A child, a tarantula and a musical number walk into a bar...

I'm pretty sure that if you wanted to devise a script as a production challenge it would look a lot like My First Spellbook. Children, dangerous (and creepy) animals, a musical number, fire, special effects, multicam days and a huge amount of make-up.

This is the challenge I have helped to face as production assistant and then 2nd AD and it's been quite a task.

My main role in the run up to shooting was helping out with the art department, buying and sourcing the many props we needed. I also scurried about helping with auditions and on one day, cleaning a location.

Now that shooting is under way my role is more administrative, though there's still some scurry work - today I helped our cast find their way around the academy as we balanced music recordings and costume fittings. Mostly, though, I am just working on the coming days and the paperwork required.

This has led me to be rather confused about what day it is - my mind is constantly a few days ahead, thinking what will need to be done then and mixing me up about the present. Still, I think I've managed a fair approximation of mental balance.

And so, I sit at my desk (in the new and rather lovely production office) sending emails, making phonecalls and wrestling frustratedly with the bloody Windows OS. I really do hate it  - I can barely work with it, if my laptop weren't so frail I'd bring it in and work from there.

Things I have learned:

• how the entertainment license thing works
• when someone is cut, or their role reduced, it probably isn't anything personal - it's a decision you make in the production office for horrid practical reasons like the number of people you can fit in a car
• there is an occult shop in glasgow, but it shuts on the sabbath
• the best joke shop in glasgow - tam sheppards on Queen St.
• finding hallowe'en decorations in may - rather difficult
• house candles are no longer sold in normal places, it's all tea lights all the time! luckily there was a big morrisons next to one location and I popped in and bought them there
•  call sheets are pains
• but they're also the perfect organisational tool
• Word is the devil's own word processor
• I'll say it again - how did people produce before the mobile phone? I don't think I've ever made/received as many calls as the last two weeks
• probably more but my brain is currently mush from poring over endless, fiendishly complex movement orders

It is a strangely powerless position, though. You set everything in motion and prepare but then you have to set it free and anything can wrong and quite often there's nothing to be done.

I enjoy ADing a lot, but I'd rather be on set, it feels much more connected. As it is I only get told what's going on if there's a problem, I won't be there for the triumphs and the moments when it all comes together. No one calls the 2nd AD to say, "we just did a great shot! It worked perfectly!", it's always "the van was late and then the boiler exploded and three crew members have gone to hospital".