From the course: Creating a Short Film: 07 Cinematography

About our camera department

- Before we get started, I just want to introduce you to the members of our camera department and our G & E, short for grip and electric department, on The Assurance. As we go through this training, you'll be seeing them a lot and hearing their names all the time, so I just wanted you to get familiar with them. Now I was the DP on The Assurance, or the director of photography. To understand the basics of what this role entails, check out the last course in this series about working on set. And also later in this course, we're going to talk a lot more about how to be a better DP. For our camera team, I was greatly assisted by Ty Huffer, who served as the camera operator. On a lot of sets, big and small, the DP might choose to operate the camera themselves. Other times they might prefer to have an operator so they can just kind of hang back at video village and just monitor everything that's being recorded without the added burden of operating the camera. Though I usually prefer to operate the camera myself when I've been DP on other projects, on this project I was also directing the film, so I desperately needed Ty's help. In addition to Ty in the camera department, we also had Marco Scaringi, who was our first AC, or first assistant camera person. When it was time to setup for another shot, I would just tell Ty and Marco what I wanted, and they would get it setup. And I would go to work with the actors or do whatever director-y business I had to take care of and then once Ty and Marco were setup, I would just give them little notes and fine tune some things about their setup and then they would go off to make those adjustments and tweaks while I went back to director-y stuff. In G & E, we had Chris Taylor as gaffer, Daniel Mimura as best boy electric, and Matt Harrison as key grip. Like our camera department, these guys are all multi-talented, experienced filmmakers with great attitudes that each took their various turns saving my life during production. For more information on these crew positions, and the people who filled them, consult the previous training series about working on set. Okay, now that we know our team, let's actually start learning about cinematography.

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