is short for properties. It is one of my favourite departments because you can go in and asked for a stuffed owl and no one shrieks ‘What??’ They just ask you what species.
The props people are on set all the time and they make sure all the right props are there in the right place and the right location. If, for instance, your prop happens to be a hot cup of tea or a squealing piglet, it is up to the props people to make sure your tea is hot and your piglet is squealing. They are wonderful people.
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20. Foam Piglets: We had some incredibly realistic stand-in piglets that had to be used in some scenes when the piglets were asleep or under the Scratch-O-Matic. They were very expensive and kept under lock and key by props. We also had white foam stand-ins, which we used for underwater work and throwing about and so forth. The very realistic ones were made of silicone and had thousands of hairs individually punched into their pink skin.
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21. Greg: My husband. He is very good at this job and brings me tea every morning and makes comforting noises like ‘Not long now’ and ‘What do you want for dinner?’ Also he is not put off by my warts.
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22. The Call-Sheet: A piece of paper issued by the producer and ADs every night, which has everything every department needs to know about the next day’s filming on it: what we’re doing, where we’re doing it, who’s in the scene, how many cameras, all that stuff. Everyone gets a call-sheet at the end of each day.
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23. The Line Producer: Another essential producer, who starts work on the actual filming process almost before anyone, doing the budget and seeing how much it’s all going to cost and what will be spent on what and then doing a schedule and working out what will be shot when and where. The line producer knows everything about the nuts and bolts of the production. If you need to hire a baby elephant, he’s the one who has to go off to Whipsnade, for instance.
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24. The Can: This is the camera, really. Well, sort of. It is short for canister, I imagine – the canister in which the film sits, which is also called a mag. But no one ever says, ‘It’s in the mag.’ They only say, ‘It’s in the can,’ which means that whatever it is has been successfully filmed.
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25. The Costume Department: As the name suggests, this refers to the people responsible for all the costumes. Sometimes they buy them – for instance, Asa and Oscar are wearing old Aertex shirts which will probably have been bought from a costumes supplier. But my costume and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s and Rhys Ifans’s have all had to be made from scratch. A lot of sewing goes on, and a lot of washing and ironing. I’ve got five versions of my costume, because they get smaller as Nanny McPhee gets smaller. Rosie has about ten versions of the costume she gets muddy in – some clean, some very muddy, some torn – all according to what bit of the film we’re shooting. It’s all a great deal more complicated than it looks.
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26. The Script Supervisor: Generally a woman, although I have worked with male script supervisors, this person is responsible for continuity. Continuity means things like when you’re drinking a glass of water in a scene, she has to make sure it’s always in the right hand and the right place and that the water is at the exact right level for whatever part of the scene you’re shooting. If you’re in a scene where you’re sitting with your legs crossed