Building Your On-Set Kit for International Film Productions

The first time I travelled internationally for a film production, I packed the way I packed for a local shoot: everything I owned, in the order I owned it, into the largest cases I could move. I arrived. The kit arrived. Customs waved me through. I counted myself lucky and did not examine why it had gone smoothly. The second time, I had a more systematic grasp of what I was doing and why, and the difference between the two experiences was not luck — it was knowledge. Here is what that knowledge looks like, assembled in one place. Airlines classify cosmetics and makeup products under IATA dangerous goods regulations in ways that are not intuitive until you have been through them. The main categories to understand: aerosols (setting sprays, compressed-air dusters, hairsprays) are permitted in checked luggage in limited quantities per container — typically under 500ml and with a total per-passenger limit — but are prohibited in carry-on. Alcohol-based products, including most professional spirit gums, adhesive removers, and alcohol-activated palettes, fall under flammable liquids regulations. Small quantities — typically under 100ml per container, within the carry-on liquids allowance — are permitted in cabin baggage; larger quantities must travel checked, with declared quantity limits. Solvents including acetone and isopropyl alcohol in large quantities are outright prohibited on passenger aircraft. Knowing this before you pack means you can plan the division of your kit between carry-on and checked, rather than discovering it at security. The carry-on liquids rule (100ml per container, all containers in a single 1-litre clear bag for most jurisdictions) applies to professional kit exactly as it applies to personal toiletries. This means your most essential products — adhesives, primers, liquid foundations you cannot replace on location — should travel in 100ml transfer containers or in the smallest available size from the manufacturer. I carry a small kit of empty 30ml and 50ml amber glass bottles specifically for this purpose and decant before every international trip. The inconvenience of decanting is marginal; the inconvenience of having a full-size Pros-Aide bottle confiscated at security is not. Insurance and customs are two separate considerations that many working artists conflate. Professional equipment insurance covers your kit against loss, theft, and damage in transit — if your checked baggage is lost or your Pelican case is damaged in the hold, your insurer makes you whole. Customs is a different question: it concerns whether the tax authority of the country you are entering considers your professional equipment to be imported goods subject to duty. In the EU, a professional artist travelling for work with equipment they intend to bring back is generally protected by ATA carnet — an international customs document that allows temporary importation of professional equipment without payment of duty. Outside the EU, a commercial invoice listing the declared value of your kit, combined with a letter on production letterhead confirming your role and the temporary nature of the importation, is typically sufficient for customs clearance. The situation becomes complicated when customs officials detain your kit for further inspection — this does happen, particularly at certain African and South American borders — and the best preparation is documentation. Carry a detailed itemised list of your kit with approximate replacement values, your insurance certificate, and contact details for the production's fixer or line producer who can intervene on your behalf. The 40-piece core kit that fits in a Pelican 1510 carry-on is a constraint worth imposing on yourself even when you have more checked luggage capacity available. The Pelican 1510 is the largest carry-on case that fits in standard aircraft overhead bins and is virtually indestructible — it will survive anything that does not destroy the aircraft. My core 40 includes: a full-coverage foundation palette with twelve shades covering the production's cast range; a colour-correction palette with orange, peach, lavender, and yellow correctors; a highlight and contour palette; a neutral eye palette; a full lip range from light nude to deep berry; three setting powder options (translucent HD, warm-toned for deeper skin, and a mattifying option for oily skin); a brush roll with eight foundational face brushes, four eye brushes, and one lip brush; a set of mixing spatulas; basic application tools including beauty sponges, disposable mascara wands, and cotton buds; a skin prep sequence (micellar water, primer, barrier cream); and a compact touch-up bag for set use. This is the kit that works. Everything else is supplementary. Products that cannot be reliably sourced in some markets must travel with you, regardless of weight and volume. These include: specific prosthetic adhesives such as Pros-Aide and medical-grade silicone adhesive; high-opacity HD foundations in the specific shade range required by the production; alcohol-activated skin illustrator palettes, which are not stocked in most professional beauty markets outside North America, the UK, and Germany; and specialist SFX products including scar wax, sealer, and stipple sponges. I have been on productions in Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Southeast Asia where none of these were available within a two-hour drive of the location. Products that can be reliably sourced almost anywhere include: cotton wool, cotton buds, tissues, basic disposable tools, and any major commercial cosmetic brand. Leave the bulk cotton at home and source it on arrival. Digital continuity is the administrative element of international productions that most artists treat as an afterthought. Every application — photographed from the same angle, under the same lighting, at the same distance — should be uploaded to a shared cloud folder accessible from your phone and any other device on the production. I use a specific folder structure per production: talent name, scene, date, and application note. If the production is interrupted by weather, injury, or a schedule change and the same look needs to be replicated three weeks later in a different country, that photograph is the only record that can be relied upon. The look in your memory is not the same as the look on the photograph, and only one of them is admissible evidence. The most expensive lesson in international kit management is this: never put your most irreplaceable items in checked luggage. Airlines lose checked bags at a rate that is low in percentage terms but significant in absolute terms across a career spent travelling. The items that cannot be replaced in the location — your full prosthetic adhesive selection, the specific HD palette matched to the lead cast, the skin illustrator palettes you have tested and approved in pre-production — travel as personal item on your body, in a bag that does not leave your hands at security. The checked cases contain the things that can be replaced with a day's shopping. The carry-on and personal item contain the things that cannot. Once I adopted this as a rule rather than a general intention, I stopped having problems I could not solve on the day they arose.