Directing: Decoding the Video Crew

Do you sit through the long list of people during the credit roll at the end of a movie and wonder who all those titles are? Why does it take so many people, and do you need a Best Boy or a Gaffer for your video project? This column looks at crews, the positions you should crew and answer the eternal question: "What is a Best Boy?"

Video crews range in size from one-man bands, where the director does everything, to crews that fill the end credits of most movies. The crew size depends on several things. The first is the sophistication of the scenes you are going to shoot. You also will need to take into account the amount and type of lighting and audio equipment you will need, the number of actors and the size of the scene you're shooting. The more equipment and actors and the more sophisticated the scene, the bigger the crew. If you're working a union shoot, you will also need a bigger crew, because the unions fill very specific jobs with very specific personnel.

If you are shooting interviews or small, intimate scenes, you don't need a huge crew. A small crew is a director, camera operator, audio mixer, grip and perhaps a boom operator. A very small crew like this would have to wear a number of hats.

The director makes all of the aesthetic and technical decisions for the crew, as well as directing the movements of both the camera and the talent. A good director should be able to wear multiple hats and speak in the languages of the actors and the techies. A good director knows how to work with actors to get the best performance possible, yet also be able to talk lens choice, f-stop and composition with the camera operator. The director should also have a good sense of lighting aesthetics and how to achieve the desired look, and work with the sound mixer to ensure that the audio has the right mix of elements to make it technically clean and aesthetically pleasing.

The camera operators for small crews have a huge job. They must be very aware of the quality of every shot, determine the correct f-stop, lens choice (wide angle, standard, telephoto, etc.), white balance and composition of every shot. They must work closely with the director to make sure they know what shot types, angles, movement and focus the director wants. They must let the director know about any problems with the finished shot. Usually in a small crew, the camera operator and director work together to make sure the lighting is properly set up to accomplish the technical and aesthetic choices for the scene.

Audio mixers are responsible for the sound portion of a shoot. They work with the director to choose microphones, recording device and media, if they are using a separate audio recorder. During the shoot, they monitor the audio levels and listen through headphones to check the quality of the recording and to make sure everything is fine for the post-production process. This is a very important position in the crew. Through headphones, the audio mixer will be able to hear every sound the microphone picks up and, even though the director may not hear the plane crossing the sky or the siren in the distance, the audio mixer should be able to ask the director to do another take due to bad audio.

If the project calls for using a shotgun microphone mounted on a pole, then you need to add a boom operator to the crew. This crew member monitors the audio from the shotgun mic through headphones to make sure there is a good, consistent sound in every scene. If the microphone varies too much in distance from the different actors’ mouths, there will a distinct difference in the sound recorded, and the scene will be ruined. There is an art to maintaining good pickup with a boom mic. Practice does make perfect!

• Digg This!
• del.icio.us
• Technorati
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit