Everyone’s Job on Set Is More Important Than Yours
You're the A Camera op on a show. Clearly, yours is the most important job on-set; everything should revolve around your needs and desires, and every other job on-set, from the Director and Executive Producer on down to the newest PA, should be done in order to serve your needs as the incredible center of this universe we call a film set. Everything should be run by you and everyone should recognize that you are the engine that moves the bus.
Right?
Wrong.
There are some camera operators who feel this way (god help their crews) and the reality is, yes, most of us wish this was how it was on some level, because it would make our job easier. But the clear truth is that, while your job is the most important thing to you, the props department thinks theirs is. Makeup thinks theirs is. Crafty recognizes that without them, no one would come to work in the first place (this actually may be true).
Sets are sort of akin to combat on some level, and crews work like the military. It’s chaos, no one has enough time to do what they need, and as a result, everyone is fighting to do what they need in the time allotted, while everyone else is doing the same thing. Winning the battle is the goal and sometimes sacrifices have to be made.
I put this out there to ask you to consider that every single department has a job to do, every single job is important, and every time you are asking one of those departments to make a change, to cut a corner, or to let something slide for the sake of the shot, you are potentially crapping on their work. Ideally, this should never happen, but it eventually does, so leading into those discussions, make sure to couch them in language that lets people know you value their work and understand what you are asking. More importantly, approach them with the issue you are struggling with and see if they have a solution where both of you can achieve what you need.
Most importantly, recognize that sometimes camera has to take the hit. Clearly, we view the frame as the most important thing on-set, but in order to win the battle, there will be times when we have to compromise our work in order to tell the story. Accept these losses graciously and remember that, barring a mistake in the shot, no one will ever see a shot and wonder why you didn’t do that other thing you wanted to. If it works, and tells the story, lesson learned and battle won.
A ways back I was doing a pilot for a good friend who is a director. We were about a day or so in and I had already gotten to know most of the crew. As is usual, I had met the on-set dresser on the first shot and we were working pretty well together–not always a guarantee, but certainly what you hope for, because the on-set dresser is an extremely important piece of the puzzle. We shot the master, and in setting up the coverage, I noticed that a lamp was coming out of one of the actor’s heads in an odd way and asked the on-set dresser if we could move it about a foot to the right. He hesitated and said he really didn’t think we should because it wouldn’t match the master. I was working on something else and off-handedly said “No, it’ll be fine, it’ll look ok,” and finished what I was doing. A few moments later, he came up to me and asked if we could talk.
We walked off set and he told me that he felt that I was being dismissive of his job and that I wasn’t taking his work seriously enough. I was a little surprised but, thankfully, instead of reacting, I immediately apologized and explained that I have been doing this since my days in ER, and have a pretty good idea of where we can cheat and where we can’t (he was much newer in the business than I and protecting his turf, which I respected and still do). He didn’t seem quite convinced, so I apologized again, said I probably wasn’t being clear, and asked him if I could show him what I meant. We walked over to our video playback station (a rarity on a pilot) and I asked the script supervisor to join us. I asked the video playback op to pull up the current shot and the master, and when they were up, said to the script supervisor “we are trying to decide if we can cheat the lamp back a foot in this shot, do you think we can get away with that?” She looked and said that, yes, because of the change in angle she thought it was fine and left. When she was gone, I turned to the on-set dresser and asked if he felt we’d be ok, and assured him that we would put it back before we moved to the next shot so that it was correct for everything else, and that is what we did.
I share this story because this is what constantly happens when you are an operator on a show. You need to tread on other people’s turf to make the larger picture work, and in doing so, you have to recognize that that piece of the pie is their entire job and responsibility. So, instead of simply saying it needs to be that way (the DP would have never accepted the lamp growing out of the actor’s head), I took the time to show him that it wouldn’t bump, and that others saw it too. This not only let him know that I valued his input, but established trust, and the next week and a half went smoothly as a result.
In the end, most of this is about trust. When I am working with people I know, and they know that I will never knowingly do something that will make them look bad or be a problem on-set, they trust what I am suggesting. The same goes the other way around as well. We are all looking out for our own self-interest as far as our jobs and trust allows us to leave ourselves hanging out there exposed when it-s in the best interest of telling the story.
