How to Work with a Movie Crew

Video Transcript

"Rhett Reiger, White Caspian Studios on behalf of Expert Village. Talk for a brief minute about working with the crew. Just like with the actors, as the director, you will be working so closely with the crew every day, all day. You'll be almost going to bed and sleeping with them. I mean you'll be waking up in the morning with them. You'll be just living right next to them all day of every day. And you know there have been times when we have shot all the way through the night. So you're almost never away. So it's so important that you and the crew, primarily the director of photography, but also the production manager, the camera AC's, the assistant director if there is one, you’ve got to have a close relationship with these people. And you've got to understand their needs. Now everybody has common needs. Such as food. Food is vitally important. I'm sure you've heard this before. If you read much about movies or if you've made them before, food is so important. Feed your crew right. If you don't feed your crew, no matter what you've saved in terms of money, you will pay for it in production. Guaranteed. So feed them right. Number two, you've got to give them rest. You know that time is always a problem on a movie set. And you're always running out of daylight. And we can always do a little bit more. But, it's better to shut down when people are starting to get a little frazzled than to keep going, push on through, and lose production value. You don't want to lose that value. And I'll just add to that, treating the crew like professionals. Some directors like to pretty much scream their way around the set and personally I think that's a bad choice. I think you need to give everybody respect. If that guy knows how to work that camera, let him do his thing. If she knows how to organize the whole production, and the script supervisor, let her do her thing. Let people do what they're good at. And as a director, the best thing you can do is just direct and help lead everybody in the same direction."