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 map
Every department, its size and its reporting line
Shooting-unit figures for a mid-range British drama. A studio feature multiplies most of them; a low-budget independent collapses several departments into one person with two hats and no truck.
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”.
Nearest the camera
The floor crafts, in detail
Trainee grades exist in most of these departments. Camera trainee, lighting trainee, grip trainee, sound assistant, art department assistant, production trainee and locations assistant are the recognised bottom rungs, and they are real jobs with real responsibilities.
The overlooked ones
Where 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.
Largest
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.
Shortage
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.
Shortage
Post-production
Assistant editor, post coordinator, post supervisor, colourist, sound editor, VFX artist. Office-based, less weather-dependent, and largely invisible to careers advisers.
Shortage
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.
Open
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.
Open
Employer research published by ScreenSkills in 2026 identifies production accountants, editors, script editors, first assistant directors, post-production supervisors, VFX supervisors, post-producers, production coordinators and producers among the hardest roles to fill in the UK screen sector.
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.
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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.
