RESEARCH INTO ROLES

The main roles involved in the making of a film can be rounded up to;

- Director 

-Camera operator

-producer

-editior 

-dop (euphoria)

-sound

 Role of the Director 

The key role or a director is controlling all of the creative elements of the film, from translating the script into a guide for the actors to working with the technical team to enhance the vision for the screen; Their role is crucial in the making of any film.

An example of a famous director, one that is growing in the industry is Greta gerwig, most notable for her film released in 2017, 'lady bird'. Gerwig is most famous for her unique film making choices in her straightforward yet touching films. 

After Gerwigs solo project 'Lady bird' reached success, gerwig became the fitch female director to receive a best director nomination.   

greta gerwig in an interview, referenced from (https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/filmmaking-advice-from-award-winning-directors-74217/) "“If you have reverence for the art form, your fear of failure could come from not wanting to muck up something you love. But I think there’s a time when the fear of not ever having tried is bigger than the fear of failure. And that’s when you get to work, because you realize you have fears on both sides; which one would you rather live with? You’ll make a bad movie or give a bad performance or write a bad song or make a bad painting. Because if you’re doing it, you’ll get some bad ones. That’s just the price of admission!”

This interview from Gerwig concludes the creative element of the role of a director and the art form of film making, directing a film.

role of a camera operator

the contribution of a camera operator is to essentially manage all of the technical aspects that come alongside any camera work: from operating the camera physically to preparing the scenes and the camera movement within it.  

As oppose to any other key roles within the making of a film, the camera operators get the least recognition due to the nature of it. However, an example from a very well renowned film due to not only the gripping story line but the sophisticated filming, specifically that of hand held, was done by Micheal Chapman. 

In an interview looking into the overall prospects of the role of a camera operator, referenced: (http://www.creativesgo.com/gail_jenkinson_camera_operator_director_of_photography_interview.html), Gail Jenkinson gave a 'career insight' into her role as a camera operator, explaining the roles technicalities. Furthermore, Jenkinson went on the evaluate the difficulty of her jobs nature about 'breaking through to become a regular op', where she wrote: "Keeping motivated during those in between times and not to panic. It's a transitional time and that in turn takes time. Thinking of your career maybe more like golf than other sports I find helps, you have to play the course."

Role of the producer 

The role of the producer is to essentially create the film from start to finish; this involves all the hiring of creative elements, for example the writer, director and all areas of the technical team, to overseeing all of the three areas of production and finally to releasing the film. In many cases, the director becomes their films producer, thus obtaining much more creative freedom with the film; a famous example of this would be Stephan Spielberg. 

Spielberg has directed and produced 7 out of 20 of the highest grossing films of all time; Spielberg shared his film making tips with  [https://collider.com/steven-Spielberg-filmmaker-advice-comments/] as he shares his knowledge whilst talking about his latest hit, 'West side story'. Spielberg wrote, “The only piece of advice I love to give is don't worry so much about technique and don't worry so much about where to put the camera or have a light. Worry about one thing or think about one thing, preoccupy yourself with, how do you tell a story that's really interesting, that you can get somebody not to walk out of the room right in the middle of your second act of your telling the story? How do you just tell a story that people lean into what you're saying and they don't lean back, they don't start looking around the room? Find a way first, a compelling way to express your art through your storytelling. Once you've got that, there's a lot of people in this world that will get around you and show you the ropes, but learning how to be a storyteller is the most important advice I can give you.”

role of the editor 

the role of the editor is to essentially gather all the clips and content of the film, cut it down, edit transitions, cgi and all the technical areas of what makes up the final experience of a film by combining the film into sequences to create the final motion picture. 

An editor works closely with the director from pre-production and assembling the scrip and screen play, to production and making sure the story telling is making sense with the attention to detail. Finally, during post-production, the director will work alongside the editor to assemble the final cut to then allow music and sound to be added. 

An example of a famous and up coming female editor is Joi Mcmillon; most notable for 'moonlight' 2016. Mcmillon co-edited 'moonlight' and her and nat sanders received and oscar nomination, thus making her the first black women to receive a nomination. In an interview with source unknown, mcmillon explored her journey with editing moonlight; [from https://womenfilmeditors.princeton.edu/mcmillon-joi/]  “I think one of the lessons I learned was allowing the footage to speak to you. Sometimes as an editor you’re trying to pace things up to keep the audience engaged, but I think we learned to just allow moments to breathe and allow the audience to become acquainted with the surroundings. When we were cutting the diner scene, I was slightly nervous that we were lingering too long, but a lot of people tell me that they love being in that diner. You have to trust your instinct and your gut. Barry [Jenkins] would always say, ‘Don’t break it. It feels good.’ You’ve got to listen to that feeling.”

Role of the dop  

the role of the dop is to be able to understand the screen play and the directors intention and communicate the feel of the film through the lighting, framing and camera movement. The dop work extremely closely with the director to communicate their intentions through the visuals of the film, from the camera positions to the lighting and color choices and view all of the raw footage with the director. 

The dops role during production is to block out the exact movements of the actors and camera and to discuss what is needed of the camera operator to make sure that the filming goes smoothly 

AN example of a director of photography, andre chemetoff, worked alongside 3 others on sam levinsons Euphoria, creating unique cinematoc choices. CHemetoff discusses his work on mona fastvolds film 'the world to come'

[https://filmmakermagazine.com/110992-softness-to-achieve-an-ethereal-image-dp-andre-chemetoff-the-world-to-come/#.YdMNgWjP1PY] Chemtoff dicusses his biggest challenges as DOP: "The biggest challenges were inherent to shooting in remote locations, up the Carpathian Mountains on a very tight schedule. We indeed had to recreate a wintery feeling when shooting all interior sets during the summer, hoping there will be some snow end of fall when coming back to shoot the outdoors scenes. Luckily when we got back in the fall we were welcomed with white powdery landscapes.". He then goes on to discuss lighting; "The approach of lighting was quite frontal and filled up, as I wanted to make sure we could transcript the beauty of the colors and the details of the set created by the genius production designer Jean Vincent Puzos."

Role of the Sound designer 

sound designers are essentially in charge of choosing the right sound tracks to communicate the atmosphere of the scene and to successfully communicate the story line and the characters to present the directors overall intention. This differs with animation however, as all of the sound are completely made from scratch, making the sound designers job much more important in the progression of the film making process. 

EThan VAn der ryn, a notable sound designer, worked alongside erik aadahl on 'a quiet place'. From an interview with [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17253262/a-quiet-place-sound-design-eric-aadahl-ethan-van-der-ryan-interview] Ethan van der ryn dicuess how they went on communicating the script to essentially tell the story through sound, especially when working on a film where 'sound' is so important for the story line and the lack of dialogue leaves plenty of opportunity to create mood and atmosphere through non-diegetic sound: " We’ve done a lot of big action, special visual effects, creature movies, where there’s often a lot going on onscreen. What we’ve learned is that often, what can be the most effective in our work is to really strip down the number of sounds we’re playing, to try and get it very focused. And sometimes, we almost have to counter the visuals when there’s a lot happening visually. We feel like we have to actually get the sound more focused, in a way, to help tell the audience what is important at any particular moment.

So that’s something we’ve been working on, stripping sound down. Seeing how much we can take out. In a way, instead of seeing how much we can play, which is what a lot of people think about in terms of sound design — “How much sound can we play?” — for us, it’s been about the opposite. How minimal can we get, and how focused can we get? [A Quiet Place] is taking that to its logical conclusion." 

An interview on how sound designers in 'a quiet place' used sound to essentially shape the film