After realizing and accepting my hyper-organizational tendencies last week, I realized that there are certain positions on a production that utilize these skills more often than others. As I previously mentioned, I will be working as the Assistant Director for our production of Doll House. In class Arturo challenged me to learn more about the AD position and think critically about how I could possibly apply my skill set to this position as I try it for the first time. After looking into it a bit, this is what I found.
One of the primary duties of an AD is maintaining order on set. This means tracking the daily progress of the production against the overall production schedule. It is imperative for the AD to stay organized and on task, they are essential to keep the shoot running smoothly. An unorganized or uninformed AD would slow production and possibly even ruin time sensitive shooting dates. The AD must have a complete understanding of the script breakdown in order to fully follow the production schedule that they help create, making sure that each scene is shot in an order that makes sense logistically. An AD must also be very good at estimating how long a particular scene will take to shoot; depending on the amount of action or dialogue a scene that is only half a page may take hours to shoot.
The AD is also responsible for the health and safety of the crew. As Arturo talked about in class, if someone gets hurt on set, it is the AD that will suffer the consequences. This means making sure each department is taking the necessary steps to secure the set, like ensuring that lights are stable and cords are taped down.
The AD is also responsible for "calling the role" before filming a scene. This entails calling "Quiet on set" followed by "roll sound" and "roll camera." The call for "action" is usually called by the director, but can be called by the AD at the director's preference.
In more complicated productions, there can be many different ADs, creating a hierarchy of sorts whilst dividing up the many managerial duties that occur at any given time during a production. A production could have a First AD, Second AD, Second Second AD, Third AD, and Additional AD. I guess they just sort of ran out of creativity there.
Along with being organized, a good AD needs to be able to communicate to many (all) of the departments on set, and needs to exhibit good leadership skills to keep everything rolling smoothly along.
While I'm sure my time on set as AD for Doll House will certainly be a learning experience, I do think that I am ready to give this position a shot. It will provide me with an opportunity to really get involved in the production and put my organization skills to the test. I am looking forward to working with all of the departments and seeing how they all come together on set.
I am a very organized person. My room is impeccable, my backpack is laboriously and strategically packed to optimize convenience, my calendar is color-coded, and I always know what is on my schedule for at least the next few days in advance. This organization carries over into my post production work, which is one of the reasons I think I initially gravitated towards the post process.
I edit out of Premiere, which allows for an immense amount of organization as well as customization. You can arrange the window panels in any conceivable way, customizing the size and location of every window and tool imaginable. and don't even get me started on the bins. I LOVE bins. I have bins for everything. I have bins for my clips. I have bins for my sequences. I have bins for my bins. My Premiere projects are complete Binception.
So far, I have only found use for my obsessive organization within the post production process, however, in this class I am trying to push myself and be involved more with the pre prodoction and production aspects of our projects. At first I wasn't sure if I could find a role that suited my organizational skill set, however, on Monday we watched a short interview that described the Script Supervisor/Continuity position, and I think I found what I've been looking for. Having never been a script supervisor on a project before, I cannot say whether I would actually like this position, but just from the short clip we watched, I could see a lot of overlap from my post production skills.
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| Notes from a 'scripty' |
Basically, the script supervisor is responsible for keeping the project alive during the production process, which involves a significant amount of work in pre production through script breakdowns, which ensures that the production, which is often filmed out-of-sequence, always makes verbal and visual sense. It also requires an intense attention to detail, making sure that actors motion and wardrobe stay continuous throughout different shots, ensuring nothing will break the moment of the film. The script supervisor gets to work with many different departments on set, making sure each is doing their job correctly and consistently between takes.
That being said, I will be working as the Assistant Director during our project for this class, but I still think my organization and attention to detail will certainly come into play, whether it is from script breakdowns,scheduling, or general on set management. Either way, I am excited to take a step out of the dark editing room and into the light during the production process.
