What we now have to do is discuss whether this budget is sufficient to do what you want to do. First, look at the money included for you. Does that compensate you for the amount of time you must put in? If not, you may not be able to do anything about it because of your producer’s financial condition; on the other hand, most DGA salaries are minimums—the contract clearly states you can bargain for more. Next, what about the time periods allotted for support personnel? Do you have enough time to consult with your director of photography, your prop person, and so forth? If you’ve never made a film before, some of this analysis may have to wait until you’ve read chapter 3, but suffice it to say for now that how much time you have with key personnel, and how much they’re paid, is important.
What about settings and costumes? Is there enough money for these? Is this a period film to be shot in France, or a contemporary story to be made in the studio? The amount of money available for each costume multiplied by the number of costumes should add up to a sum that you can read off the budget. If it looks skimpy, put a question mark next to it. Similarly, for each piece of equipment or each actor, you should figure how many days or hours you feel you need and then compare them with the hours or days allocated in the budget. You may find that the budget doesn’t spell out the number of days; it may be based on previous experience with similar films, or it may simply be a guess, an average, concocted at the beginning of a project, but not one that takes into account all the rewrites or added characters or changed settings you’ve decided on.
A lot of producers wouldn’t dream of letting you see their budgets, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask about certain categories that are important to you. Fireworks, for instance: Is there an allowance under special effects or props for that scene when the hero and heroine stand watching fireworks? If the producer says, “We’ll buy some stock footage,” and you know you want to shoot it “live,” then you’ve got some bargaining to do. Some producers may simply say, “There’s enough money, and if there isn’t, we’ll tell you when you’re spending too much,” or “You’ve got five days to shoot it, and we’ll supply ample crew.” A smart director won’t stop there, even though that sounds like a monumental turndown. A smart director will say, “Okay, I understand, budgets are your business, but I do want to let you know some of the areas that are of special concern to me, where I’ve planned something a little more daring, a little out of the ordinary.” And then you should go over the list. You don’t want stock costumes, you want them made. You don’t want a nine-foot ceiling, because you have in mind something grander. And so on. (Some of these details will be discussed again in chapters 5 and 6.)
If you are producing and directing your own film and you are uncomfortable with this kind of process, get a friend who isn’t to work on it with you. That kind of partnership can be very comforting. What you may not do, however, is ignore the importance of the budgetary process and simply leave it to other people. That way disaster lies, not just because money is hard to come by, but because—unless you are incredibly lucky—sooner or later you will run into a scene or a shot or a costume or an actor for which you have plans beyond the scope of your dollars.
Throughout this chapter, I have made the assumption that you are working with a “narrative” script, that is, a script based upon a story. What if you are called upon to read, rewrite, or direct a documentary or educational film or tape? An industrial film? A commercial? Obviously, we cannot take up every film form in a book this size, but the documentary, encompassing so many important kinds of filmmaking, is a special case, one which is discussed in chapter 12. There, too, I will take up the question of how to read and write documentary scripts.
Reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are the basic three Rs of grammar school. And they’re very basic to filmmaking too: script and money. But, as you will soon see, there’s a lot more coming.
3I know that the word “modest” applied to a $325,000 budget must seem ridiculous for some, especially students, but keep in mind that a public television documentary these days costs between $200,000 and $750,000, and dramas go up from there.
4Here’s a case where a difference exists between video and film. Depending on the kind of video you’re shooting—BetaSP, Digibeta, Mini DV—the budget could go down from 10 percent to 15 percent because there would be no laboratory costs. Additionally, if you edited on video, the costs could be significantly lower. (See chapter 9 “The Digital Divide.”)
2
The Team
The first day I appeared on a film set, when I was twenty-two, I was introduced to the cast, to my client (I was a dialogue coach on the Lassie television show), and to members of the crew. It was like a page out of Damon Runyon. “Here’s Wally the Gaffer,” one person said to me. “Meet Charlie the Best Boy.” “This is Tommy the Mixer.” The terms both amused and baffled me. “Wally the Gaffer,” indeed! I now know that a “mixer” is the man or woman who handles the level of the sound as it comes from the microphone(s), as well as the person who monitors the sound in the rerecording studio (often called the dubbing studio) or on the music recording set. The gaffer, of course, is the chief lighting person, who takes orders from the cinematographer (also known as the director of photography, or, in England, the lighting cameraman) and bosses around a crew of juicers (electricians), the top dog of whom is the best boy.
The purpose of this chapter, however, is not to describe the peculiar names associated with the crew of a motion picture production, but to define the responsibilities of those crucial members of the crew with whom a director works and especially those with whom he or she will have the most important relationships. In order to do so, I propose to list the jobs that are associated with even a moderate, independent production in film and television, because such a list is astonishing to those who have studied film or video as a low-budget operation. The list of team members described below is only one kind of configuration. It is a Hollywood/New York, professional, unionized production crew. The list will be useful to the novice, however, precisely because it is so large, and because it lists the variety of crew positions to be found in many productions. Yours may vary. You may never have the luxury of some of the support to be found here. On the other hand, since the beginning days of the professional motion picture era in America, this has more or less been the traditional team.
FILM
First are those who are in the so-called management team: those who are responsible for running the show.
Executive Producer The man or woman in charge of the production from top to bottom. The title is usually reserved for someone who has helped raise the money or someone who is responsible for a number of productions, whether in feature films or in television.
Producer The person in charge of a specific production, who reports to the executive producers and is responsible for the day-today operation of the project.
Associate Producer In my view, this is someone who can take over the duties of the producer if that person drops dead or gets ill. In other words, a top assistant. Often the associate producer has very specific duties of his or her own that are quite different from a producer’s. In other words, the associate producer is like a vice-president, either busy and contributing to the work or frustrated as hell.
Writer The man or woman who conceives and writes the story line, the “treatment,” or the actual script that is used. Sometimes the writer and the executive producer are the same person. Often, as we saw in the last chapter, the director is also the writer.
Story Editor A position that seldom exists on a feature film. But in television, story editors are crucial members of the team. They are management personnel who work with the writer(s), making sure the writers understand the nature of the project. They often supply the writer with something called a “Bible” that outlines character traits and story lines permissible in the series, and they edit or rewrite scripts in order to ensure that they are supplied to the production team on time and in good shape. The story editor
is often responsible for writing some scripts on his or her own and for making financial deals with the writers.
Production Manager (P.M.) Variously, a tough-minded, difficult human being who is responsible for making the business deals with the rest of the crew, getting the equipment that the director and others want, seeing to it that the location has precisely what’s needed, or a tough-minded, difficult human being who is disliked by one and all because he brings the production in under budget by renting hotel rooms without private baths. In short, an indispensable team member who doesn’t have a chance of being liked.
Unit Manager Person responsible to the production manager or to the company’s business manager for the day-to-day financial operation. Sometimes the unit manager functions as a location scout; sometimes she or he simply helps the P.M.
Production Office Coordinator (P.O.C.) If the production manager is the most indispensable member of the management team, the P.O.C. certainly comes in as a close second. This team member was added to the cast of characters when production after production left the confines of the film studios in Hollywood and ventured out into the world to do “location” shooting. The P.O.C. is that lonely person who sits in the production office, which has been rented for the occasion, and holds down the fort. She or he is there throughout the day and often into the night, coordinating various members of the crew, overseeing technical operations, taking messages, finding the caterer, redirecting lost agents and lost property, and typing and retyping cast lists and location schedules. You can tell by the length of this list of duties just how important the P.O.C. is.
Onward now to the crew itself, those people who are hired when production is about to begin. As is the case with everything else in the industry, there are variations as to who is hired when. Sometimes, for instance, an art director is considered management, but I choose to think of management as those people who would be kept on even if there were a long delay in the scheduled start of shooting. So, people like art directors, who are not kept on in such circumstances, are listed here with the rest of the “crew.”
Assistant Director (A.D.) Often hired instead of the production manager on a simple shoot, the A.D. is responsible for breaking down the script into segments that can be shot on a single day. The A.D. plots these segments on a board, into strips that contain, among other things, the scene number, the number of pages, the cast of characters needed for each scene, animals or special effects that are used, and a myriad of other details that make it possible to see at a glance how many such scenes can be shot on a single day, which ones can be shifted to another day, what to do if it rains or if a character in the cast gets sick, and so on. In short, the A.D. (or the P.M., if he takes on that responsibility) must plot the film in such a fashion that everyone knows in advance what will be shot when. And, of course, it all has to come in on, or under budget. The A.D. is also responsible, once the shoot actually gets under way, for running the set. The classic line, “Lights, camera, action” is never heard on a set. It’s much more likely to come from the first A.D. in the following fashion: “Quiet on the set. I said, ‘Quiet!’ Come on, boys, let’s get it quiet. All right . . . roll camera.” The camera rolls, the sound rolls, a clapstick is made to close noisily in front of the camera, and only then does a quiet voice (take note of that adjective, please!) say, “Action.” That voice, of course, belongs to you, the director.
Second Assistant Director This person is usually hired only a few days before the beginning of the shoot and has a terrible series of jobs. He or she must sign the actors in and out, make phone calls to the actors to change their “calls” (the times they’re due on the set or location in the mornings of the shoots), take over the set only when the first A.D. is out changing the strip board, and do a great deal of dirty work, like rounding up stray extras or horses that have wandered off with their wranglers. The second A.D. also does a great deal of paperwork at the end of the day, filling in reports on how many scenes were shot, how many hours of overtime were used, and so on. Yes, there are sometimes third and fourth assistant directors. Using walkie-talkies, they will handle traffic, hold back crowds, and generally herd large numbers of extras around, especially when the shoot occupies a large outdoor area.
Cinematographer The fancy name for the director of photography, called D.P. for short (never “cameraman”), who is in charge of how the picture looks. I’ll leave it at that for now, because I would need more than ten paragraphs to describe what this title really means. However, we’ll come back many times to what the D.P. does and how he or she interacts with the director.
Camera Operator This position refers to filmmaking in 35mm or larger formats: the “big time.” Because of unions and because of the many things a D.P. has to watch, it was decided long ago that he would not handle the camera during the actual shooting; that a camera operator would do this. On lower-budget productions, and with different union relationships or negotiations, the D.P. will in fact often handle his or her own camera.
Assistant Cameraman (A.C.) The person who assists both the D.P. and the camera operator, changing focus and lenses, measuring distances, and keeping everything neat and tidy. (Yes, there are second assistant cameramen, too.)
Mixer As I mentioned earlier, this is the person who takes care of all sound levels, whether in a studio, on location, or in a postproduction situation. In addition, the mixer is in charge of the rest of the sound crew on the set.
Boom Operator The person who handles the microphones.
Recordist On a big set, the recordist is the person who does the actual recording of sound. On most productions these days, due to simplification and miniaturization of equipment, this person and the mixer are the same.
Grips The key grip is the chief carpenter, stagehand, and dolly-pusher on the set. The other grips are carpenters, stagehands, and so on.
Continuity Person Formerly called “script girl” until everyone realized that (a) a lot of men did the job, and (b) it was a derogatory term. The continuity person is crucial. He or she keeps track of how many takes are made of each shot and of each scene, how long they ran, who was in them, what lines of dialogue were changed, where the characters lifted hats, chewed gum, drank whiskey, and so on. He or she will yell out when a line is mangled and no one else has heard it, take a Polaroid shot of the scene so that clothes and colors will match if and when it’s reshot, and remember details about the scene that you would not think possible. The continuity person is also responsible for handing the film editor a detailed, notated script containing every possible kind of remark about what was shot, when, where it was, and who was in it. Truly, a monumental task.
Gaffer As mentioned earlier, the person in charge of the lighting crew. The gaffer takes orders from the D.P.
Best Boy The top electrician, who reports to the gaffer.
Juicers The rest of the electricians.
Makeup and Hairdresser(s) Depending on how many members are in the cast, there are one or more of these artists.
Costume Designer The person who actually designs the costumes.
Wardrobe. Not to be confused with the costume designer, wardrobe people handle the costumes on the set. There is usually one for men and one for women.
Art Director Sometimes called the production designer (depending on his or her importance in the production-or his or her contract), the art director is in charge of the overall setting, design, and construction for the production. In some ways the fact that I list this person here is indicative of the industry’s mindset. In point of fact, the art director is much more important and belongs with the team that comes in before any shooting actually goes on. Whether or not the art director is brought in early depends on the way the producer, the director, and the entire production company treats the production. Is this a large feature film that requires much art design? Or is it a television show with a “standing set” that was pulled out of stock a long time ago?
Art Decorator The person who is in charge, on a large producti
on, of actually filling in the details on a set. The art decorator works for the art director.
Props Oh, how easy it is to leave this one out and then regret it. The prop man or woman is a crucial member of the crew. He or she supplies not only the perfect prop, but many copies of it (for retakes), the director’s favorite mints (from an unlimited supply), the right word of encouragement, and the perfect solution to a tricky but solvable special effects problem-when no one else thought of it. On big shoots, there are several categories of prop persons: special effects, “greens-men” (those who handle shrubs, grass, branches), and so on.
Postproduction There is a whole series of postproduction personnel, most of whom don’t actually fit into the “team” or “crew” of a film or television set (mixers, dubbers, laboratory technicians, and so forth), but there is one person who absolutely must be considered a part of your primary team, especially since he or she will often begin work long before the production is “wrapped” (finished).
Film Editor The person who actually edits the film under the direction of the producer or director or other people. He or she has an assistant editor and sometimes, in Hollywood, an apprentice editor. (The rules for getting these jobs used to be arcane. In Hollywood, you might, for instance, have to be an apprentice for seven years before graduating to the job of assistant. In New York, being talented and adept is more important.) More about this crucial job in chapter 10.
What I’ve listed is the standard crew and production team for most motion picture shoots. There are even more, but they are not important for this book.
TIME OUT
Wait a minute. What happened to the job of dialogue coach? Isn’t that an important part of the team? I’m afraid not. In fact, except on rather large shoots or under special circumstances, it is highly unusual to have a dialogue coach anymore. Okay, but what was my job as a dialogue coach? I was responsible for teaching lines in Lassie to the new young boy who couldn’t read (he was too young). It was a terrific entry-level position, which I got, frankly, because my father had a friend who was the executive producer of the series. When I say entry-level, I mean entry-level. The dog was paid $750 a week, the boy was paid $450 a week, and I was paid $75 a week.
Directing for Film and Television Page 4