CHAPTER 36
DIRECTING THE CREW
Look in a film school's movie credits for a particular period, and you will find the same few names in different capacities for different films. These are the people in their cadre who loved the process of filmmaking and would direct one month and be a friend's gaffer or production manager the next. This is whom you should aim to become and whom you hope to find in your crew.
LIMIT YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
Beginning directors often try to oversee the whole crew's work. In search of perfection you will have the urge to set the lights, operate the camera, and control a hundred other small details. Too often neglected is the human presence on the screen, the one aspect the audience really notices. A check of composition, as we shall see, is absolutely necessary, but the director must be willing to give technicians and production personnel control of their areas. For their part, those people must be fully responsible and aware at all times and take the appropriate initiative without waiting for explicit instructions.
INITIATIVE
Finding crew members who take initiative yet work as a team is not easy. Some are too passive to act without instructions. Some in a student shoot, regimented by family and schooling, can only produce from within a punitive, monitoring structure and cannot act when something in their area needs doing. Others take initiative to exert control for its own sake. Status and control issues absorb too much of some people's energy to make them suited for the give-and-take of film teamwork.
COMMUNICATING
Before shooting begins, each crew member should have read and questioned the script and contributed ideas about his or her own area of specialty. A director should, in turn, understand the rudiments of each technician's craft and be able to communicate in the craft's special terms. That's why this book contains so much about the whole production process.
From you or your delegates, the crew needs positive, concise directions with as much advance warning as possible. The crew will not rise to genuine crises if things that could have been foreseen go unattended. Avoid thinking out loud, especially when the pace heats up. Try instead to arrive at your conclusions and produce brief, practical instructions worded so they cannot be misinterpreted. Without being condescending, get people to repeat instructions of any complexity so you know they understand. Anything that can be put in writing should be.
Wherever possible during shooting, the assistant director (AD) and director of photography (DP) should deal with all production and technical questions. This releases you to do your job properly, which is to answer the needs of the actors and to concentrate on building the film's dramatic content. Your script supervisor will be an important ally, although this person is unable to judge performance quality as the job requires a fierce concentration on words, actions, and materials. Do, however, confer over coverage, especially if you make changes.
RELATIONS WITH CAST AND THE PUBLIC
Warn crew members that actors may privately seek their opinions on the quality of the work. This is treacherous ground, and the crew member must react with extreme diplomacy. However flattering this may be, it is probably neurosis and can, if wrongly handled, become dangerously divisive. To avoid such pitfalls, crew members should only be supportive, which is mainly what actors seek. When actors solicit support for negative attitudes or communicate something the director should know about, the crew member should remain neutral and afterward discreetly report the situation up the chain of command. Warn crew never to voice criticism that can weaken anyone else's authority, either on the set or off of it. This preserves the all-important working morale.
Everyone should exercise the same caution when conversing with bystanders on location, who may take it upon themselves to cause trouble or attract unwelcome publicity. Any purposeful questions should be referred to the AD or other crew member delegated to deal with public relations.
LOOK THROUGH THE CAMERA
When a new shot has been set up you must look through the viewfinder to ensure that framing at the start and other key compositions are as you expect. You may need to do the same at the take's end to check the camera's finishing composition. When there is a lot of moving camera coverage, you will need to agree with your operator on compositions, angle, size of the image, and so on (see Figure 36-1). Walk the actors (or stand-ins) through the take, freezing them at salient points to agree with the operator on what should appear in the frame. To stabilize these decisions, your crew will need to make chalk marks on the floor for both actors and the camera dolly. Everyone may have to hit particular marks at particular moments in the scene.
Precision of this kind separates the experienced from the inexperienced. Trying to impose this degree of control on an inexperienced ensemble may be an exercise in futility that wastes time and wrecks cast morale. Because framing,
composition, lighting, and sound coverage are the formal structuring that translate a live world into cinema, the director must keep the strongest possible contact with the outcome on the screen. When shooting video or film with a video assist, you can watch the whole take on the monitor during recording and know immediately what you have. With film and no video assist, the results remain in doubt until the rushes return from the laboratory. This is why rushes or dailies are rushed back to the unit—so reshooting can take place if it's ever needed.
On a film shoot, all you can do to ensure your vision is being recorded is to clearly brief the technical crew through the DP and to stand close to the camera so you can monitor what it is doing. With a little practice you can see from the operator's movements if he or she is in sync with the action. Not doing these things invariably leads to rude shock at the dailies viewing, when it's usually too late to make changes.
If you can watch the action on a video monitor because you are shooting film with a video assist or shooting video, the actors may feel abandoned if you are not beside the camera and physically present for them.
MAKING PROGRESS
Shooting is stop-start work, with many holdups for lighting or camera setups. A crew can easily slow down while everyone waits for A. N. Other. Nobody quite knows who they are waiting for, but everyone knows that somebody is not ready. Eventually it becomes apparent that everyone is waiting for the notorious and elusive A. N. Other. This character hounds the disorganized and the tired. The good AD is, among other things, a sheepdog who constantly monitors bottlenecks and who barks everyone into action the moment that shooting can continue.
WHEN YOU AND YOUR CREW ARE ALONE
If you have a fairly small and intimate crew, encourage them, when you are alone, to discuss their impressions of the shoot. Some members such as grips, electricians, and ADs do their work before shooting and stand observing during the actual take. What they notice may usefully complement your sense of what is really happening. You, after all, have goals from rehearsal to fulfill while they may be seeing the action for the first time and have an audience-like reaction.
The work of other crew members such as the camera operator, DP, and sound recordist demands such localized attention to quality that they cannot reliably register the dramatic. You will therefore get a very mixed bag of observations, some of them way off track. Hear and encourage all views, but do not feel you must act upon or rebuff ideas that imply criticism of your work. If, however, most of the crew, including the female members, were to find the main female character abrasive, you should take serious notice.
WRAPPING FOR THE DAY
At the end of a working day, thank each actor and crew member personally and make sure that everything in a borrowed location has been replaced exactly as found. This attention to someone else's property signifies your concern and appreciation. It also helps ensure a welcome should you want to return. Initial reluctance to accept a film crew's presence often arises because people have heard horror stories about a boorish crew's treatment of property.
On a small crew, those with little equipment should help those with much (lighting for instance). Like most human organizations, a film crew can personify divisions of rank. As their general you must be concerned for the whole army's welfare. You need your foot-soldiers' affection and loyalty. If it seems appropriate, pitch in and help with the donkey work.
No wrap is complete without a careful reiteration of the following day's arrangements with the AD and production manager (PM). If you are shooting exteriors, someone must check the latest weather report and have contingency shooting ready if bad weather threatens. Call sheets should be issued to cast and crew, and rented equipment should be returned, batteries charged, and film dailies delivered to wherever they must go.
DAILIES
If you can watch a video version of the day's work, now is the time—before dinner is better than after—to see it. You are interested in every aspect: the performances, camerawork, lighting, sets, and support organization. This is when trends—good or not so good—can be spotted and congratulations or corrections can be diplomatically handed out.