When shooting a small-scale video, only one person handles all department workings. He or she works not only as a director, but also a cinematographer and the camera operator.
However, as the production grows and needs large-scale filming, more specific members are needed for different departments. Whether you want to set up a filming studio, or join a movie-making workshop, you'd better figure out the entire composition of the film crew and choose the best one according to your capabilities.
To simplify the scenario, we have divided the crew into these major departments, as shown below, with their work areas.
In this article
What Is the Role of a Producer?
The producer is the main handler of the filming. Before filming, he finds out the content and directions and links with the director and DP for each direction to get the best vision of the music video. The producer are responsible for:
1. Schedule the crew members
Producers can make the call sheets for the crew members to maintain their schedule according to the specific timelines.
2. Find the studio space
To find the studio space, the producers work with the directors to get the exact location according to the script of their music video for better illustrations.
3. Find the gear
Producers found the gear for the studio space and handled the renting of the equipment from the warehouse.
4. Build relationships with the industries
If the filming is starting and you don't know who to choose, you should build a relationship with the appropriate people in the industry. So that when you are in trouble, you can call them off to get the solution.
Roles of a Director Department
The director is considered to be in charge of filmmaking. His main responsibility is creatively giving the idea to the production and communicating to the crew and characters to check out what they want in their scenes to play out.
The director department mainly consists of the director and the first assistant director, and sometimes there is a 2nd, a 3rd, and 4th AD. For example,
1st AD
The first lead is mainly in charge of time management, communicate with the crew member, and ensuring that the shorts get done safely and readily.
You need to work with different people in the industry to check their personalities and work according to them. There is no need to work with the same people repeatedly.
Team for Production Designing
The next and foremost department is the production design. In this the production designer is the leader of all and has to work with the art director. He is mainly in charge of the set builders, set dressers, prop makers, hair and makeup, and costume and wardrobe departments.
In this department, the production designer is mainly involved in decorating the sets, making props, and setting up the lighting.
Cinematographers Department
The cinematic department comes to the frontline to give the shots and the lit music video final touches. In this, the head of the department is also known as the director of photography.
Director of photography
He mainly decides how the shots and the music video footage look. The main action is to handle the lightning and interact with the lights with the environment and the characters. He should build relationships with each other for better illusions.
Director's monitor
The director's monitor is the screen that displays a live shoot and filming of everything happening on camera. It mainly gives each take's exact position and views for coordinating with the director and the DP.
Due to this, they can change the direction and the setup wherever they want and whenever they want.
Camera operators
To operate the camera, the DPs are not involved, but there is a specific job of the camera operators, which handle the shots and moves according to the director's directions. There are also 1st and 2nd Assistant Cameras (AC) with the camera operators.
1st Assistant Camera
The duty of the 1st AC is to focus on the required target, pulling, swapping the lenses from the camera. He is ensuring that the camera is all set and workable on the shoot day without any trouble.
2nd Assistant Camera
The 2nd AC has to consider the slates of the shots, place exact locations and markers for the characters, and give exposed footage to save for the backup.
Gaffers and key grip
Gaffers and key grip have their own teams for maintaining the lighting and grip work assigned by the DP according to the creative plans.
Digital media technician
It is essential to get the backup of footage of every shot. If you are working on a large scale, the backup planner is recognized as the Digital Media Technician (DMT).
DMT will handle the exposed footage, which Digital Memory Card will do with tapes denoting the card's number. Make sure to make two backups of the footage to prevent any trouble.
Additional Roles
If you are the music video director, you need a Cinematographer with Camera Operators. He will be in charge of pulling and adjusting all the camera alignments. If you have enough budget, go with the co-producer to help you direct the talents.
To make your subject looks good and modern according to the theme, you should hire hair and makeup artist. If you have more budget, you can do it professionally with more and more crew members.
Conclusion
If you are a starter, then there is no need to worry to pull-off all the roles in a crew; you just need two to three people for the start-up. That's all about the large production, but whenever you scale up, you should know how to manage all the members with their required areas.
