Floor assistant

A floor assistant helps the assistant floor manager and the floor manager.

According to DWM 111, it was in many ways one of the junior jobs within production, and many people's first television jobs. In fact, it was John Nathan-Turner's first job at the BBC in 1968, when he worked as a floor assistant on The Space Pirates. JNT later became the longest serving producer of Doctor Who.

According to Charles Beeson in the same DWM interview, "The floor assistant's job is principally to look after the artists. You are the only contact they have with the production when they are in the studio." Beeson saw the main point of his job as making life for the actors as easy as possible. Floor assistants were the only members of the production crew available to update the cast on going-ons behind the scenes, as the production manager would be busy.

"The job starts when you go to the technical rehearsal", where the floor assistant has two major tasks: to check the sequence that the studio filming will take, and secondly to meet the actors.

The floor assistant's next job comes on the studio day, where the first task is to check all the dressing rooms and make sure everything is running smoothly in make-up. When time comes to record, the floor assistant has to make sure actors in their rooms and ready to start. "From then on during the day, as each scene is done, the most important and most skilful job of a floor assistant is to be able to anticipate when the artists are going to be needed on the floor."

Robert Fort was an uncredited floor assistant on An Unearthly Child. David Tilley was an uncredited floor assistant on at least Planet of Giants.

Charles Beeson was an uncredited floor assistant in the 1980s; this was his first job in the television industry as well. Beeson is now a director and producer.