There is something special about making a great TV commercial – beginning from finding the right actors to making sure the desired image and story influences the minds of ideal consumers.
As an ad Film Maker, you must carefully choose your crew, as they are the backbone that may make or break your production. Depending on budgets and complexity of the ad film, you may need dozens or hundreds of crew roles. However, you must have these eight essential crew members before any other roles (when necessary) to guarantee success.
Assistant Director (AD)
The Assistant Director helps set-up the multiple scene breakdowns, budgeting, shooting schedules, relaying orders, distributing call sheets, keeping everyone informed, and many more components.
Most TV commercials may use more at least one Assistant Director, while a full-scale film crew requires at least three ADs depending on the complexity.
Director of Photography (DP)
The DP or cinematographer captures and brings your story to life on camera. They’ll work closely with the Director to ensure that you have the right equipment and lighting plans for the job. They’ll also strategize on everything from actor positioning to framing your scene and beyond to deliver the best product.
Some smaller crews make their assistant director handle the job of the DP. However, this role is too critical for such actions, and making the assistant director serve both duties can ruin the project.
1st Assistant Camera
Your DP alone cannot operate the entire camera set-up. They need the first Assistant Camera to ensure that the subject of a shot remains in focus throughout the take. It is achieved by setting marks to reflect where objects or actors must be, determining the distance, and lens focus.
The 1st Assistant Camera will also handle other technicalities such as ensuring that all equipment are ready when needed and keeping the lenses clean. The perfect TV commercial can never be fully achieved without the highly skilled 1st Assistant Camera.
Gaffer
The gaffer handles everything electrical, especially about your lighting set-up. They will select the right flags, filters, lights, and lighting apparatus and will ensure that they are positioned to achieve the desired look. If your budget only allows a small crew for your ad film shoot in Delhi, India, your gaffer may also ensure that the safety and proper operations of your lighting set-up.
Grip
The Grip handles the skeletal structure of your ad film production. This means they are responsible for set-up, maintaining, and transporting all heavy equipment needed for your TV commercial. As an ad-film maker, the grips you need should able to handle the physical demands of the roles and make sure your equipment set-ups are safe and reliable.
Sound Recordist
Accomplishing an authentic cinematic look is one crucial factor; the other is ensuring that your sound is perfect. You need an expert to operate microphones, mixers, gains, and other necessary equipment to capture sound efficiently. They must be carefully attuned to details and able to hear things you can’t hear to get eliminated all unwanted noise that may ruin your project.
Hair & Makeup
It simply isn’t possible to work without hair and makeup artists. Shoots are long and exhausting, but they need that consistent, camera-ready appearance on your actors at all times. The ideal Hair & Makeup professional understand the type of specialized cosmetics and techniques required to achieve that desired appearance on camera. Even if you can’t have one on a full-time basis, having experts handle touch-ups before shooting can significantly transform your shoot.
Production Assistant
Your production assistant will handle everything other members of your crew cannot handle. They handle will mainly run errands, clean up after shoots, and even chasing down the actors. Though they do not have direct roles in production, they are indispensable to any film crew.
Concluding Thoughts
The list of essential crew members will never end, for our film for Bausch And Lomb we had to bring photographers on board for the photography which was to be handled in parallel with the video shoot.
There are so many roles to make the perfect TV-Commercial. Imagine how great your ad-film shoot can turn out with the right crew-setup.
Make your production seamless and less stressful by carefully selecting these eight roles.