Small size productions

Can you shoot a feature or TV-series with only ten persons on set?

If we plan to have three actors per day on set, then we have seven more persons on set to limit group to ten persons per day.

  • Director

  • First assistent director

  • Cinematographer

  • Sound mixer

  • Gaffer

  • Script supervisor 

  • Make-up & costume 

The rules are simple, if you need other skills on set or more actors, you take away a role or two. Most extreme is one cinematographer or one sound mixer with nine actors.

You can also be creative and have several teams at different sets at the same time.

Grip, craft services and production design prepares their parts before and is not on set during the day.

Producer,  production manager and other administrative personal is not on set. DMT and roles in post production is not either on set.

Based on the limits of persons in the production, some jobs have to be done by the existing roles and others automated or not done. We give two examples below.

  • We don’t have a focus puller, therefore the cinematographer needs to manage the focus himself or rely on autofocus. 

  • Only one gaffer and no grip on set leads to limitations in lightning setup, but as we don’t have scenes with lots of people, the ligtning is different.

More preparations in pre-production and probably more days on set. E.g. fewer persons in each production, but during a longer time leads to higher productivity and better utilization for the small crew on a yearly basis. 

The alternative to small size productions is to wait until everything’s over and hope nothing has changed during the time away.