A working day for Mr K for BBC Doctors

Last week, we got a call from Alan Sharman agency to ask if Mr K was free around to be put forward for a job. Soon after, we got a follow up phone call to let us know that BBC Doctors wanted Mr K to be part of the show. I was very excited for him. This is his first proper filming job. We did ponder for a while because of the miserly fee especially as he had to work for 6 hours a day. Anyway, we accepted the job.

In this BBC Doctors’ storyline, it is about a Vietnamese lady, with her son Han (Mr K), married to a Englishman. There’s a focus on her life and the need to bring her son to see a Doctor. There is more to that story but I do not want to give away too much information so you can watch it for yourself.

BBC Doctors is a West Midlands based drama. So most of the scenes are shot around Birmingham areas and the BBC studio. Today, the shooting was in a private house in Birmingham. It was a nightmare driving through Birmingham city in rush hour. It took us at least one hour and 10 minutes to reach the location which is approximate 24 miles.

Once we reached the location, we were asked to settle our self in a camper van where we met our chaperone for the first time. I was quite shocked that being a chaperone earned much more than Mr K plus my allowance. What’s the role of the chaperone? Her duties are to stay with the child, record the total amount of time the child has worked and make sure they finish on time.

Mr K’s role is non-speaking which is just as well as he has a Midlands accent and the character he portrays doesn’t speak English as his first language.

It was very daunting when we reached the scene. There were a lot of lighting equipment, cameras and people working.  He was thrown in quickly to do his first scene. He was quite scared and shocked. He didn’t take long to warm up with his character and his on-screen parents. Once he got used to them, he was really eager to do his job.

As for me, the place was overly-crowded so I was sitting at a corner keeping myself to myself while they were filming. Mr K on and off came back to me and had a few games on my iPad. Time passed quickly and soon it was lunch time. As this is a low budget show, lunch was not provided so I had to drive around to look for food. We do get a £6 allowance each for lunch refunded from BBC so it was not too bad. Next time, I should remember to bring our own lunch.

After our lunch break, they quickly moved to an outside scene where they filmed them coming out of the car. Poor Mr K was so short that he was chopped off the scene. The two main actors were about 6 feet tall.

The whole experience was quite enjoyable except that most of the time we weren’t allowed to make any noise nor move around. Thursday and Friday, we need to go back again to finish our filming. I am looking forward to meeting the rest of BBC Doctors’ crew. Look out for Mr K in BBC Doctors’ episode 40 on your TVs!