What's Expected of a Student Director of Photography

Continuing our "What's Expected" series, it's now time to take a look at what makes for a successful student director of photography, or DP.

1. Develop a Visual Vocabulary for the Film. As the Director of Photography, your primary responsibility is to assist the Director in interpreting his or her vision of the story on the page into compelling images on the screen. That means thoroughly reading the script and spending time with the Director discussing non-visual things like theme, character arcs, mood, and emotional beats, as well as visual elements like camera movement, color, light, and shadow. Firm understanding of those non-visual elements buried inside the text will enable you to effectively communicate those deeper elements to the audience through your lighting, lens choices, camera moves, and overall visual style. And that understanding will also enable you to quickly improvise, make changes to your plan, or simplify your methodology on set without compromising the artistic integrity of the film.

2. Lead by Example. You're the "Captain of the Crew" in that the Camera, Grip, and Electrical Departments all report directly to you. They will look to you for direction and approval for everything they do on set. But more importantly, your behavior shapes theirs. A DP who is chronically late to set will train their crew to not have any urgency to get going in the morning. A DP who leaves set while the rest of the crew is cleaning and packing gear will show the crew that their work isn't respected. And a DP who publicly battles with the Director or even goes so far as to direct actors diminishes the Director in the eyes of the crew.

3. Manage Your Equipment. As far as camera, grip, and electric equipment goes, it's your responsibility to reserve it as soon as a shoot is scheduled, check it out of the Library the night before the shoot, inspect it thoroughly, charge all batteries, clean all lenses, confirm that bulbs light up, make sure monitors have all their cables, etc. While your crew will be responsible for much of this on set, you do yourself and your team no favors if you haven't inspected everything beforehand. What's more, you don't know who might have checked out your gear before you or how they may have left it. Don't assume that a camera is set to the right ISO, white balance, or frame rate. Be sure. Check it. Dial in your settings the night before so your AC can literally set up the camera without you in the morning while you go over the day's shot list with the Director.

4. Brush up on Your Fundamentals. In the heat of production, you're going to be expected to execute the plan and solve any problems that come up, quickly and efficiently. To do that you need a strong grasp of all the fundamentals of cameras, lenses, depth of field, lighting, and grip equipment. Review terminology, techniques, and important steps from classes like DVA241 and Cinematography. Knowing the difference between "move the lamp left" and "pan the lamp left," remembering the names of the three positions of an apple box, and grasping the key visual differences of all the lenses in your kit will make you a more effective and more efficient DP.

5. Delegate. It's very tempting to just try to do everything yourself, especially on the first day with a new crew. But resist the urge to change your own lenses, move your own lights, or even pull your own focus. Your crew is there to make your job easier, not stand around and watch you do theirs. Trust them and empower them to do their best work in support of your vision of the film. Your AC is there to manage your camera rig, change your lenses and batteries and memory cards, put down marks for the actors, take focus measurements, pull focus for you, and keep the camera log. Your Key Grip is there to manage your grip equipment and your grip crew. Likewise your Gaffer is there to manage the lights and the electrical crew. Delegate jobs to the right person and let them do their thing, but be ready to give guidance and approval as soon as they are needed.

6. Nail Your Focus. It may be your AC's job to pull focus, but it's your responsibility to make sure it's right. Our newer, large-sensor cameras give us beautifully shallow depth of field but also make nailing critical focus more difficult than ever. Work with your AC to set marks, take measurements, and use all our monitoring tools to check focus again and again to be sure it's sharp. Consider the aperture of your lens. Do you need to shoot so wide open that your depth of field is so shallow that if an actor breathes, he's out of focus? Probably not. Should you be shooting so closed-down that almost everything in your shot is in focus? Again, probably not. Check those settings, make your marks, and make sure it's sharp before you roll camera.

7. Shoot with VFX in Mind. Visual Effects are part and parcel of what we do here at UAT. You're going to need to light greenscreens, pay attention to tracking markers, and add interactive lighting for effects that should be emitting light into the scene. You may have to compose shots for elements that aren't there and won't exist for months. You may have to shoot actors separately with the intent of having them composited together by the VFX team. All of this requires you to have at least a basic handle on visual effects work and the ability to previsualize the final outcome of a shot so you can provide the VFX team with the raw materials they need to make it happen.

8. Watch Dailies. Watch your footage while the film is still in production. Don't wait til the end. You should be watching footage every day, hence the name "dailies." That means you're probably staying later than the rest of the crew, or you're taking footage home with you, or you're arriving an hour before everyone else in the morning. Whatever you have to do, do it. Because you can't improve upon yesterday's performance unless you see the footage with your own eyes and assess what you could have done better.

9. Manage Color. Shoot with the flattest dynamic range possible. Adjust the picture settings on your camera to give you the most information in the highlights and the shadows so you can dial in your final look in post. Then make sure you manage the color grading process or even better still, grade the film yourself. The color grade can dramatically change the look of a film, just make sure you aren't handing the responsibility for that off to someone else. Ultimately the image still belongs to you as DP, and you need to be satisfied with the final product.

10. Develop Your Own Style. Finally, start to develop your own signature. You can always tell a Gordon Willis film from a Wally Pfister film from a Roger Deakins film. Figure out what makes a film uniquely yours, the type of shots you want to be known for, or the type of lighting that feels like your signature. Put some of yourself as an artist into everything you shoot, no matter who is directing, no matter what the genre. But make sure it serves the story and isn't just "cool for cool's sake." A bad DP lets his or her personal style overwhelm the substance of a film. A good DP serves the story first and foremost. But the great DPs know how to serve a story while also expressing their personal style in harmony with the rest of the film.

What's Expected of a Student Producer

Continuing from last week's "What's Expected of a Student Director," let's turn our attention to the person who makes the director's job possible - the producer. Producing can be a thankless job, one that many people - even people in the industry, sometimes - don't quite understand.

So what, exactly, is the job all about?

1. Breaking It Down. Producers thrive on "breakdowns." The Script Breakdown is a master list of every scene in the script and every character, prop, set, vehicle, etc. that will be required to film those scenes. The Casting Breakdown is the list of the characters in the film and the brief descriptions of the types of actors you want to read for those roles. The "Day out of Days" is another type of breakdown, used for scheduling actors ("Actor X is on set for 3 days out of a total of 10 days of filming," for example.)

2. Doing Paperwork. The paperwork doesn't end with the breakdowns. If you're using Screen Actors Guild actors, you need to file paperwork with the Guild 6 weeks before you start production. Once SAG approves your production, you sign more paperwork and become "SAG signatory," meaning you've now entered into a contract with the Guild. And that spawns more paperwork - actor contracts, time sheets, final production reports.

3. Wrangling Locations. If you want to shoot off-campus, you need to help your director find the locations that will work for the film. Then it's your job to get them to agree to let you film there. If it's a public location, you'll have to work with the local film office to get a permit (more paperwork). And a public or commercial location will most likely expect the production to have insurance - which UAT can provide after you do (you guessed it) more paperwork.

4. Scheduling. Your actors - SAG or otherwise - probably have day jobs. Your crew members have other classes, homework, part time jobs, social lives. Your locations have restrictions on when you can film there. Equipment gets reserved for other productions. Juggling all these factors to find the best times to get everyone and everything on set at the right times can be a full-time job unto itself.

5. Issuing Call Sheets. 12 to 24 hours before filming begins, it's your job to send out a call sheet to all cast and crew that includes the location address, call times for everyone to arrive on set, contact info for you and other key personnel, even the address of the nearest hospital in case someone is hurt on set. And as each shoot day wraps up, it's your job to issue the next day's call sheet.

6. Sticking to "12 On, 12 Off." Shoot days can be LONG. On student and indie projects they can get out of hand and go 16 hours or more. It's your job as producer to stick to a policy of no more than 12 hours of work on any one day, and no less than 12 hours off between wrap time on one day and call time on the next. Sometimes your director will work against you on this, going longer than planned. It's your job to encourage the director to wrap, or it's on you to revise your call time for the next day lest you incur the ire of your crew.

6. Feeding the Team. Like an army, a film crew moves on its stomach. A well-stocked craft services table, a constant flow of water, sports drinks, and coffee, bagels in the morning, and a hearty lunch halfway through the day will keep things running smoothly. And if you're working with SAG, remember to feed your actors at the 6 hour mark or risk violating your contract!

7. Preparing "Sides." Every day on set you need to provide the day's script pages - a.k.a. "sides" - to all department heads. These sides need to be half the normal size of script pages (i.e., two pages side by side on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper) and must only include the materials being shot today (meaning anything else gets blacked out with Sharpie). This is a daily task that on a bigger production would fall to a Production Coordinator or an Office PA, but since this is a student film - you're it.

8. Missing All the Action. You're going to be so busy making sure the next shoot day will go off without a hitch, that you're probably not going to be on set much, if at all. If you thrive on the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, then the producer gig isn't for you.

9. Getting Very Little Credit. Once the film is done, everyone is going to talk to the director, congratulate the director, praise the director, and credit the director for everything that went right in the film. No one in the general audience even comprehends everything you did to make the film possible, so try not to take it personally if they overlook you.

10. Realizing That You Are Now a Professional. In spite of all that, try and remember that there's a reason why it's the producer who gets the "Best Picture" Oscar at the Academy Awards - because without the producer, there is no movie. And now that you've been through this experience, you're ready for just about anything the industry is going to throw at you!

What's Expected of a Student Director

So you want to direct, huh? You want to direct a big project. A BIG visual effects-driven project like a "Fallout" or a "Red Sand." Leading a team of students over multiple semesters to make something AWESOME.

Cool. Only you're not ready. Oh, you think you are, I know. But you're not the first student to think that, and you won't be the last. But no matter how ready you think you are, you're not. Most people aren't ready for the responsibility of directing a project like this until they've done it once before. Kind of a Catch-22.

But don't worry. I've compiled this handy list to help you through the process, a list of what your classmates and I will expect from you when you undertake the insane task of directing one of these behemoth productions.

1. You will work harder than EVERYONE on your team. This is your number one guiding principle. If anyone on your team - including me - is working harder on your film than you are, you're doing it wrong. Period.

2. Preproduction begins and ends with YOU. You need to oversee everything. Your team is going to need guidance on every decision - casting, costumes, props, sets, locations, concept art. Everything. If you're the director then the film is your vision, not someone else's. No decision should be made without your thumbs-up.

3. Know your script. Whether you wrote the script or not, you need to know every scene, every line of dialogue, every character, and how they all fit into the whole of the film. Read that document and commit it to memory.

4. Get on the same page with your Director of Photography as soon as possible. You and your DP need to be a team. Spend time talking about the script, particularly the emotional beats and how to visualize them. Write a shot list. Storyboard if you can. Draw blocking diagrams. But whatever you do, plan MEANINGFUL coverage that conveys your vision of the story. Make sure your DP buys into your vision so that there are no arguments on set. Ever. And once you and your DP are on the same page, you can focus on your actors when on set, rather than fussing about lenses and f-stops and debating the framing of the shot.

5. Trust and respect your team. Assume they are all going to get their work done to your satisfaction. Give them approval when possible, guidance when needed, and supervision when requested. But never micromanage. If your team feels like you're a tyrant who is going to undermine their every decision, they will no longer buy into your vision and will lose their motivation and passion for the project.

6. Set the tone on your set. Be the first person on set in the morning and the last to leave at night. Make sure your cast and crew have eaten before you grab your lunch. Say "please" and "thank you." Get your own coffee. Sit if you must while the take is rolling, but in between takes when your team is on their feet moving equipment, show some solidarity by being on your feet too. No one is expecting you to grip, but an offer to help once in a while wouldn't hurt. These little gestures will mean a lot to your crew in the long run.

7. Make your day. Your producers have been struggling to schedule your actors around their other gigs and their day jobs. Your team is forgoing doing their homework for their other classes. Your professor is giving up time with his family to make sure your film gets shot. It's on you to respect that by making sure that you make your day, every day. That means getting the shots you need to tell your story. Remember that "meaningful coverage" back in #4? Shoot it, while simplifying and streamlining wherever possible, but without sacrificing your story. Combining two shots into a single moving setup that better conveys the moment? Genius. Losing vital close ups because you shot 10 takes of a master shot? Unforgivable. Finishing on time but not getting the material the film needs to be successful ultimately undermines the whole project and disrespects the efforts of all involved.

8. Watch dailies. Review the previous day's footage before your next shooting day. Assess what worked and what didn't. Compare notes with your DP. Don't HOPE you got it, KNOW you got it.

9. Let your editor find the story. Your intentions were one thing. What you actually got on film is sometimes another thing entirely. If you've chosen your editor well, now trust that person to save you from yourself by finding the best version of the story that is possible with the footage you shot. No matter how insistent you are about your vision, sometimes it's just not there in the footage. Actors don't deliver the goods. The focus puller missed their mark. Dialogue is superfluous. Your direction was wrong. It happens. Let that stuff go and let your editor work.

10. Do some of the heavy lifting during post. Roto sucks. Greenscreens sometimes don't key. Camera tracking fails. Help out. Pick up some tough shots to work on. Be there with your post team while they're struggling. Let them know you haven't thrown them to the wolves. Stand with them, and they'll stand by you and your film.

Remember these ten rules and you'll have a better chance of a smooth and successful project. Disregard these rules at your - and your project's - peril.

Still want to direct?

IndieWire: 'The Six Things You Must Know to Make it in the Film Industry'

Barbara Freeman Doyle, Chair of the Film Division of Chapman University, shares her insight into how the film business really works in this incisive blog post for IndieWire.

In a business where much of the deal-making and negotiations are verbal, your word and your reputation is EVERYTHING. The film industry is small. Everyone who is established can easily make contact with anyone else or can get the straight scoop by making a few calls. How much you are paid, your title on a project, how hard you work, how honest you are, how you treat people— there are no secrets.

Read the entire post here, bookmark it, re-read it, commit it to memory, live it!