Explainer 04
About twenty departments, roughly two hundred distinct jobs, and one person on the floor who can tell all of them what to do.
A shooting unit on a mid-budget British drama is sixty to a hundred and fifty people on any given day, organised into departments that each hire their own crew, carry their own budget, travel in their own truck and answer for their own work.
This is the map. What every department does, roughly how many people are in it, and who reports to whom. It makes a credit roll legible, and it is the thing nobody hands you before your first day.
The whole mapEvery department, its size and its reporting line
| Department | What it does | Typical size | Answers to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production | Runs the company that is the production. Budget, schedule, contracts, payroll, logistics, insurance, compliance. | 10–20 | Producer, then line producer |
| Assistant directors | Runs the floor and the day. Schedule, safety, cast and background movement, the call sheet. | 5–8 | 1st AD, working to the director |
| Direction | The film itself: performance, staging, the final creative call. | 2–4 including the script supervisor | Director |
| Camera | Operating, focus, framing, media, and the technical image. | 6–10 per unit | DoP |
| Grip | Everything the camera sits on or moves on, and the safety of all of it. | 2–5 | Key grip, working to the DoP |
| Lighting (electrical) | Rigging, powering and operating every light, plus distribution and generators. | 6–15 | Gaffer, working to the DoP |
| Sound | Recording dialogue and atmospheres live on the day. | 3 | Production sound mixer |
| Art department | Designing and drawing everything you see that is not a person. | 5–12 | Production designer |
| Construction | Building it: carpentry, plastering, painting, metalwork, rigging. | 10–60 in a build period | Construction manager, to the designer |
| Set decoration and props | Dressing the space and supplying everything handled on camera. | 8–18 across both | Set decorator and prop master |
| Costume | Designing, sourcing, making, fitting, ageing, and standing by all day. | 5–12 | Costume designer |
| Hair and make-up | Design, continuity, prosthetics, and constant maintenance through a shooting day. | 4–10 | Hair and make-up designer |
| Special effects (SFX) | Physical effects done for real: rain, wind, fire, snow, breakaways, atmospherics. | 2–8 | SFX supervisor |
| Visual effects (VFX) | On set, data and reference; in post, a far larger team. | 2–4 on set | VFX supervisor |
| Stunts | Designing and performing anything unsafe, and rehearsing it until it is safe. | As required | Stunt coordinator |
| Locations | Finding, securing, permitting, managing and putting back every real place you shoot in. | 4–10 | Location manager |
| Transport | Moving crew, cast, trucks, trailers and action vehicles. | 5–15 | Transport captain |
| Catering | Feeding the unit, on time, in a field, in any weather. | 3–8 | Head chef, to production |
| Accounts | Budget tracking, purchase orders, payroll, invoices, cost reporting. | 3–6 | Production accountant |
| Health, safety and medical | Risk assessment, safety advice and a unit medic or nurse on site. | 1–3 | Production |
| Post-production | Edit, sound, music, VFX and grade, running from the first shooting day to delivery. | 5–100+ over time | Post-production supervisor |
Three lines at once
Which line applies to your question.
You will look for a single organisation chart and fail to find one, because a production has three overlapping ones. Knowing which applies to a given question is most of what people mean by knowing how a set works.
The creative line
Director to heads of department. What the film should look like, sound like and feel like. The DoP owns the image and directs camera, lighting and grip through their heads.
The floor line
1st AD to everybody physically present. When things happen, in what order, and who moves. On the floor, during a shooting day, this line overrides the others.
The money line
Producer to line producer to production manager to heads of department. What things cost, who is hired, for how long, and what has to be given up to have something else.
Inside your own department you take instruction from your own head of department. If another department asks you for something, the right answer is almost always “let me check with mine”.
Instructor and trainee at the camera in the shop set
Nearest the cameraThe floor crafts, in detail
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Director of photography (DoP) | Designs the image and the lighting, chooses lenses and format, and runs camera, lighting and grip. Called the cinematographer on some productions; the same job. |
| Focus puller (1st AC) | Keeps a moving subject sharp on a lens with a few centimetres of tolerance, by hand, judged by eye and by distance. Also owns the camera package technically. |
| Clapper loader (2nd AC) | Slates every take, keeps the camera sheets, loads and manages media or film stock, and is responsible for the department’s paperwork and its accuracy. |
| Camera trainee | Batteries, media, marks, kit, and being one step ahead of the department all day. The genuine entry grade, and a real job. |
| Digital imaging technician (DIT) | Manages the image pipeline: on-set look, exposure monitoring, colour management and data. A route in for people who came from computing. |
| Gaffer | Chief lighting technician. Takes the DoP’s intent and delivers it in cable, fixtures, power and time. |
| Electricians (sparks) | Rig, power, position, adjust and strike every fixture. A department with a real electrical trade underneath it. |
| Key grip | Everything the camera moves on: dolly, track, crane, remote heads, car rigs, and the engineering that keeps it safe. |
| Production sound mixer | Records the sound and is responsible for its usability. The only person who can stop a take for something nobody else can hear. |
| Boom operator | Places the microphone, moving with the performance, out of frame and out of its own shadow, for hours. |
| Script supervisor | Continuity, screen direction, eyelines, timings and the record of what was shot. The editor’s advocate on the floor. |
The overlooked onesWhere the employment is, and where the shortages are worst
Attention concentrates on the twelve people nearest the camera. Numerically the industry is mostly the other departments, and a substantial share of the hardest-to-fill roles in the country sit in production, post and coordination.
Art department and construction
The largest crew on most productions by a wide margin. Carpenters, painters, plasterers, metalworkers, riggers, draughtspeople, buyers, dressers, prop makers. A direct crossover for anybody with a building trade.
Production and coordination
Production coordinator, assistant coordinator, production secretary, travel and accommodation, production manager. Persistent national shortages, and a route that rewards organisation rather than a portfolio.
Production accounts
Production accountants and assistant accountants are among the hardest roles in the industry to fill. Direct entry for anybody with accounting or bookkeeping experience from any sector.
Post-production
Assistant editor, post coordinator, post supervisor, colourist, sound editor, VFX artist. Office-based, less weather-dependent, and largely invisible to careers advisers.
Transport, catering and facilities
Unit drivers, facilities drivers, chefs. Every one of them a licensed trade already, and a genuine door into a unit for somebody who holds the licence.
Standby crafts
Standby art director, props, carpenter, painter and rigger, plus locations: the people who fix, adjust, negotiate and reset while the shooting day is running. All extremely transferable from events, hospitality or council work.
The etiquette
Four rules that follow from the structure.
Once you can see the department structure, the social rules on a set stop being mysterious and start being obvious consequences of it.
- Do not touch another department’s kit. Not to be helpful, not to be quick, not because it is in your way. Move a light and you have moved a decision somebody made, and possibly created a hazard you cannot see.
- Do not take an instruction from outside your department without your own head of department knowing. It is not rudeness; it is how a department stays accountable for its own work.
- Do not answer for your department. If somebody senior asks whether camera can be ready in five minutes, the answer comes from camera’s head, not from the trainee standing nearest.
- Do not go home without telling your head of department. Wrap for the unit is not wrap for your department, and the difference is a truck that does not get loaded.
Next
Pick a department and follow it down to a grade.
Every row on this page is somebody’s working life, with its own ladder, its own rates and its own way of hiring. The Careers A–Z takes each department apart into grades; the glossary gives you the words those grades use.
