At a network or local station, the operations depart- ment assigns the physical studio and hardware, as well as the engineering and stage crew to run it. They’ll need to know the requirements of your pro- gram and will usually try to get the best studio and crew for your needs. If you are doing a simple panel program, for example, the chances are that you won’t be assigned the largest sound stage or a light- ing director who’s best known for producing elabo- rate high-key gelled lighting effects. At a rental facility, the operations department is apt to supply the studio, a studio manager, and an on-site engi- neer who is familiar with the facility, while the pro- duction company hires the crew.
Wherever you’re shooting, once you’ve chosen a day for the shoot, or preferably provided a choice of days, a dialogue will begin with the operations department. The operations room at many facilities looks like the Hollywood version of a war room, in which the general staff plots what to do while the planes are overhead. There are a number of different ways of handling the scheduling, and more often than not the schedulers use computer programs such as ScheduleAll. The programs emulate the old- fashioned white boards with markers or grease pen- cil boards. Facilities, studios, and edit bays are laid out on a template that overlays a calendar. It’s updated as jobs and facilities are logged in—all in a variety of colors. The different colors usually corre- spond to stages of the job—for example, “Monday the 4th, Studio 1 on hold for Company X, second hold for Company Y. Monday the 4th to Wednesday the 6th, Studio 2 committed to Company Z.”
Figure 3.1A A typical top page for a production budget summary. This is the “Top Sheet” to a sample program from Gorilla. It would be used to summarize the costs throughout the budget. There can be hundreds of line items to accommodate specific needs. A demo version of the program is available at their website athttp://www.jungle software.com.
Figure 3.1B This is the Account Level Budget Report from the same test budget supplied by Gorilla. This is just one of the pages in which the details get filled in. In this example the subheading for director, which is summarized inFigure 3.1Aas a single “cost” 106.00, really encompasses six line items: 106.1 Director, 106.2 2nd Unit Director, 106.3 Dialogue Director, 106.4 Director’s Secretaries, 106.10 Director’s Travel, and 106.59 Amortized Series.
When you call Operations, they need to know: 1. The nature of the program; the format of the
production.
2. What dates you have in mind and what alternatives are acceptable.
3. Which of their studios your production need to use—the large one with a hard cyc or the small insert stage that is sometimes used for news interviews.
4. How many hours your production will use the studio (including setup, production, and strike).
Then, at a local station, a network facility, or a facility that supplies crew, you will need to know: 1. THE CREW CALLS
a. For how many hours do you require just a setup crew as opposed to a production crew? b. When should the paint and light crew come
in? The engineers? Others?
At this point, Operations would begin to work out a plan based on your description of the produc- tion’s needs. Its staff considers the studio hours you need to mount, rehearse, and shoot the production and the time it will take to strike the set and return the studio to its normal condition.
In working out a schedule, Operations is guided by the rules and conventions of the facility. Different production organizations have different require- ments. While a professional, union studio works by one set of guidelines, student productions work with another. Students are constrained by school rules regarding the use of the studio, the willingness of others to help, and occasionally the availability of a pizza restaurant that’s open late and delivers. Nonunion production facilities have their own sets of criteria for crews. Most of the tasks that have to be accomplished are the same everywhere. The three largest unions for television production crews that represent stagehands and engineers are:
G The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees (IATSE)
G The International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers (IBEW)
G The National Association of Broadcast
Employees and Technicians (NABET)
All union facilities, and many nonunion ones, maintain standards that are mandated by contract.
A simple example of these standards concerns lunches. Almost always, crew lunches can begin no sooner than two hours after the job starts and no later than six hours after the start. Second lunches must be taken no later than five hours after the com- pletion of the first lunch. These rules are meant to ensure that management doesn’t take advantage of the crew and that the crew gets a chance to get some food without being hassled. Once when I was a crew member on what turned out to be yet another all- night shoot, I came to love that rule. Later, as a direc- tor/producer, I wished for a little more flexibility.
As far as Operations is concerned, the engineer- ing crew comes on duty after the stage crew. It can become quite a challenge to schedule lunches so a sufficient crew is available all the time. As a director/ producer you become acutely aware of how time is used as you go through a 10-hour engineering day that doesn’t actually give you 10 hours. Most studios (and common sense) require you to take five-minute breaks every hour. That’s a total of 10 five-minute breaks a day, or 50 minutes, which leaves you 9 hours and 10 minutes in which to shoot. You lose an hour for lunch, which leaves you with 8 hours and 10 minutes to shoot. You lose at least another half-hour for Engineering check-in and setup at the beginning of the day and another half-hour after lunch, which leaves you 7 hours and 10 minutes in your 10-hour day to shoot your project. Even then, such a schedule works only if everything goes as planned. Counting the half-hour of wrap time, your actual time for directing and producing during that 10-hour day amounts to only 6 hours and 40 min- utes. Obviously, even when working efficiently, it can be difficult to avoid expensive overtime.
Another rule—and one that always seems to be in transition—limits the number of jobs that any one person can do per shift. For example, the utility audio person can switch from pushing boom to sound effects during one eight-hour shift, but cannot switch to any other job or even return to the boom during that same shift. Recent contracts permit more changes as long as the change happens at a convenient time, such as during a recording stop or a lunch break. These kinds of contractual obliga- tions are handled by the facilities operations man- ager, who must arrange for a studio and crew and have a firm grasp on the specific needs of each production prior to the production meeting. At the meeting, the details are agreed upon, and any poten- tial contractual problems are addressed. These pro- blems often come up in what appear to be simple
asides such as “If you’re not careful, that second lunch could get to be very expensive. You’ve got to take it no later than midnight and no earlier than 8:00P.M.”
Other production team members may participate by offering suggestions. They are trying to make sure that nothing has been overlooked. They might need more time for one job and less for another. For example, the set crew might ask for more time to rig some special effect, while the lighting director may explain that new blue gels will have been left in place after an earlier program, and thus, if your show can use a blue background, less time will be needed to gel the instruments.
Engineering
No matter where you work, you’re likely to have an engineer who knows the facility assigned to your production: the facility’s engineer in charge (EIC). Each facility has its own quirks, and the EIC can provide shortcuts, using his or her knowledge of the facility and the crew. Even if you bring your own crew, the rental facility expects you to use and pay for at least one of its personnel. This will be its in-house staff person, who knows the facility’s strengths and weaknesses and the peculiarities of the facility’s gear, personnel, and engineering policies.
Before the production meeting, it’s usual for the director/producer and the unit manager to get together with the EIC and outline the demands of the production. The EIC wants an overview of the production in order to be able to make suggestions regarding the schedule and to have time to work out any unusual hardware needs or technical requests. Knowing the needs of the production allows the EIC to contact Operations prior to the meeting and make suggestions for crew assignments. For exam- ple, if your program requires complicated moves using a Chapman Crane or a jib crane operator, the EIC may try to get the facility’s “A team,” which is more proficient than the “B team.”
During the production, the EIC will be the link between engineering gear, crew, and management. EICs help with last-minute requests and may be able to offer solutions to problems that arise during the production. In the event of some unavoidable engineering delay or “downtime,” the EIC, along with the technical director (TD), may be called on to help arbitrate questions that arise. Downtime is any period when an unforeseen event hinders the
production. Engineering downtime usually involves malfunctioning engineering equipment.
Accounting
Accountants are rarely present at production meet- ings unless there’s some unusual aspect to the pro- duction. An example of a project that might require intense use of accounting is a phone-in response program, such as an infomercial, in which the facil- ity’s fees are based on responses to the production.