Behind the Jargon of the Film Industry

What's the difference between a Gaffer and the Best Boy? What do all the roles on a movie set actually mean? We look at the tech and terminology of film sets.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
all things tech and a lot of you guys probably know.
I live in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States of America,

(00:27):
and my hometown has become something of a second Hollywood.
In fact, there are a lot of times when there's
actually more film production going on in my home state
than in California, and the reason for that is largely
economic in nature, Georgia has created tons of tax incentives
for film and television projects that make it cheaper to
shoot here in Georgia than in other places, and the

(00:50):
fact that we have a major airport, which is in
fact the world's busiest airport, probably doesn't hurt either. Practically
every week I pass at least one film crew in
production somewhere in the city. Uh. In fact, just between
my house and work, there are a lot of different
locations that have been used for various film shoots. I

(01:11):
rarely know what film they're working on because they typically
use codes to designate the projects and they aren't obvious
references to the film, but I do know that right
across from my own house, I've had movies like Goose Bumps,
Hunger Games, Baby Driver, and Bad Boys three Shoot there.
You can even see my house in the background of

(01:31):
a couple of those movies. But anyway, that got me
to thinking about the terminology of film and film sets
and how that relates to technology. And you could argue
this is a little tangential, but I really love digging
into this and kind of demystifying what all those roles do,
because you if you ever sit through the credits of

(01:52):
a film and actually paid any attention at all to them,
you've probably seen some job titles that might have been
a little confusing, like key grip or gaffer or the
famous best Boy. Maybe you've wondered about the difference between
producers and executive producers or directors, and there are lots
of phrases and words used on set that could be
a little bit confusing. I'll do another episode in the

(02:13):
future about some of the terminology that film folks use,
but today we're really going to explore the origin of
the names for various roles the cast and crew of films.
Now to give you the bad news early. In many cases,
the origin for those words hasn't really been well documented.

(02:37):
There are a lot of theories, for example, where best
boy comes from, but those theories range from plausible to
what is more likely a best guest or maybe wishful thinking.
So let's take a look at the terms to describe
the people who work on films. Some of this is
gonna be really simple stuff. Some of it you probably
already know, and some of it might be new to you.

(03:00):
So here we go. Let's start with the executive producer
or executive producer's role. Now, if you were to compare
a movie with a company, you could say the executive
producer is like the CEO of the company. It's the
job of the executive producer to hire or more likely
oversee the hiring of producers, directors, and the talent that's

(03:23):
going to star in a film. Uh, they might be
more connected to the film and serve other roles. It's
possible for an executive producer to also do something else,
maybe direct the film, maybe a writer. In the case
of some of the Marvel films, you occasionally see some
of the actors listed as executive producers. On the other hand,
you could have executive producers that never visit a set

(03:46):
at all, that have no connection to a movie once
it starts shooting. Rather, they're managing multiple projects back in
the home office of the movie studio. They also are
often in charge of getting funding for a film. Now,
on an independent film, an executive producer might be funding
the film largely through their own assets. They might be

(04:08):
personally funding that movie. But in other cases you might
have executive producers who are whining and dining potential investors
to fund the production of a film. They're usually in
charge of making sure that the money needed to pay
for the production is available, and they're also the ones
you do not want to take off if you have

(04:31):
to go and tell people that your film is going
over budget, because that means you're gonna have to ask
for more money than The executive producers are the ones
in charge of it, and they might have some pretty
tough questions for you as to why your film is
costing more than it was projected. Now, not all films
have executive producers. Some only list producers in their titles,

(04:54):
and they can do many of the same roles that
executive producers follow. However, producers tend to be on set.
They don't always appear on set, but a lot of
them do work day to day on set supervising the
production of the film, making sure things are going well
and that nothing unexpected as happening that could impact the

(05:16):
timing of the film or, because time is money, the
budget of the film. All department heads in a film
production ultimately report up to the producer, and the producer
also works with the director to try and make the
director's vision a reality, or in some cases, the producer
will work with the director in order to talk that
director out of an idea that could be too expensive

(05:38):
or too difficult to pull off. The producer also is
in charge of making sure other departments are operating within
that budget that's set for the film on that day
to day basis, and the producer is involved through the
entire process all the way from pre production before any
film is shot at all, to the distribution of the
movie to theaters. Some film projects are really really big

(05:59):
and require multiple producers, particularly if there are different crews
that are filming in separate parts of the world, so
you can have co producers who are all of the
same level. They are sharing producer credit, so it's not
like one producer is over the others, but they're all
overseeing different parts of a production. You can also have
an associate producer or line manager. These are sort of

(06:22):
the next in command, kind of the lieutenants of the producers.
They oversee specific tasks, usually designated by the producer, so
they they If you don't like the lieutenant analogy, you
can think of them as a vice president of a company.
So they might oversee a secondary film crew that's capturing
footage that's going to be inserted into the film. You know,
a film crew that's going to be focusing on stuff

(06:44):
that doesn't require the director or any of the main
talent of the movie to be in it. A line
producer tends to be the person specifically supervising the budget
of a film, so they're very much taking a close
look at the numbers. You can also have task manager
producer who are in charge of specific parts of a project,
and then you also have coordinating producers producers. Their job

(07:07):
is to make sure everyone involved in the production of
a film remains instep and informed of what's going on,
so that no one is left behind. If something changes
or there needs to be a shift in scheduling or
anything like that. A production manager, for example, is in
charge of supervising the production budget to the various departments,

(07:27):
and that includes scheduling of crew and equipment and covering
crew salaries. They report their needs to the line producer,
who then make sure that those needs are met or
comes up with a really good reason why they can't
do that. There are also production secretaries. These are people
who assist with paperwork and administration needs. And there are

(07:48):
production designers who work with the director to get a
sense of what will be needed to achieve the director's
artistic vision. And at the bottom of the production hierarchy,
you have production assistance who perform basic tasks for the
production side, such as distributing hand radios to the various
departments or running errands for the production staff. Um they

(08:09):
don't tend to run errands for anybody else. They're specifically
meant for the production staff side. So you can think
of the the sides of a film being the production side,
which is talking, you know, all the stuff that's necessary
to make sure everybody else has what they need to
make the movie. You have the the creative side, which

(08:30):
would be like the director and all the talent, and
then you have all the crew who are doing the
actual physical work to support that. So you kind of
have like these three columns in a way. Now I've
mentioned the director a couple of times, but what does
the director actually do. Well, that's the person who is
the lead creative artist on set. So ideally the director

(08:53):
sets the vision for the film. Was the film going
to look like, what is the tone going to be?
What sort of reaction is the film supposed to evoke
from the audience. So ideally, if someone is watching the film,
how should they feel from scene to scene? You know,
if it's a horror movie, you need to feel uneasy
and fear and tension. If it's a comedy, you need

(09:16):
some tension offset by laughter which relieves that tension. These
sort of ideas. So the director is the person who
says this is my goal, here's how I'm going to
achieve my goal, and then has to communicate that out
to other departments in order to make that a reality.
They're also in charge of directing the talent to get
the performance the director has in mind. Talent is the

(09:36):
word used to describe all the actors in a in
a film. Um, it's also the word that tends to
be used to describe me as a podcaster, and I
find it funny to be referred to as the quote
unquote talent, but that's just an industry term. So the
directors are in charge of making sure the actors are
giving the performance that the director had in mind in

(09:59):
order to create the movie that they want to make. UM.
They work closely with the heads of the other creative
departments to achieve this specific vision, and they might work
very closely with the writer in some cases calling for
script revisions. If the director feels that they need to
move in a in a different way to achieve the

(10:19):
overall goal, they might say, well, our goal is to
creep out the audience because this is a horror movie.
But this scene is messing things up because it's it's
changing up the pacing, it's I want to keep increasing tension,
and this one kind of relieves the tension in a
in a point where I don't want that to happen.
Let's do a rewrite that can happen. The director will

(10:42):
frequently work well beyond the filming stage and even have
a hand in the editing department. That's a pretty big
departure from how directors work in live stage theater. Typically,
if you're talking about stage production, you know, a play
or a musical or something like that, the director will
step way once the show opens. So the director is

(11:03):
heavily involved with a theatrical show all the way up
until opening night and then tends to step back, and
at that point the management of the show largely falls
to the stage manager. But with a film, even after
all the performances have been completed, after everything's been captured
on film or digital video, directors will often play a

(11:24):
part because so much of a movie can be shaped
in the editing department. And I'll talk about editing more
at the end of this episode. Now you've probably also
seen credits for things like assistant director, often shortened to
a D. You might have seen first a D and
second a D. Now, these aren't assistants to the director.
They're not like running off to grab coffee or anything.

(11:45):
They're rather very important members of the creative team. And
typically it's the first assistant director's job to take a
shooting script, break it down into scenes, and then create
a shooting schedule in an attempt to build the most
efficient production approach as possible, which is why films are
typically shot out of sequence, which means they're not filmed

(12:07):
in the same chronological order as the scenes play out
when you watch the finished movie. So you could go
and watch a movie and you might see an opening
scene that was actually shot months after the final scene
of the movie. Uh. You know, it doesn't play out
that way when you watch it, but that's how it
was produced. During filming, the first assistant director determines the

(12:29):
shooting order, and again, the goal is mostly to figure
out what's the most efficient means for us to make
this movie because time is money, So one way the
first a D might do this is to take note
of all the locations needed in the script and try
to group similar scenes, like scenes they're set in the
same location together so that over the course of several days,

(12:51):
the crew and talent can knock those scenes off the
shoot list, and once it's done, assuming that they have
their confident that they're done with that location, they can
reich that's set and uh and not have to worry
about again, and that gives other crew members time to
build and dress the other sets that are going to
be needed. In upcoming scenes and have that way to

(13:11):
go as soon as the first group is done. Now,
this isn't always possible. Sometimes two scenes in the same
set rely on drastically different set dressing. For example, if
you have a big action movie in which characters are
in one location before something catastrophic happens, like a massive explosion,
and then you might revisit that scene later in the movie, well,

(13:33):
obviously that's going to look dramatically different, so you may
not shoot those two sequences back to back. You may
have a break between while you're changing out the set. Now,
the first a d also helps manage the schedule for
the talent, the crew, and the equipment needed each day.
You're gonna hear this said over and over again because
this is a huge endeavor. If you're talking even for

(13:53):
a small film, it's a big it's a big issue.
But for really big movies, you need a lot of
people working together to organize all this stuff because you're
just looking at a massive number of people, a large
amount of equipment, potentially tons of props and costume pieces.
So it's a it's a big endeavor, and when it
comes to time to shoot the big action scene, everyone

(14:14):
needs to know who needs to show up and win. Now,
the second assistant director works with the first a D
to achieve those goals, and it often falls to the
second a D to create what are known as call sheets,
and a call sheet is a list of all the
people needed on any given day of shooting. So you
check the call sheet and if your name is on there,
you know that you need to show up that day.

(14:36):
And typically you have a call time as well, what
time you need to be on set ready to go
and uh, that's when you are called to do your job. Now,
I mentioned that the director is the lead creative artist
on a project, but usually big films will have other
important department heads that could have just as big a role,
sometimes an even bigger role on the final look and

(14:59):
feel of a film. Them their job is to do
what takes to achieve the goal that the director has
set out, but they can create their own stamp on
a film's feel. So if you follow the industry, you
will see names of people who haven't necessarily directed films,
but have taken one of these positions. You know, in
lots of films, you know they've headed up at department

(15:21):
and they've developed a reputation and you can see their
impact from the different movies they've worked on. A big
one of those would be the director of photography. It's
the director of photography, which usually is UH shortened to
either d O P or even more frequently DP. It's
the director of photography's job to oversee the overall visual

(15:44):
look of the film. So they take the director's idea
of what the movie needs to be, like what what
what does it need to convey? And they take the
script and they determine what is going to be needed
to create the best representation of the director's vision on
the film or digital video that's actually shot on set.

(16:06):
So they might recommend which cameras should be used, which
lenses should be installed on those cameras, how the shots
should be framed, which scenes maybe should have camera movement
in them. They'll work with a team to design all
of these things. UH. They will determine how cameras should move.
If a camera is deemed like this, this is a

(16:28):
scene that needs to have some kinetic motion to it.
We need we need to have the camera itself the
point of view changing as this scene unfolds. They have
to figure out how does that work? How should that
actually come across. They're also the head of the camera crew,
and they work with another person called the gaffer, who

(16:49):
is sort of the head of the electrical and lighting crew.
In fact, before I go to a break, let me
explain a gaffer's job and the most probable origin for
the name gaffer. Now, the gaffer is the chief lighting
technician and chief electrician on a film set. The gaffer
works very closely with the director of photography to come

(17:09):
up with a lighting plan for each scene. Because the
director of photography knows where the camera should be placed,
with the angle and what is important in the scene,
so the gaffer has to figure out with that how
to light the scenes so that the important stuff gets
the focus of the audience. The goal of the gaffer
is to take all this information of camera framing and

(17:30):
movement and then make the lighting so that the actual
effect is possible. Now, the name gaffer is one of
those that still has a little mystery to it. In
UK slang, gaffer is used for godfather or sometimes grandfather,
and it's often a term that's just used as a
general way of saying old man. But that's probably not

(17:54):
why it's used in film a lot of people argue
that the name actually comes from lamp lighters back in
the old gas lamp days, where they would have to
go from lamp to lamp in the streets of a
city such as London and turned the lamps on went
started getting dark, and turned the lamps off when it
started to get bright again. And to do that they

(18:16):
would use these poles that would have a hook at
the end to be able to either light or extinguish
a lamp, and those poles were called gaffs, So they
used gaff poles. You could say that the person using
it was a gaffer. And a lot of those lamp
lighters apparently also worked in theaters in England. They would

(18:41):
light the lights in the theater so that when the
audience comes inside to your indoor theater, they can actually
see what's going on. And because the gaffer is the
head lighting technician, the name was transferred over to the
film world and they typically oversee the entire electrical department.
Now I've got some more terms to cover as soon
as we come back, but first let's take a quick break.

(19:08):
And before I continued down the road with lighting, let's
jump back to photography for a second, so director of
Photography is ahead of the department, but there are a
lot of other jobs in that group. There are the
camera operators who physically control and operate cameras during the
filming process. Uh. The camera operators work very closely with
the director of photography, essentially kind of following the director

(19:29):
of Photography's instructions to make sure cameras are where they're
supposed to be and they move the way they're supposed to.
Some sets employ specialty operators, such as aerial camera operators.
This might be someone who controls a camera that's mounted
on an airplane or in a helicopter, or it might
be someone controlling a drone with a camera on it.

(19:50):
And you also have other camera operators like jib arm
or crane camera operators. As the name suggests, they control
a camera that's mounted on the end of a movable
arm to get shots from typically high elevation, to get
sort of these sweeping, established, establishing shots in a film
that typically is used on on jibs or cranes. Then

(20:12):
there's steadicam operators. I did an episode about steadicams. I'm
pretty sure, but it was a long time ago. But
just to go over what that is. These are rigs
that allow operators to capture smooth handheld camera shots. They
free up a director to capture images that otherwise would
have been really difficult or maybe even impossible to get so.
Before the steadicam, the solution to moving a camera through

(20:36):
a scene, like actually physically having the camera move through
action was typically you were using if you're moving around
the horizontal plane, you would lay down tracks and you
would mount the camera on a moving platform called a
dolly that would physically be moved by members of the crew.
The dolly would allow cameras to get this sort of

(20:58):
smooth lateral motion, but it meant you were restricted to
the path of the tracks, and moreover, you had to
make sure the tracks weren't really visible on camera, or
it kind of ruined the illusion of fantasy. Now. In fact,
there's a movie I can tell you to watch if
you want to catch a little glimpse of this, Terry
Gilliam's movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. There's this sequence

(21:21):
in which the main character of the film is supposed
to be executed, and the camera starts with a shot
of Baron Munchausen as he stands at the execution block,
and the camera starts to pull back, and it keeps
pulling back further and further and further through dozens of
ranks of soldiers, one after another. It seems almost impossible

(21:41):
how far back this camera pulls until it's at the
gates of the city itself, looking through all these people
at the execution block. It's a really impressive shot. But
if you pay attention, you actually see that the actors
in that scene are moving in from the sides as
the camera moves backward. And the reason they're doing that
is to you not just make it look really impressive,

(22:02):
but also to obscure the fact that there are Dolly
tracks on the ground. And if you look at the
ground as the camera's pulling back, occasionally you'll catch a
glimpse of those Dolly tracks. Now, the steadicam freed up
the camera operator to move through a scene with a
camera with no tracks at all and keep the motion smooth,
so the picture doesn't jerk around a lot the way

(22:24):
it would if the camera were just being held by
the operator. In recent years, we've seen a lot of
that sort of jerky cam handheld action that that became
sort of an aesthetic. Recently, and by recently, I mean
in the last ten years or so, you've seen a
lot more of that, But before that there was a
lot of emphasis on this smooth motion. Now, I should
mention the steadicam existed long before Baron Munchausen came out.

(22:47):
Gilliam chose the Dolly option to create a particular visual
effect that would have been very hard to do even
with the steadicam, so it was done purposefully. And a
steadicam rig typically has a mechanical arm attached to a
harness worn by the camera operator, and it uses some
cool mechanical elements to smooth out motions. And like I said,
I did a full episode about this, so I'm not

(23:08):
going to go into all the mechanics right here, but
there's some really fantastic long stead camp shots in cinema
that show off what this kind of rig can achieve.
One example, a famous one, probably the one that most
people site when they're talking about long steadicam shots, is
a scene in Good Fellas in which the character Henry
Hill takes his future wife Karen on a day to

(23:30):
the nightclub, and they passed through the kitchen on their
way to get through to a table, and it's a
very long scene. Lots of action is going on as
the cameras moving through following these characters, and it would
have been impossible without the use of a steadicam unless
you were just going to deal with a very shaky
kind of experience, which would have taken away from the effect.

(23:52):
Then there are the first and second camera assistant roles. Now,
these are people who helped the camera operator in very ways,
such as measuring and pulling focus during a shot, threatening
film into a camera if it's an actual film camera,
or monitoring data in the case where you're using a
digital video camera rather than an actual film camera. On

(24:14):
some sets, there's what is called a data wrangler. It's
a relatively new position because in the old days it
was all done on film. But data wranglers oversee the
function organizing, labeling, duplicating and formatting of hard drives to
make sure captured footage gets to where it needs to
be and that they're always more storage available for for

(24:38):
the camera operators to save footage. Two, the second assistant
camera operator or a cameraman is often the term used.
Tends to be in charge of loading and unloading film
for film cameras. They're often also referred to as the
loader as a result, and they're also usually the person

(24:59):
who is the slate or clapper and that or they
oversee that task. Maybe they're not doing themselves, but they're
ultimately in charge of making sure it gets done. So
let me take a quick aside to talk about this.
The slate is that clapboard you've probably seen in either
behind the scenes footage or in television shows or films
that show the production side of some sort of movie

(25:22):
or TV show. Uh, this is the little board. It's
it's white and black. Typically it's got a little uh
lever that goes up and can slam down and make
a clapping noise. It's got stuff written on it now
typically the clapper slate or clapper board, or there's dozens
of names for this thing has the information on it
about the scene and take that's being shot at that time.

(25:46):
A take is another attempt at filming a scene, and
some directors like to do lots of takes so that
either they get exactly what they want or they have
a lot of different options to pick from once they
get to the editing phase of film's production. Some directors
are pretty quick to move on as soon as they

(26:08):
figure they got more or less what they need, so
they'll only do a few takes unless something really messes up,
and then they'll do another one. So the board typically
has whatever the scene number is and then the take
number on it um and probably some other information on
there too. It might have the associated film role on
there if the film is actually shot on film, probably

(26:31):
has the date, probably has the name of the director
and the director of photography, and maybe some other information
as well. Now, the purpose of this, the reason why
we have clapboards in the first place, is one to
help editors synchronize audio with the visuals and to be
able to just associate the audio that's been captured with
the visuals that were captured. So whomever is running the

(26:54):
clapboard will actually say the scene number and take number,
maybe a little more information such as which can is
being used before clapping that little movable arm down on
the board. They say that so that the audio version
once once we know that sound is rolling, has a
record of that take, and the film, which we also

(27:15):
know is rolling, also has a record of it, and
then you can sink the two up the clapping motion
is the que that editors used to synchronize the video
or film with the sound. You see the lever come down,
you know that that should be associated with the loud
clap noise on the audio track. You make sure those

(27:36):
two line up, and then you've got your audio synchronized
with your visuals. Without that, you would have a really
hard time making sure the two were in line, and
everything would seem a bit off. You know, people's mouths
would be moving, but the sound they would make would
not be in line with their talking, and that would
be very off putting. All right, Now back to the

(27:56):
camera crew. There are people who work closely with the
camera crew called grips. They also work closely with the
lighting and electrical crews. Now, they themselves are not electricians.
So what do the grips do and what is a
key grip? Well, first, let's talk about where the name
comes from. Generally speaking, most people think that the name

(28:17):
comes from the stage theater world, but this time we're
talking about the American stage, not the English stage. And
in American theater it was shorthand for the stage hands
who would help move scenery during a show. So between scenes,
maybe the curtain comes down, or maybe there's a scrim
or something that's hiding the upstage from everybody. The grips

(28:40):
come in, they grip the scenery, and they haul it
off to wherever it needs to go. Now in the
film world, they do a little bit more than just
lug stuff around. The grips are responsible for acquiring, building, maintaining,
setting up, and breaking down all the equipment that supports
the cameras, and that includes stuff like tripod dollies, cranes, jibs,

(29:02):
the dolly tracks, and other rigs. They might have to
build rigs that can hang from supports or be mounted
to a vehicle, or otherwise help support a camera if
there isn't a market solution out there already. In the
case of dollies, they are also the people who push
the dolly along the track as the camera operator captures
a shot, at least if you're not using a motorized dolly.

(29:26):
They also work with lighting crews to hang lights and
set up lighting rigs, though the actual electricians on the
lighting crew work with the lighting itself, so again the
grips don't end up working the electrical side of it.
They work on the physical. Let's get this to where
it needs to be. The key grip is the head
grip in charge, sort of the the foreman or supervisor

(29:48):
of the department, and frequently will end up working with
the main camera in a film production, so the key
grip and the gaffer worked together closely to make sure
the lighting and the camera support are all in lace. Now,
both the key grip and the gaffer can have a
position under them called the best boy, and this is
where a lot of mystery comes back into play. The

(30:10):
best boy position isn't really just an assistant. Typically, the
best boy is responsible for doing stuff like hiring the
crew in their respective department, whether that's in the grips
or in the electrical and lighting department. They schedule the crew,
they coordinate between departments. They might oversee you equipment rentals.
They can oversee the day to day operations of those departments.

(30:33):
So they are the supervisors under the foreman. So where
the heck did the term best boy come from? Well,
one popular but probably apocryphal explanation is that comes from
the early days of film production, before all the roles
on set had been established and unionized. So but back

(30:53):
in those days, you had a lot more lucy goosey
collaboration between the lighting crew and the grip crew, and
in those days goes the story you would have the
key grip or the gaffer asking one another to lend
someone from the other team to help out on their team.
So the gaffer might go to the key grip and say,

(31:13):
I need somebody to help us out. Send over your
best boy. So in other words, send over whomever's on
your team who's really good at what they do, because
I need someone who's going to pick up what I
need them to do very very quickly, and we got
to get this done. And that was generally placed as
this is the origin of the term, and that eventually

(31:35):
the term began to be used for the supervisor of
the grip or electrical teams, the idea being that whomever
is doing the best job is going to get promoted
to supervisors, so they're the best boy. Now, the term
is likely apocryphal, or the very least, there's no real
source to support it apart from hey, you know, that
sounds like it makes sense, So it's kind of like

(31:55):
after the fact reasoning saying, well, it's probably because of this,
but there's no documentation to show that that's actually how
it happened. And there is an alternate theory, one that
also doesn't have a ton of documentation to support it,
and it's that the term comes from sailors. And this
requires me to talk for a second about the relationship
between sailing and film. So the general wisdom goes that

(32:20):
back in the old days, theaters, as in stage theaters,
would frequently employ sailors who were between jobs. So the
sailors would be looking for work while they're on land
and they don't have another UH expedition or whatever, they
don't have another job lined up, they get hired on
to do work in theaters, working in the rigging, so

(32:41):
they're rigging up scenery pulleys and UH curtains and that
sort of stuff. And it was similar to the work
done on sailing vessels with sales and and ships rigging,
So the sailors would do this stuff and move scenery around.
And this is, by the way, the also the UH
the possibly apocryphal reason why there's a superstition in theater

(33:01):
that it's considered to be bad luck to whistle if
you are backstage at a stage theater, and the reason
for that is that the sailors would, as the story goes,
use whistles. They would whistle to one another to signal wind,
to move scenery, or otherwise mess with the rigging backstage.
So if you were backstage and you were whistling, you

(33:22):
might accidentally command the sailors to do all sorts of
funky and possibly dangerous stuff with the scenery. Now, I
have no idea if that's actually true, because the theater
world is even worse at documenting its mythology and terminology
than the film world is, and of course many film
terms would grow from the theatrical world. But anyway, according

(33:42):
to this alternate theory, in the whaling industry, it was
apparently common to refer to a member of the crew
as the best boy. Beyond this fairly vague description, I
can't find much more, and there's not really any evidence
to support the assertion, apart from the fact that sailors
occasionally worked in the ors, and that possibly the term
made its way from the sailing industry into the theatrical

(34:05):
industry and then onto the film industry. Whatever the case,
the best boy positions are important, and while the name
indicates a gender, a best boy can be anyone, whether
they identify as male, female, or other. And I've got
a few more positions to talk about and some other
terminology to get through. But first let's take another quick break.

(34:33):
So we've got a few other big departments to talk about,
like the sound department. This includes people like the sound mixer,
the boom operator, and the sound utility expert. Their jobs,
as you would guess, is to capture sound during recording
and organizing all those recordings so that they can be
mixed later in the editing process. They also typically try
to capture important sounds and eliminate distracting stuff like background

(34:57):
noise and room tone. Sometimes that's done at the time
of recording. Often it's done in the editing phase. And
related to this group are python wranglers. That's a term
jokingly used to describe people whose job it is to
help manage the cables on a film set so they're
not in the way. They also work obviously with the
electrical and camera departments, so you've got people who are

(35:20):
just making sure that stuff is is kept fairly organized
so that it doesn't cause a problem and doesn't end
up making a big mess, so that when you're striking
at the end of a day or at the end
of a shoot. Uh, it doesn't, you know, take up
even more time. Now, while I'm talking about sound, I
should also mention a d R, which stands for additional

(35:40):
dialogue recording or additional dialogue replacement. I've also seen some
sources say a d R stands for automatic dialogue replacement,
But additional is how I normally see it. And honestly, uh,
the practice has been around longer than automated systems. But
this is a technique in which an actor rerecords lines
of dialogue in a studio in order to get a

(36:01):
clean audio version of the line. The actor times their
delivery to work with the captured footage, because obviously you
can't just create new footage, not without the use of
computers anyway. And so it's sort of like lip syncing,
but in reverse. Instead of instead of mouving words that
have already been recorded, you're recording new words, but you're

(36:24):
doing it to time it with previously recorded visuals. So
the actor has to time their delivery to work within
that captured footage. And this can be done to correct
for poor audio recording from the onset or on location audio.
Let's say there was some extraneous noise that was too distracting.
You could re record the audio in studio and have

(36:44):
it inserted there, Or it could even be done in
an attempt to change the performance that the actor gave
by having the actor give a different read on the lines,
maybe a different emotional take or a different emphasis on
certain words. And and it's done well. The audience never
even notices it. They don't notice the difference between something

(37:05):
that was recorded on set versus a d R. If
it's not done well, it could be super distracting, like
it might not quite match up with the mouth and
it seems really weird. Uh. Then you have the art department.
This falls under the command of the film's production designer,
who helps determine the look of a film outside of
the camera and lighting departments. So those departments are all

(37:27):
focused pun intended on how to light and capture a scene.
But the production designer is in charge of the groups
that make all the stuff that goes into those scenes.
Like they select locations for location shoots, they build sets, uh,
they dress sets, they design costumes. They set the physical
look for the characters with makeup or prosthetics. Visual effects

(37:52):
teams are part of this too. So under the production
designer you have a lot of other people. Uh. The
art director is in charge of craftspeople who work in
set design and graphics. They also head up the illustrators
who might work on a film. They're really important through
the entire phase, including pre production. Uh. They might help
with designing animatics and storyboards. That helps the director bring

(38:13):
a vision into realization before committing stuff to film. So
you could say, like, I'm thinking of having the camera
in this particular position, and this is how I'm imagining
the the scene playing out. You can have an artist
kind of draw out what they feel that the director
is saying and sort of build out a comic book
or even crude cartoon version of whatever the action is

(38:37):
going to be. It can also be a really collaborative
process with the director of photography to really figure out
exactly how it's supposed to look. That also gives the
director of photography and a chance to rethink their position.
They might say, you know, now that i'm thinking about it,
I think that actually putting the camera over here would
look better. Let's see what that might look like and

(38:59):
have the illustra to go back and change things out.
It's time consuming, but it's less expensive than finding out
once you're there on set and you've set everything up.
The set designer is the person who is in charge
of overseeing the entire set construction job, from concept to
full build out. UH. This often happens in a sound stage,

(39:19):
which is a controlled environment within which a film can shoot,
so you're isolated from the outside world you have fewer
distractions that can come in. But set designers also can
build sets on locations where you have slightly less control,
but you can have more authenticity In those cases, the
set decorator's job is to furnish the set with all

(39:41):
the important props and elements that make it seem like
a real place. So a set decorator working on a
film UH that takes place and say an old, creepy mansion,
might use a collection of objects that could be in
a warehouse that the movie studio owns, or it could
be rented from a business that's specifically caters to the
movie industry. Or they might even crawl through various antiques

(40:04):
and oddit these shops in order to find what they're
looking for. If you listen to my episode with the
Stranger Things crew, you heard them talk about the challenges
of filling a set with appropriate props and set pieces
that dated from the nineteen eighties. Now, while the set
decorator determines which pieces are going to go in, there's
a crew called set dressers who are actually in charge

(40:25):
of placing those items within a set according to the
vision of the creative team. Now, as you can imagine
these films, sets can have hundreds of props in them,
which means someone needs to keep track of everything, and
that job falls to the props master. A prop is
really anything that isn't an actor, a piece of scenery, uh,

(40:45):
some film equipment, or a costume. It's pretty much everything else.
They tend to be portable or at the very least movable. Uh.
Some people will actually only use the word prop to
mean anything that an actor actually interacts with within the film. So,
in other words, if there's a book that an actor
has to pick up and and look through, that book

(41:05):
would be a prop. But maybe there's a stack of
books that are on the set that the actor never touches. There,
just set dressing, And they would argue, no, that's not
a prop, that's scenery. But it's all largely academic. The
props master has to keep track of all these things,
and so typically has an organization system to know where
props are in order to get hands on them when
they are needed for any given scene. Often they are

(41:27):
also prop builders on staff as well, as that name suggests,
they build any props that you can't otherwise find, So
in some types of films, like science fiction or fantasy,
you have a lot of props that you really just
can't find in stores, so you have to make them
from scratch, like Star Wars with lightsabers. Lightsabers, I hate
to tell you, aren't a real thing, so they had

(41:49):
to build them. Likewise, costumers can end up making outfits
for cast that are a combination of pre made pieces,
some of them bought right off the rack from stores
or off and secondhand shops. Other stuff might be made
to order for the film itself, unique pieces that were
specifically made for the movie. In addition to those positions,
you have special effects artists who may work on practical effects,

(42:13):
meaning those effects that happened within the real space and
use physical objects or c g I effects. In the
case of c g I, most of that work tends
to happen far from the action of the actual shooting location,
and it can stretch well into the post production phase
of a film. Practical effects are pretty nifty, but they
also can be fairly expensive, and if things do not

(42:33):
go well, they can end up pushing a film behind schedule.
A famous example of this would be the mechanical shark
in Jaws. I did a full episode about that shark
with Chris Palette years and years ago. The shark's name
is Bruce. Anyway, that ended up being a huge headache.
But practical effects, when they're done well, can seem more
quote unquote real than c g I effects, and some

(42:55):
film snobs like myself tend to favor practical effects over
c g I in most cases because if c g
I isn't done well, it just looks kind of like
a video game to me. Now, you've also got makeup
artists who have a pretty challenging job. Even with a
simple film that has no need for special effects makeup,
those artists have to make sure an actor's look is

(43:16):
consistent throughout the film, depending upon whatever the film scene
calls for, So they have to keep a record of
all the different looks that the actor goes through in
the course of a film to make sure that they
stay the same from scene to scene, and if you're
shooting scenes that are sequentially far apart in the in
the finished film, it may be that the actor has

(43:38):
to undergo some sort of transformation, and it means that
you might have to have a record of several different
looks to make sure you replicate exactly the right one
for whatever scene is shooting that day. If the film
calls for special effects makeup, there's an even bigger job
ahead of the crew because they may have to work
on a single actor for several hours to get everything
ready for the camera. There are also location scouts and

(44:02):
location managers. Their job is to seek out the real
world locations where a film can shoot. I've had a
lot of location scouts come through my neighborhood um and
location managers talking with me as well about using the
area for for shooting, and they have to handle all
the real world issues that come along with that, including

(44:23):
possibly working out deals with homeowners so that they can
use a location for for a shoot, and that ends
up getting to be a really complicated job. You've gotta
be a real people person to be a good location manager.
But there are tons of other roles as well. If
a film requires stunts, there's a stunts department. That's the

(44:44):
group to make sure that any potentially dangerous action on
camera is done safely and with trained professionals to minimize
risk to the performers, to the crew, to the equipment,
to the production. There's the craft's Services group. Some people
argue that's the most important group on any film set
it because they feed everybody, They bring all the food. Uh.

(45:04):
Then there's the transportation captain who has to handle all
the logistics of getting everybody and everything to where it
needs to go. So they need to make sure that
all the talent has their transportation to get to the location,
that all the crew is knows where they need to
be and how they're going to get there, that all
the equipment is ready to be shipped there, and there

(45:25):
are there are trucks to do it. Um. I can't
even imagine the stress that goes with that job. Also,
they tend to be the first great people on location
and the last people leave, and they have to be
because they're in charge of getting everybody to where they
need to go. In post production, there are also lots
of other jobs they're folly artists. That's the sound effects group.

(45:46):
There are there's marketing, there's publicity, there's accounting, there's casting.
A lot of that is pretty self explanatory. I do
want to end this episode talking about editors. The editor's
job is to take all the footage, all the aftured sound,
all the A d R, all the effects reels, all
that stuff and make a movie out of it. Now,

(46:07):
movies are made in editing. The editor can have just
as much impact, or potentially even more impact than a
director on the final feel of a film. The editor's
job is to piece that film together and to select
takes from all those shoot days and to put them
in the proper sequence to tell the story. And they

(46:27):
have to do that also by adding in the correct
sound and all that other stuff. So it said that
a great editor can turn a decent film into a
fantastic film, and they can turn a fantastic film into
a masterpiece. A bad editor can take something that you
know has good raw material and turn it into a
total mess that's almost unwatchable. Some directors work very closely

(46:49):
with editors to craft a final piece that best represents
what the director had in mind, and so they take
a very tight hand with it through the whole process.
Quentin Tarantino is famous for this. Some times producers will
step in the way and they'll prevent a director from
having too much influence on the final edit of a film.
The producer might say, you know what, your creative vision,

(47:10):
it's not so good, so I'm not gonna let you
do that because it's gonna cost me money, and then
they make the editor do all the work. Sometimes the
producers are the ones steering the editors. They can get
really messy. There are tons of stories in Hollywood about
how these stories play out, and most of them are ugly. Now,
I think, out of all the positions on a film production,
I respect the editor most of all because they cannot

(47:30):
create a new scene or anything like that. They can't
make something out of nothing, but they can take what
was shot and shape it, so that has a really
powerful effect on an audience. Sometimes just cutting a scene
short can do the trick. Or switching between different takes
to get the best reactions from the various actors in
the scene will do the trick. And I don't want
to go overboard on praising editors because obviously everyone on

(47:54):
a film set is important. They all contribute to the
success of a film, but really the editor helps take
all that stuff and create a final picture. And that
is the rundown on the basic rolls behind the scenes
on film productions. Like I said, I plan to go
into the the various sayings in terms used on film

(48:16):
sets to describe the process of making films in a
future episode. Um, after a couple more episodes, but for now,
let's say it's a rap now. If you guys have
any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, you can
write me an email. The address is tech Stuff at
how stuff works dot com, or you can pop on
over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com.

(48:36):
There you are going to find the archive of all
of our older episodes, links to our social media accounts,
as well as a link to our online store. And
I will talk to you again really soon. Tex Stuff
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i

(48:57):
heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.