Chapter 8
Developing a Crew
You “develop” rather than “choose” a crew because you should always do some trial shooting together. This verifies that equipment is functioning and that you understand each other’s values, signals, and terminology. One operator’s close-up is another’s medium shot, so developing a brief and unambiguous communication is important, especially when you face “run and gun” shooting. Responding to a rapidly changing situation, with no possibility of rehearsal or repeats, allows wide margins for misunderstanding. Only if your crew understands your occasional whispered instructions do they achieve successful subject selection, framing, composition, speed of camera movements, and microphone positioning. Shoot exercise footage and expect to find wide variance in taste and skill levels. Look, too, for variations in responses, technical vocabulary, and interpretation of standard jargon. It’s the director’s job to unify the crew so it becomes like a many-armed individual.
Developing Your Own Crew
In the worst-case scenario you live remote from centers of filmmaking and must train your own crew. Let’s say you have access to a camcorder, microphone, and replay facilities. How many and what kinds of people will you need? What are their responsibilities?
Certainly ascertain technical expertise and experience, but also find out their feelings and ideas concerning documentary, books, plays, music, hobbies, and interests. Technical acumen matters, but a person’s maturity and values matter more. You can negotiate many changes, but not with someone who is uninterested in your choice of subject or disdains your approach.
Why Crew Members’ Temperaments Matter
Today documentary crews are smaller than ever—two, maybe three persons. You depend utterly on your colleagues. They must have personalities that support not only the project and each other but also those in front of the camera. Most documentary participants have never experienced filming before, so the crew’s interest and support are vital, especially if the shooting extends over days or months. Because of their exposure to the new and unfamiliar work, they are highly attuned to bad atmospheres.
Since a documentary is a record of relationships, the presence of anyone detached or disapproving in the crew casts a cold shadow over your endeavors.
The BBC usually assigned me wonderful crews, but occasionally I got individuals with problems. Typically it was forgivable lapses in mental focus, but more than once I got people who were actively subversive and one person who proved to be mentally ill. Being under pressure and far from home can further unbalance some people and exacerbate latent insecurities and jealousies. This is difficult to foresee and in documentary becomes an appalling liability because good relationships are everything.
Whenever potential crew members have done other film or team work, speak confidentially with their coworkers. Filming is intense, so work partners quickly learn each other’s temperamental strengths and weaknesses. Assess new teammates according to their:
- Realism
- Reliability
- Ability to sustain effort and concentration over long periods and in discomfort or danger
- Commitment to the processes and purposes of making documentaries
- Knowledge and appreciation of films or filmmakers that you particularly respect
In all film crew positions, beware of those who:
- Fail to deliver on what they’ve promised
- Forget or modify verbal commitments
- Habitually overestimate their own abilities
- Let their attention wander beyond their own field of responsibility
- Have only one working speed (it’s usually medium slow; faced with a crisis, these people slow up in confusion or go to pieces)
- See you as a stepping-stone toward something more desirable
Be sure to assign areas of responsibility so each person knows which is theirs. Be on guard against areas mistakenly assigned to nobody or to two people, when each can think the other has taken care of the problem and neither does.
In a small crew in particular—camera operator, director, and sound recordist—each person ends up with important additional roles, such as prophet, visionary, scribe, or fixer. Someone is always the jester because every unit develops its own special inside jokes. The pleasure from working well together is the best intoxicant you can imagine. It becomes headiest under pressure and there’s no hangover the morning after. Carefully selected partners make anything possible, because determined friends are unstoppable.
Small Crew Roles and Responsibilities
Here is an outline of each crew member’s responsibilities in a minimal crew and the strengths and weaknesses you might look for. Of course, in real life many of the best practitioners are the exceptions, so this list is fallible. Editors and their work are described under “Postproduction” in Chapter 13, Editing: From Start to First Assembly. For producers, production managers, gaffers, and grips found working on larger projects, look in Chapter 28, Organization, Crew, and Procedures.
Director
The director is responsible for the quality and meaning of the final film. He or she must also:
- Assemble funding
- Conduct or supervise research
- Decide on content
- Assemble a crew
- Schedule shooting
- Lead the crew
- Direct participants during shooting
- Supervise editing
- Hustle distribution
A good director has a lively fascination with the causes and effects behind the way real people live. He or she has a mind always searching for links and explanations, is social, and loves delving into people’s stories. Outwardly informal and easygoing, he or she is methodical and organized but quite able to throw away prior work when early assumptions prove obsolete. The best directors have endless patience in stalking the truth, and strong ambitions in doing it justice in cinematic terms. They are articulate and succinct, know their own minds without being dictatorial, and can speak on terms of respectful equality with other film craftspeople.
Directors are, however, very human. Many are obstinate, private, awkward, and even shy beings who do not explain themselves well, change their minds, or are disorganized and visceral. Most can be intimidated by bellicose technicians, have difficulty in balancing attention between crew and participants, and desert one for the other under pressure. During shooting, sensory overload catapults many into a state of acute doubt and anxiety in which all choice becomes painful. Some cannot relinquish their original intentions and go catatonic or act like a captain at the wheel of a sinking ship. Directing can change normal people into manic – depressives chasing the Holy Grail. If that is not enough, the director’s over-heated mental state can generate superhuman energy that tests crew members’ patience to the limit.
Directing a process that crystallizes life is a heady business. It often means living completely in the present, whether you like it or not. Initial success raises the bar. Thereafter, you fear failure more.
Like a mountaineer dangling over a precipice, the director often comes to depend on the adrenaline pumping from dread and exhilaration during the cinematic chase. This, like stage fright for actors, is a devil that never really goes away. But aren’t fear and excitement the portents of everything worthwhile?
Director of Photography (DP) and/or Camera Operator
In the minimal crew, the director of photography (DP):
- Orders the camera equipment if it’s hired,
- Tests and adjusts it,
- Masters all its needs and working principles, and
- Answers to the director but takes initiative when shooting handheld action footage.
He or she is also responsible for:
- Scouting locations to assess light and electricity supplies,
- Lighting aesthetics,
- Setting up lighting instruments,
- Deciding camera positioning in collaboration with the director, and
- Making all camera movements.
Handheld camerawork is a talent that all operators think they have, but which few do. Work on it using test footage and critique the results. A good operator:
- Is highly image conscious, preferably from training in photography and fine art
- Has a highly developed sense of composition and design
- Has an eye for the sociologically telling details that show in people’s surroundings
- Is sensitive to the behavioral nuances that reveal so much about character
- Is interested in people, not just photography.
Experienced camera personnel sometimes hide in the mechanics of their craft at the expense of the director’s deeper quest for themes and meanings. One such answered a question of mine with “I’m just here to make pretty pictures,” and he might have added, “and not get involved.”
The director sees content happening in front of (sometimes behind) the camera, but only the operator can see the action in its framed, cinematic form. When you are grab shooting, only the operator really knows when and what to shoot.
You can direct the handheld camera up to a point, but usually you have to rely very much on your operator’s discrimination. For this reason, a camera operator must be decisive, and mentally and physically dexterous. The best are low-key, practical, and inventive types who don’t ruffle easily in crises. They enjoy improvising solutions to intransigent logistical, lighting, or electrical problems.
A narrow “tech” mentality is never good enough. Crew members must comprehend both the details and the totality of a project and see how to make the best contribution at any given moment. Look for the perfectionist who will cheerfully find the best and simplest solution when time runs short.
In a two-person crew, the director often handles the microphone. This is a recipe for bad sound because you have too much on your plate.
Sound Recordist
Students often think sound recording is unglamorous and unimportant and leave it to whoever consents to do it, but poorly recorded sound fatally disconnects the audience. Capturing clear, clean, and consistent sound is highly specialized. The sound recordist is responsible for:
- Checking equipment in advance
- Choosing the right equipment for the situation
- Not causing shadows or letting the mike creep into frame
- Keeping the microphone close to the sound source even during handheld shooting
- Hearing sound inequities and curing them whenever possible
- Shooting atmospheres and sound effects on his or her own initiative
A good sound recordist needs patience, a good ear, and the maturity to be low person on the totem pole.
FIGURE 8-1 Wearing high-quality, ear-enclosing headphones is the only sure way to monitor sound quality. (Jason Longo and Byron Smith shooting for David Sutherland Productions.)
The camera position and lighting (if there is any) come first, so the sound recordist must hide mikes, cause no shadows, and yet try to achieve first-rate sound. For some, shooting becomes a series of aggravating compromises. Many professionals end up bitter that “good standards” are routinely trampled, but it’s the disconnected craftsperson, not the whole filmmaker, who gags on necessary compromise.
The art of sound recording is all about the selection and placement of mikes. You listen not to words but to sound quality. This means hearing all the buzzes, rumbles, or edginess that the novice unconsciously screens out.
With a camera that is handheld and on the move, sound work requires skill, awareness, and quietly agile footwork. The recordist must wear ear-enclosing, isolating headphones (Figure 8-1); when moving the mike, he or she must be able to hear the differences. Musical interests and musical training best equip people to judge. Once the material is edited together, then you begin hearing all the inequities (Figure 8-2).
FIGURE 8-2 Sound mismatches emerge when you play the cuts between mike positions. A skilled recordist can minimize differences in the field.
Going Further
See Chapter 28 Organization, Crew, and Procedures, for notes on the larger unit needed to make more elaborate documentaries.