Tomorrow I start co-directing a short movie. I must say, it felt suddenly on me. Just today morning I've found a request, titled "Co-Director with experience needed...". I was answered within a few hours, told them that I've got some experience. I am already a Co-Director in another movie, but we're still in Pre-Production, and I haven't had a chance to Co-Direct yet. I haven't been instructed, and they think I have some experience. So, basically, I know what to do in theory, but no practice. Could someone offer me any tips?
Tomorrow I start co-directing. Any tips?
- Thread starter Inarius
- Start date
So... what are you doing?
I mainly deal with locations within the scene, like where an actor stands, and where all the items/furniture/props should be in the scene. Think of it as a creation of a room for the casting crew to work further on. Another part of my job is to track all shooting takes.
Yes, I understand why it sounds strange, but this is the dirty job of the director.
Actors or extras? You're either doing part of blocking (or just marking where the director wants the marks) or you're telling the extras where to be and when. The later is usually done by the AD.
Production Designer / Art Director tasks by the sound of it.
Script Supervisor/Camera Assist/Sound mixer jobs (reporting)?
It's not really weird, though your production has labeled it rather oddly. "We'll throw a bunch of tasks we don't want to do to him and call him co-director." I assume shooting has already begun. If you were clearer from the start, the advice you were given would have been more helpful to your assigned tasks.
Hope the shoot went well.
Well, I think it's some kind of AD.
Probably AD, if following your description.
Script supervisor maybe, but no camera assist or sound.
It hasn't begun yet, I've still got 3 hrs before it does.
So you won't be recording the camera/sound data within your logs?
I can see the problems you're going to have. You're going to be spread so thinly, you will be unable to any particular job well.
AD is always busy if they're doing their job right. Script Supervisor is quite busy too, but not as much. Production Designer is also rather busy too, though at the time you're doing production designer, you're going to be missing the AD's duties and vice versa. They're not typically jobs that can be given to the same person with an time effective outcome.
Once again, good luck with the shoot.
I do record the data, but I have nothing to do with the camera or the sound, besides recording the data and keeping the camera and the sound on the same shots. And later I sorted the video files by scenes and shots. This is what I was doing most of the time. Supervising the script wasn't something long to do. Just a breakdown to shots, which I can hardly call "Script supervising".
I don't call it script supervising either, but alas, you've through the experience. Part of a script supervisors duties can be to prepare data so the editor can see at a glance what is captured with each take, what each take etc so if they're looking for coverage, they don't need to go searching through all the files, it's cataloged on a single piece of paper.
On top of all that, keeping photos and notes of scenes to ensure proper continuity and answering questions from various people regarding the state of certain scenes. This becomes more important if scenes happen over multiple shooting days, sometimes days, weeks or months apart.
They're a combination of a representative of the editor and the director on top of support for other departments. It's a difficult role serving multiple masters.
As for logs, the mixer usually handles the sound logs, the camera assistant (I believe) handles the camera logs as part of their duties.