Planning - Job Roles in a Film Crew

A film crew is a group of professionals hired by a film’s production company to produce a film. All crew members have their own job title and are involved in producing the film in different ways, however there are often multiple people working in the same role as part of a film crew, for example the film may have more than one producer.
Job roles in typical film crews include:

• Director
• Manages the creative aspects of a film, such as selecting locations the film will be shot in, directing actors, as well as controlling the use of lighting, positioning of cameras, and the content of the film’s soundtrack. They are seen by many as the head of a films production, but are in fact secondary to the film’s producer.
• Hannah will have this role during the production of our film as she has experience with acting, meaning she will know how to direct our actors.
• Producer
• Coordinates the process of filmmaking, by hiring key personnel, funding the film, and controlling how the film will be distributed. There may be more than one producer working on a film, and each producer will specialise in a certain role, for example finance or marketing, but as we only have three people working on our production this will not be the case for us.
• Rebecca will have this role as she and Hannah work well together and we can trust her with money.
• Director of Photography (DoP)
• Works with the film’s director to control the lighting and framing of shots. Directors will usually tell the DoP how they want a shot to look, and the DoP will create this using the desired type of lens, filter, and lighting.
• I will have this role as I like working with cameras and shot composition.
• Camera Operator
• Works under the DoP and director to film scenes. Sometimes, the DoP may also be a camera operator, but this is not very common.
• Each of us will take it in turns to operate the camera as there are only three of us in our film crew. If we were involved in a real production, there would be separate camera operators hired
• Editor
• Head of editing, i.e. assembling the shots recorded into order to create the film. They work closely with the director, and are often helped by several assistant editors, which is what we will be doing.
• We will all contribute to the task of editing, with Rebecca being the head editor. Again, separate personnel would be hired to edit if this was a real production.