CHAPTER 28

DEVELOPING A CREW

 

ON CREW AND ACTORS

USING PEOPLE WITH EXPERIENCE

Because your crew members will affect your actors, they should be cast for personal as well as technical capabilities. This chapter is titled developing rather than choosing a crew because even when experienced crew members are available, you will still need to see their work and do some trial shooting with them before the main shoot. Expect to continue developing standards and communication all through the production.

Chapter 23 strongly advised videotaping rehearsals using a documentary style of spontaneous coverage. If you haven't done so yet, reconsider and cover some rehearsals now. There are definite benefits that should be reiterated. You will:

• Find out how well you and your crew understand each other.
• Develop a terse and unambiguous language of communication before you need it.
• Discover what developments (or outright changes) are required in key crew members.
• Confirm that equipment is functioning and determine how expertly the crew handles it.
• Dispense with surprises: one camera operator's close-up is another's medium shot, depending on prior experience.

Filmmaking is relativistic—framing, composition, speed of camera movements, and microphone positioning all arrive through mutual values and adjustment. This happens only when crew members are attuned to each other's reflexes, terminology, and assumptions. From shooting rehearsals and test footage, expect to find wide initial variations in skill levels, interpretations of standard jargon, and assumptions about solving technical problems. The key is a common language and clearly understood lines of communication and responsibility. These must be locked down before shooting, which brings enough problems.

DEVELOPING YOUR OWN CREW

If you are working with colleagues who have already proved themselves in film school, some of what follows may not be relevant, but read it anyway. Let us take the most daunting situation—that you live in a place remote from centers of filmmaking and must start from scratch, work up your own standards, and find and train your own crew. We will assume you have access to an adequate camcorder, a microphone on a short boom, and computerized editing with good sound reproduction. How many and what kind of people will you need? What are their responsibilities?

Commitment: First and foremost, everyone you recruit must understand and accept your commitments to the project and to the importance of drama. Ideally they should share them. Naturally this matters more in a DP than in a grip or assistant editor, but a low-budget enterprise needs optimal unity because much will be done by few. Belief and morale really matter.

Ideas and identity: Before committing to crewmembers, assess not only their technical expertise and experience, but also their ideas and values. Of course you must see (or hear) their work, but ask about favorite films, books, plays, hobbies, and interests. Technical acumen is important, but under stress their maturity and values become more so. Technical deficiencies can be remedied, but someone lacking maturity or positive responses to your work can quickly turn into dead weight.

CREW MEMBERS' TEMPERAMENTS

A low-budget film crew is small, perhaps six to 10 persons, and a good team is immensely supportive not only of the project, but also of the individuals in front of the camera, some of whom may be acting for the first time. The crew's aura of commitment and optimism can easily be undermined by a single misfit with a bad attitude. Such people are like black holes, swallowing up energy, enthusiasm, and morale.

Crew problems can vary. One member may need some pressure to maintain focus on the job at hand, or more seriously, at a location far from home or under pressure someone may become unbalanced and regress into bizarre hostilities. You may even have to deal with someone actively subversive or emotionally out of control. You can seldom foresee such extremes, but they are an appalling liability in something so dependent on good working relationships. Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) shows these all-too-human tendencies at work in the cast, but crews are susceptible, too. Under the benign but watchful leadership of the DP, the crew makes a huge contribution to cast morale, for their interest and implied approval is a vital supplement to that of the director. Conversely, any crew member's detachment or disapproval may be taken to heart by actors, whose work naturally makes them hypersensitive to judgments of any kind.

When recruiting, speak with key figures in prior workplaces about their experience with the person you intend to use. Filming is intense and former colleagues will know the person's strengths and weaknesses. If you are unable to verify a potential crew member's teamwork record, you may just have to rely on your intuition about how he or she bears up under stress.

Warning: In all acting or crew positions, beware of people who:

• Have only one working speed (usually slow). Faced with pressure, this temperament can slow up in confusion or even go to pieces.
• Forget or modify verbal commitments.
• Talk too much.
• Fail to deliver on time—or at all.
• Habitually overestimate their abilities.
• Have a short attention span.
• Act as though doing you a favor (in mid production they may use you as a stepping stone to something better).

In addition to relevant experience, look for:

• Sociability and a good sense of humor
• A love of their work
• Enthusiasm for films and an appreciation of how painstaking filmmaking is
• A nurturing temperament
• Low-key realism
• Reliability
• Ability to sustain effort and concentration for long periods

ORGANIZE AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY CLEARLY

Lines of responsibility: No crew functions well unless roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and a chain of command is established. Contingencies make this all the more important. When the director is occupied with the cast, the DP normally leads the crew and makes necessary decisions. In most cases, crew members should take queries first to the DP and not to the director. The assistant director(s), production manager (PM), and DP are all there to take most burdens from the director, whose entire energies should go into the craft of directing, which includes a heavy responsibility to the cast. The director should not be expected to decide whether someone should put another coin in a parking meter.

Keep it formal: When first working together, and for a long time after, stick to a formal working structure (Figure 28-1). Everyone should take care of their own responsibilities and refrain from action or comment in anyone else's area. As people come to know and trust each other, the formality can be relaxed by cautious and mutual consent.

Other roles: In time, the members of a small film crew fall into additional roles such as prophet, diplomat, visionary, navigator, earth mother, scribe, nurse, and strong man. Someone in every situation always assumes the role of jester or clown, for every crew develops its own special humor and inside jokes.

Synergy: Working effectively as a group can be the most exhilarating and energizing experience imaginable, especially during times of crisis. Careful selection of the right partners makes anything in the world possible. A team of determined friends is unstoppable.

CREW ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Judging from a feature film's end credits, a unit has a bewildering number of roles and an army of people. Paradoxically, low-budget films often have even more personnel in the titles because many have contributed only a day or two of service. A “genealogical chart” of a small film unit, showing customary lines of responsibility, is Figure 28-1.

The role descriptions that follow are confined to the modest core likely to carry out the low-budget film or video shoot. I have assigned desirable personality types and backgrounds to the different crew positions, but, of course, in real life the best practitioners may always be the exception. This list outlines each crew member's responsibilities and the strengths and weaknesses you can expect to find. To make it complete, I have included a summary of the director's role.

A large feature film unit is made up of departments, and I have organized the job descriptions under these.

DIRECTION

DIRECTOR

Answers to: The producer

Responsible for: Nothing less than the quality and meaning of the final film, which requires:

• Writing or working with writers
• Envisioning the film's scope, purpose, identity, and meaning
• Researching locations
• Auditioning and casting actors
• Assembling a crew (though this may be done by the producer or PM)
• Developing both cast and script through rehearsals
• Directing actors and crew during shooting
• Supervising editing and finalization of the project
• Promoting the production in festivals and other circuits

Personal traits: A good director is:

• Broadly knowledgeable in the arts
• Possessed of a lively, inquiring mind
• Someone who likes delving into people's lives and looking for hypothetical links and explanations
• Methodical and organized even when outwardly informal and easygoing
• Able to scrap prior work if assumptions become obsolete
• Possessed of endless tenacity when searching out good ideas and good performances
• Articulate and succinct
• Able to make instinctive judgments and decisions
• Able to get the best out of people without being dictatorial
• Able to speak on terms of respectful equality with any film specialist
• Able to understand technicians' problems and co-opt their best efforts

If this sounds too idealistic, here are some of the negative traits that make even good directors decidedly human. Many directors:

• Are obstinate, private, even awkward beings who work in idiosyncratic ways
• Find difficulty in giving appropriate time and attention to both crew and actors
• Tend to desert actors for crew, and vice versa
• Sink into acute doubt and anxiety during shooting
• Suffer sensory overload and find choice painful
• Go into depression and/or physical illness at the end of a production

During production, most directors sooner or later show signs of insecurity(depression, manic energy, low flashpoint, panic, irresolution). If that is not enough to puzzle crew members, the director's mental state often generates superhuman energy and endurance that push the crew's patience to the limit. The truth is that directing a reflection of life is a heady business. The person responsible for making this happen is living existentially, that is, fully and completely in the moment and as if it were the last.

The pressures of directing a movie usually make all this happen whether you like it or not. This is especially true after an initial success: Thereafter you face failure and artistic and professional extinction every step of the way. Like stage fright, the dread and exhilaration of the chase may never go away. But the sign of any worthwhile experience is that it both attracts and scares you.

SCRIPT SUPERVISOR

Answers to: The director

Responsible for: Understanding how the film will be edited together and, during shooting, continuously monitoring what words, actions, props, and costumes are in use from shot to shot. The script supervisor, also called continuity supervisor, assists the director by ensuring there is adequate coverage of each scene, and when time or resources must be saved, is able to define what can be omitted or shortened. Shooting on video makes checking a shot's contents simple though time-consuming, but shooting on film leaves no such record visible until the rushes have been processed. If one shot is to reliably match another, you need an eagle-eyed observer who keeps a record of every significant variable no matter what acquisition method you use. If a video assist is used with a film camera, it is a simple matter to back up the script supervisor's notes by rolling a consumer VCR as a running record.

Personality traits: The good script supervisor:

• Has formidable powers of observation and memory
• Thoroughly understands editing
• Knows the script and how the film will be constructed inside out
• Has fierce powers of concentration
• Produces continuity reports used extensively in features by the editor
• Is a fast and accurate typist

On student films when directors are unable to find a script supervisor, I have seen the editor do the job. The motivation is certainly there to do it well.

PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT

PRODUCER

Answers to: Investors or studio heads

Responsible for: Assembling and administering the necessary funds, and overseeing the project as a whole. Traditionally, the producer also has ultimate say in an artistic dispute between, for example, a principal actor and the director. Because status is defined by a number of factors, relative influence may be unconventional and the producer must arbitrate such problems. Because the producer's role in the United States is primarily fiscal and logistical, the producer also heads the production department consisting of assistant producer, PM, production secretary, and assistant directors. In Europe, a different tradition places the producer more as an artistic entrepreneur, putting together a triangular creative team of writer, director, and producer around a project. This works well when financing comes piecemeal from TV commissioning editors. European TV corporations, unlike their American counterparts, sometimes develop new talent in fiction.

Producers often have assistants called Associate, Assistant, or Line Producers, each of whom has different responsibilities on a larger production.

Personal traits: The ideal producer concentrates on being an enabler, supplier, and rationer of vital resources. To this end, planning, scheduling, and accounting should be a producer's strengths, but producers of experience and taste are also important arbiters of the film's artistic progress, especially because they normally have some distance from day-to-day production. The ideal producer is a cultivated, intelligent, and sensitive businessperson whose goal in life is to nourish good work by unobtrusively supporting the artists and craftspeople hired to produce it.

And here is where it can all go wrong. Because they control money, producers have power, and some, especially the inexperienced, assume that because artists and technicians are subordinates, their work and values are subordinate, too. Experienced filmmakers are wearily familiar with the crass philistine who made his money in insurance and now wants to express what he imagines to be his artistic side by producing a film. This type of person assumes that the creative and organic process of filmmaking can be organized like a property construction project. In the end, much energy is wasted in diplomatically trying to educate this person into trusting the hired experts, and usually the film suffers as well as its makers.

Probably all producers want to control the artistic identity of the work, but the wise ones sublimate their impulses and retain respect for those whose artistry has taken many years to mature. Producers of some experience have a track record like anyone else, and you can find out through the grapevine what their reputations are. Never ever believe from the producer's overtures that you will be treated differently or better than your predecessors.

With producers of all degrees of experience, look for these danger signs:

• Visceral distrust of everyone's motives
• A drive to personally control everything (micromanagement)
• Inability to listen to or learn from experts' explanations
• Great interest in money and status, and impatience with the film process

Filmmakers usually lack all flair for venture capitalism and are only too aware of their dependency upon financial operators. It is in their interest to educate a producer, and vice versa, but this is sometimes frustrated by the unscrupulous financial operator's common compulsions:

• Trying to play people against each other
• Solving problems using aggression and fear tactics
• Trying to look competent when the opposite is true
• A willingness to trash anybody or anything that looks as if it can be bettered
• The desire to replace anyone who has seen the producer's ignorance
• Taking credit for other people's work

These strategies may pay dividends in the business jungle, but they alienate film crews in record time. Until recently there has been no schooling for producers, and no induction into the tightly organized, interdependent world of filmmaking for the outsider. Anyone with access to money can call themselves a movie producer and still get away with it. In the last four decades I recall working for producers who were, variously, an insurance man, a real-estate developer, a gentlemanly hood, and a playboy draft-dodger. For one or two of them, hell has room reservations. While the funds assembled by these people made production possible, their congenital distrust, crassness, and megalomania made the crews' lives into a tragicomic rollercoaster ride. Using threats, sudden dismissal, and humiliation, such people survive because filmmakers depend on financing.

I also worked under producers who were principled, educated, restrained, and a source of support and discriminating encouragement to everyone. These men and women were the professionals—true leaders with a long history of deserving survivorship.

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Answers to: The producer

Responsible for: Day-to-day logistics and money disbursement. The PM is a necessity with any size crew. When nobody trained is available, there are many whose business background equips them to do this vital job surpassingly well. Having a PM makes a huge difference to everything and everybody.

The PM is the producer's delegate and is closely concerned with preproduction and production. He or she is a business manager who is based in an office and takes care of all the arrangements for the shoot. These include:

• Being the contact person for the outside world
• Finding overnight accommodations
• Booking rented equipment to the specifications of camera and sound people
• Making up (with the director) a shooting schedule
• Arranging for the rushes to get to and from the laboratory
• Making transport arrangements and negotiating air and other travel
• Locating hotels, restaurants, and toilet facilities near the shoot
• Monitoring cash flow
• Incubating contingency plans in case bad weather stymies exterior shooting
• Hustling and preparing the way ahead

The PM's work lightens the load for the rest of the crew and helps them keep up the pace of shooting without distractions.

Personality traits: The good PM is:

• Organized, methodical, and an able negotiator
• Trained in business practices, as well as computerized scheduling and budgeting
• A compulsive list keeper
• Socially adept and diplomatic
• Able to multitask
• Able to delegate and juggle shifting priorities
• Able to make quick and accurate decisions involving time, effort, and money
• Not intimidated by officialdom

Good PMs often become producers, especially if they have developed the requisite contacts, cultural interests, and knowledge of the film industry.

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Answers to: The PM

Responsible for: All the legwork and logistical planning of the production. On a feature shoot there may be first, second, and third ADs. They almost never become directors because their skills are organizational rather than artistic and lean toward production management. Their jobs include:

• Scheduling for shoots
• Arranging locations and permits
• Getting the right people to the right place
• Coordinating props, wardrobe, hairdressing, and make-up personnel
• Contacting
• Reminding
• Acquiring information
• Calling artists
• Herding crowds
• Barking orders in a big voice for the director

Sometimes in a director's absence an AD will rehearse actors, but only if he or she has a strong grasp of the director's intentions. The experienced AD may direct the second unit, but this more often falls to the editor.

Personality traits: The main requirements for an AD are to be organized, have a good business mind, a voice that can wake the dead, and a nature both firm and diplomatic.

CAMERA DEPARTMENT

CAMERA CREW GENERALITIES

Personality traits: Camera crew members should be:

• Image-conscious
• From a background in photography or fine art
• Good at composition and design
• Observant of details found in people's surroundings
• Team players
• Decisive
• Practical
• Inventive
• Methodical
• Dexterous

Depending on the weight of the equipment, camera crew members may also need to be robust. Handholding a 20-lb camera for most of an 8-hour day is not for the delicate, nor is loading equipment boxes in and out of transportation. The job is dirty, grueling, and at times intoxicatingly wonderful. The best camera people seem to be calm individuals who do not ruffle easily in crises. They are knowledgeable and resourceful and take pride in improvising solutions to intransigent technical and logistical problems. What you hope to find is the perfectionist who still aims for the best and simplest solution when time is short.

Rather alarmingly, some quite experienced camera personnel isolate themselves in the mechanics of their craft at the expense of the director's deeper quest for themes and meanings. While it can be disastrous to have a crew of would-be directors, it can be equally frustrating to find isolated operatives in your crew. The best crew members comprehend both the details and the totality of a project and can see how to make the best contribution to it. This is why a narrow technical education is not good enough for anyone in a film crew.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Answers to: The director.

Responsible for: All aspects of cinematography or videography. Also known as lighting camera person, the director of photography (DP) is the most important crew member after the director and is responsible for the look of the film. That is, he or she collaborates closely with the director and makes all decisions about camera, lighting, and equipment that contribute to the camerawork. The DP is also:

• Responsible for specifying the lighting and camera equipment, lenses, filmstock, or their video equivalents
• Leader of the crew's work while the director concentrates on the actors
• Responsible for selection (and on a low-budget film, the testing and adjusting) of the camera and lighting equipment and knowing its working principles
• Responsible when the crew is small for reconnoitering each location in advance with the gaffer to assess electrical supplies and lighting design
• The person who decides and supervises the placement of lighting instruments
• Supervisor of the camera and lighting crews

No important work should ever be done without running tests as early as possible to forestall Murphy's Law, which is inexorable in filmmaking.

CAMERA OPERATOR

Answers to: The DP.

Responsible for: Every aspect of handling the camera, which means deciding on camera positioning (in collaboration with the director) and physically controlling framing and all camera movements such as panning, tilting, zooming in and out, and dollying.

The operator should be someone quick to learn the behavioral nuances that reveal when each actor is going to move. In improvisation work, as in documentary, the camera work is often grab-shooting, or shooting on the run, so the operator must decide moment to moment what to shoot in a busy scene. Even in a highly controlled shoot, actors going wide of their marks can pose a compositional conflict that the operator must resolve if the take is not to be wasted.

While the director sees content happening in three dimensions in front of (or sometimes behind) the camera, the operator sees the action in its framed, cinematic form. The director may redirect the camera to a different area, but without a video assist, the operator alone knows exactly what the action will look like on the screen. The director must be able to rely on the operator's discrimination. This is also true for very controlled framing and composition because movement within the frame often requires immediate and spontaneous reframing.

CAMERA ASSISTANTS OR ASSISTANT CINEMATOGRAPHERS

Answers to: The camera operator.

Responsible for: Everything concerning the camera. Assistant cinematographers (ACs) keep the camera optics and film gate clean and manhandle the camera equipment from place to place. Their main requirements are to be highly organized, reliable, and zealous at maintaining the camera in prime condition, whether it is film or videotape. Because their responsibilities are almost wholly technical, it is more important they be good and diligent technicians. A feature film will use several ACs. Division of labor makes one a clapper operator and magazine loader and another the person who follows focus when the distance changes between subject and camera. On a small unit, one AC may do all the ancillary work, though this can lead to costly holdups.

GAFFER AND GRIPS

Answers to: The DP.

Responsible for: The job of the gaffer is to rig lighting and to know how to handle anything that needs to be fixed, mounted, moved, pushed, lifted, or lowered. The gaffer must have a good grasp of mechanical and electrical principles to improvise solutions for which there is no available piece of equipment. A good gaffer also understands not only the lighting instruments but the principles and practice of lighting itself, because he or she must be able to quickly grasp the intentions behind the DP's lighting instructions. Under the gaffer is the best boy electrician.

The job of the key grip is to fetch and carry and to rig lighting according to the gaffer's instructions. He or she also has the highly skilled and coordinated job of moving the camera support (dolly, crane, truck, etc.) from mark to mark as the camera takes mobile shots. Under the key grip is the best boy grip. Grips should be strong, practical, organized, and willing. On a minimal crew they may double up to help with sound equipment, camera assisting, turning on and off the videotape deck, and they may leave the crew to fetch or deliver while shooting is in progress. A skilled grip knows something about everyone's job and is capable of standing in for some technicians in an emergency.

Personality traits: Gaffers and grips need patience because their work involves moving and maintaining large varieties of equipment, of which there never seems enough for the job at hand. While they work, production waits; while production is in progress, they wait. When everyone else is finished, they go to work tearing down their masses of equipment and then stow it and haul it away ready to set up again for the next day's shoot. All this must be good for the soul, for they are often highly resourceful and very funny. Gaffer is old English for grandfather, singularly appropriate for one who must know every imaginable way to skin the proverbial cat.

SOUND DEPARTMENT

SOUND RECORDIST AND BOOM OPERATOR

Answers to: The DP.

Responsible for: Quality sound, which is the unfailing casualty with an inexperienced crew. Capturing clear, clean, and consistent sound is deceptively difficult, and sound recording lacks the glamour that would cause most people to care about it. Today's camcorders have excellent sound quality if you use the highest sampling rate. It is vital to keep this consistent or the editor may have tracks that cannot be played from a time line.

It is the sound recordist's responsibility to check sound and videotape equipment in advance and to solve problems as they arise. The boom operator's job is to place the microphone as close to sound sources as possible without getting it in the shot or creating shadows. In a complicated dialogue scene this requires moving the mike around to catch each new speaker. In an interior setup, lighting and camera position are determined first, and the sound recordist is expected to somehow position the mikes without them being seen or causing shadows, and without losing sound quality. A shoot, therefore, turns into a series of aggravating compromises that the recordist is all too inclined to take personally. Exterior location shooting is often the most troublesome because background sound levels are uncontrollable and any hope of getting the best quality is usually compromised by a tight schedule. This generates Foley (voice and sound effects recreation) and other costly post-synchronization work in the postproduction phase.

Personality traits: Sound crew members need patience, a good ear, and the maturity to be low man on the totem pole. An alarming number of professionals turn into frustrated mutterers who feel that standards are routinely trampled. But it's the disconnected craftsman more than the whole filmmaker who fails to see the necessity and priority of compromise. Sound can at least be reconstituted to a degree in the sound studio later, but camerawork and actors' performances are immutable once shot.

The recordist is often kept inactive for long periods and then suddenly expected to “fix up the mike” in short order, so you need a person who habitually thinks ahead. The unsatisfactory recordist is the one who comes to life when the setup time arrives and then asks for a lighting change.

The sound recordist listens not to words but to sound quality, so you need someone able to listen analytically and who hears all the buzz, rumble, or edginess that the novice will unconsciously screen out. The art of recording has very little to do with recorders and everything to do with the selection and placement of mikes—and being able to hear the difference. No independent assessment is possible apart from the discerning ear. Only musical interests and, better still, musical training seem to instill this critical discipline.

Sound recording is often brushed aside as easy and unglamorous among the uninitiated and left uncritically to anyone who says he or she can do it. But poor sound disconnects the audience even more fatally than a poor story. Too many student films sound like studies of characters talking through blankets in a bathroom.

When shooting is done with a Steadicam and sound equipment must be mobile, the sound crew must be ready to work without a conclusive rehearsal. With a cast and camera on the move, it takes skill and agile, quiet footwork to keep the mike close to, but not in the edge of, the camera's field of view. There are always multiple solutions to any sound problem, so knowledge of available equipment and an interest in up-to-date techniques is a great advantage.

ART DEPARTMENT

ART DIRECTOR

Answers to: The director.

Responsible for: Designing everything in the film's environment so it effectively interprets the script. This means overseeing props and costumes, as well as designing all aspects of sets and locations. If the film is a period production, the art director will research the epoch and its social customs to ensure that costumes and decor are accurate and make an impact. On a low-budget movie the art director will do his or her own sketching and set dressing, while on a larger production there are draughtspeople and set dressers.

Personality traits: A good art director has:

• A design, fine arts, or architecture background
• The ability to sketch or paint fluently
• A lively eye for fashion, tastes, and social distinctions
• A strong interest in the social and historical background of these phenomena
• A strong grasp of the emotional potential of color and its combinations
• Ability to translate the script into a series of settings with costumes, all of which heighten and intensify the underlying intentions of the script
• Managerial abilities and good communication skills because the art director works closely with painters, carpenters, props, set dressers, and wardrobe personnel

CONSTRUCTION SPECIALISTS

These include the specialists you would find on a large construction site such as carpenters, plasterers, painters, electricians, and riggers.

Answers to: The art director.

Responsible for: All aspects of constructing sets with removable walls and ceilings or making anything with the inbuilt flexibility required for convenience in shooting. Construction crews must be able to build a convincing nightclub, cave, subway tunnel, airplane hold, jungle camp, or whatever else. It must be modular and moveable and not hurt its users.

Personality traits: Each must be a master craftsperson and good at teamwork.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

Answers to: The art director.

Responsible for: May be required to make explosions, contained fires, bridges that collapse, or windows that a stunt artist can safely jump through. (Lord of the Rings (2001) is a veritable dictionary of special effects, from Middle Earth rock kingdoms to creatures that crawl, prowl, and fly.) Providing answers to special script requirements. At one time they provided models for ships sinking or cars blowing up and process shooting in which a live foreground was married to a pre-shot background. With the advent of computers and robotics, and a market for exotic spectacle, the special effects purview has expanded into covering everything from dinosaurian life to space travel. The script says what is wanted, and it's a point of honor for them to make it, using every imaginable principle—electrical, mechanical, computer, robotic, biological—to provide a working answer. They also handle anything that involves danger and stunts.

Personality traits: Tenacious, inventive, resourceful, with a love of impossible challenges. Stunt people have a Houdini relationship with danger: They are attracted to it and get something out of cheating injury and death. They embody survival of the fittest.

WARDROBE AND PROPS

Answers to: The art director.

Responsible for: Locating, storing, and maintaining costumes and properties (objects such as ashtrays, baby toys, or grand pianos that dress the set). Must keep master lists and produce the right thing in good order at the right time. When no wardrobe person is available, each actor becomes responsible for his or her own costumes. The assistant director (AD) should double-check beforehand what clothes each actor must bring for the next scene so today's costume is not still sitting in the actor's laundry basket.

Personality traits: Highly resourceful and able to develop a wealth of contacts among antique, resale, theatrical, and junk shop owners. Very practical because things borrowed or rented must often be carefully operated, maintained, or even first put into working order. Costumes, especially ones that are elaborate or antique, take expertise to keep clean and functional and usually need temporary alterations to fit a particular actor. Props and wardrobe departments must be completely organized: Each scene has its special requirements and the right props and costumes must appear on time and in the right place or shooting becomes a nightmare.

MAKE-UP AND HAIRDRESSING

Answers to: The PM.

Responsible for: The appropriate physical appearance in face and hair, often needing careful attention to period details. A hidden part of the job is catering to actors' insecurities by helping them believe in the way they look. Where the character demands negative traits, the make-up artist may have to work against an actor's resistance. Make-up is particularly tricky; shoot tests to ensure makeup is credible and compatible with color stock and any special lighting.

Personality traits: Diplomacy and endurance. My father was a make-up man and arrived at work before anyone else, preparing actors hours ahead of shooting when elaborate beards and whiskers were required. Apart from character or glamour preparation, his work included the bizarre, such as putting a black patch over the eye of Fagin's dog in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948), applying gold paint to the naked girl in Goldfinger (1964), and inventing ghoulish effects for Hammer horror films like flesh melting from a face to leave eyeballs staring out of bony eye-sockets. It helps to be resourceful and to relish the unusual, but he also spoke of the miseries of trying to make up foul-tempered alcoholics in the early morning. After the dawn rush, make-up and hairdressing must often sit idle on the set, keeping a weather eye for when their handiwork needs repair.

POSTPRODUCTION

Descriptions of postproduction personnel and their responsibilities will be found in Chapter 37: Beginning the Editing Stage.