Talk:Film crew

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Contents 1 Merge 2 Lighting Technician 3 Length concerns 4 Setting a goal: This page should list every job that would appear in film credits 4.1 Film crew positions that should go in

[edit] Merge

Merging doesn't make much sense, as filming production roles seems geared towards *television* production, not film, as here. - JVC —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.73.194.59 (talk • contribs) 14:27, June 24, 2005 (UTC)

I would speak in favour of merging the two. The roles are more similar than they are different, and the few differences could easily be dealt with through notes. In fact, I’ve noticed that over my years in the industry (15+) there’s been even more convergence. Post production in even high-end film has moved completely to digital editing. At the camera end, the trend to shooting high-definition DV means that for almost all of the technical crew, it makes not the slightest difference if the show is going to the big screen or the little one.

One caveat: in-house live-to-tape shows --think news and talk-- do have specialists (e.g., switchers, floor directors) but these should be covered in an article explicitly dealing with live-to-tape television production.

I would be happy to assist with this project. --OldCommentator 20:37, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

It seems like a while since this idea was posted, but I agree that the relevant parts of filming production roles should be moved here, and another article, television crew should be created from the remaining telvision-specific content. I will start working on that and then see if there is any dissent here before finalizing the move. -Parallel or Together? 09:46, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Television Crew already exists in capitalized form, although it should not be capitalized. I will instead merge film production roles with this page, create television crew and have the capitalized version turned into a redirect, and everything should be great. Any objections? I'll leave this up here for a while before doing it. -Parallel or Together? 10:01, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Certainly no objections--my advice, however, would be to discard the Pre-production/Production/Post-production organization of the filming production roles when you move the occupational descriptions over. These terms apply to the phases of the film production cycle, but it's inappropriate (and misleading) to categorize occupations this way. Real film crews are organized by department (i.e., Production, Sound, Camera, Editing...and so on) rather than by production phase.

If you wish sources for departmental categorizations I'd be happy to supply them.--OldCommentator 13:57, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Please do! In the meantime I have set up Film crew/Temp to start working on the article in the new departmental categorization format and incorporate the material from filming production roles. -Parallel or Together? 06:59, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

So far the temp page has a departmental organization, and a merged list of roles, although I haven't yet merged/included the descriptions. If someone wants to start working on that... I've got to go to work. -Parallel or Together? 08:01, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay so I've finished porting over all the relevant aspects of filming production roles to this page. The rest of filming production roles should be sent to Television crew, I would imagine. -Parallel or Together ? 04:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I removed the merge note given that this appears to have now been completed.--OldCommentator 02:57, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lighting Technician

I am proposing to rename the article Light technician to Lighting technician. Discussion here: Talk:Light technician Threephi 05:17, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Length concerns

I'm concerned that this page is going to grow to an unmanageable length, given there are many more positions to add. I’d like to take the liberty of moving some of the non-essential job-descriptive material from this page to the individual job-description pages that link from here. I trust no one will object.--OldCommentator 17:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Setting a goal: This page should list every job that would appear in film credits

I think it'd be nice if someone could read film credits and then refer to this page and figure out what everyone does. As oldcommentator points out, detailed info should be pushed into pages specific for that position. This goal goes out of me being interested in the weird film credits, like "Inferno" (VFX artist who operates a VFX system named Inferno).

Glennchan 09:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the page would be better served by simply and explicitly being an alphabetical list fully inclusive of all regular film crew jobs? I agree, leave the description to the article. Girolamo Savonarola 09:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Dividing the crew positions into sections may help; it organizes things conceptually into the reader's head. The grouping stops the article from being a ridiculously huge list. A further grouping of pre-production, production, and post-production might also make sense (if it's a producer, then they go into pre-production; we should order it so wherever they do work in first, that's where they go). As well, perhaps there could be some article that lists everything including cast, and explains what above-the-line and below-the-line are.Glennchan 10:07, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Film crew positions that should go in

Here is a list of film crew positions that I haven't done much research on. Eventually we should get one-line descriptions and stick them into the Wikipedia. Glennchan 10:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

My responses for what I can help with... Girolamo Savonarola 10:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

• Where does storyboard artist go? - It's a pre-production job for the art department
• studio execs? - development
• What's an archivist? i.e. on superman returns [1] - depends where in the credits this appears. In theory, different departments might need this for varying capacities.
• draughtsperson ? - art department, sketches models and blueprints, IIRC
• screen graphics supervisor
• model maker foreman - a supervising modelmaker

• VFX:
• 3D artists (there are many kinds of 3D artists? i.e. characters, environments) - probably. a lot of this is organized based on the VFX company or scale of film
• 3D environments - see above
• 3D animators - see above
• lead texture painter - creates the texture mapping
• animator (the non-3D kind??) - depends
• (character) rigger- these people just do the skeletons for character models???
• compositing
• match moving (subset of compositing??)
• digital asset coordinator; data wrangler is same thing?
• CG lighting artist; lighting technical director is sort of same thing?
• lead development artist?
• camera animator (is this a subset of 3D animators?)
• systems engineer (someone who maintains the render farm and other IT stuff?)
• pipeline software developer - a programmer?
• matte painting - mostly done in-computer now
• previs artists / pre-visualization - animatics (4D storyboards, basically)
• Spydercam foreman - in charge of rigging and controlling the Spidercam (it's a cablecam controlled with four wires)
• visual effects editor?
• pipeline technical director - not sure what this is - coordination of data between remote points, I think
• colorist / digital color timer / color timer (photochemical / non-digital intermediate) / color grading - post-production management of the look of the film, usually done in coordination with the DP; specifically colors, contrast, saturation. Like Photoshop on steroids.
• visual effects dailies operator; same as dailies/telecine operator/colorist; colorist who doesn't do final grading, just the dailies - dunno about that; VFX dailies sounds like something coordinating the VFX with the DI, but that's a guess. Telecine op is usually the one who handles the immediate transfer for offline editing.
• Film scanner operator - Like telecine, but using a film scanner (2K and up).
• video assist - the person in charge of all the video output from the camera (this position still exists even if using HD) to the on-set monitors. May also have additional accessories to print out freeze frames and quickly retrieve/compare takes.
• character pipeline lead ?
• publicist, public relations - unit publicists take care of handling press during shooting; otherwise they're doing the marketing afterwards (probably from wherever the production company is based)
• special skills extras- singers, dancers, etc.
• dialect coach - works with actors and maybe director to find right accent
• set medic - usually just hangs around until someone asks for assistance, but also keeps an eye on health and safety
• set security - usually coordinated through locations; may be hired from local community
• stand-in - used to judge lighting and camera moves without hassling the actor
• craft services / catering - (yum) - they handle all of the food; on an average day, breakfast, brunch snacks, lunch, teatime snacks, and continuous tea/coffee/water and miscellany during the day. This can vary, however, given stranger hours or cheaper budgets.
• driver - many types of these, from driving cast and higher-level crew to all of the big equipment trucks. They are mainly used for beginning/end of day, from set to meals, and moving between locations. Occasionally they are also sent to pickup things.
• libra head operator - handles the Libra head, which is a remote three axis camera support. a specialized type of grip.

Hope this helps. Girolamo Savonarola 10:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Here is one more that should be included:

24 Frame Playback Operator - The person responsible for the syncing all monitors such as a television set to the cameras. Also responsible for the color shading and lighting of the monitors, and all video playing on said monitors. Sometimes called Video Playback Operators.