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Karn - First Assistant Director

Most people have no idea what a First Assistant Director does.  The title sounds like the person is the assistant to the director, like he or she gets coffee in the morning or something.  But in reality, the title shouldn’t even have the word “assistant” in it, because the person isn’t really an assistant at all.  The person is actually a director.  Think of it this way: the Director is the Creative Director, and the First Assistant Director is the Crew Director.

The position is extremely important because the First Assistant, in essence, tells the rest of the crew what to do.  Their main responsibility is to decide what to shoot each day, and then to make sure all the shots are completed as originally planned.  And they have to do this day in and day out for the entire production.  If there are one or two or six shots left uncompleted, it’s not only their fault, they also have to be flexible enough to schedule it over to another day.

This means that the First Assistant needs to know everyone on the crew really well.  Which department is fast, which department is slow, which actor performs best on take one, which actor performs best on take ten, which scene the director is likely to complete in an hour, which scene is going to take six hours etc. etc.  The First Assistant must absorb all this information and produce a realistic shooting schedule that can be completed as planned. 

Why doesn’t the Director do this?  Because it’s a totally different job.  The Director needs time and space to think about the creative stuff - how fast or slow should the character be talking?  How angry should the other character get when they start to argue?  Too passive and the scene won’t work, too aggressive and the film will peak too early.  The Director can’t think about all these subtleties if he or she also has to bark orders to everyone to hurry up.

So the barking is left to the First Assistant.  All day long on a film set, you may never hear the voice of the Director, but you will not be able to avoid the voice of the First Assistant - “Are you ready yet?  Hurry the hell up!  You have 30 minutes for lunch so be back here by 1.45!  We will shoot this angle first to wait for the sun, then we will turn around and shoot that angle.  So move the equipment out of there now!”  Or on our film set -  Leddy too choot!

There is a saying that the reason so many First Assistants are women is that if they were men, they would get punched out by the other crew members.  This is probably true.

~ by admin on February 17, 2010.

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