A film crew is a group of people, hired by a production company, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast as the cast are understood to be the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew is also separate from the producers as the producers are the ones who own a portion of either the film company or the film's intellectual property rights. A film crew is divided into different departments, each of which specializes in a specific aspect of the production. Film crew positions have evolved over the years, spurred by technological change, but many traditional jobs date from the early 20th century and are common across jurisdictions and film-making cultures.
Motion picture projects have three discrete stages: development, production and distribution. Within the production stage there are also three clearly defined sequential phases -- pre-production, principal photography and post-production -- and many film crew positions are associated with only one or two of the phases. Distinctions are also made between above-the-line personnel (such as the director, the screenwriter and the producers) who begin their involvement during the project's development stage, and the below-the-line "technical" crew involved only with the production stage.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Director
The director is considered to be a separate entity, not within the film crew's departmental structure.
Camera Crew Video
Production
Production is generally not considered a department as such, but rather as a series of functional groups. These include the film's producers and executive producers such as the production manager, the production coordinator, and their assistants; the various assistant directors; the accounting staff; and sometimes the locations manager and their assistants.
Production office
Production managements
Assistant directors (AD)
Accounting
Locations
Additional production credits
Since the turn of the 21st century, several additional professionals are now routinely listed in the production credits on most major motion pictures.
Continuity
Casting
Camera & lighting
Camera
Lighting
Grip
Grips are trained lighting and rigging technicians. Their main responsibility is to work closely with the electrical department to put in the non-electrical components of lighting set-ups required for a shot, such as flags, overheads, and bounces. On the sound stage, they move and adjust major set pieces when something needs to be moved to get a camera into position. In the US and Canada they may belong to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
Production Sound
Art department
The art department in a major feature film can often number hundreds of people. Usually it is considered to include several sub-departments: the art department proper, with its art director, set designers and draftsmen; set decoration, under the set decorator; props, under the props master; construction, headed by the construction coordinator; scenic, headed by the key scenic artist; and special effects.
Art (Sets and Graphic Art)
Within the overall art department is a sub-department, also called the art department--which can be confusing. This consists of the people who design the sets and create the graphic art.
Sets
Construction
Scenic
Property
Costume department
Hair and make-up
Some actors or actresses have personal makeup artists or hair stylists.
Special effects
This department oversees the mechanical effects--also called practical or physical effects--that create optical illusions during live-action shooting. It is not to be confused with the Visual effects department, which adds photographic effects during filming to be altered later during video editing in the post-production process.
Stunts
Post-production
Editorial
Visual effects
Visual effects commonly refers to post-production alterations of the film's images. The on set VFX crew works to prepare shots and plates for future visual effects. This may include adding tracking markers, taking and asking for reference plates and helping the Director understand the limitations and ease of certain shots that will effect the future post production. A VFX crew can also work alongside the Special effects department for any on-set optical effects that need physical representation during filming (on camera.)
Sound/music
Animation
Animation film crews have many of the same roles and departments as live-action films (including directing, production, editing, camera, sound, and so on), but nearly all on-set departments (lighting, electrical, grip, sets, props, costume, hair, makeup, special effects, and stunts) were traditionally replaced with a single animation department made up of various types of animators (character, effects, in-betweeners, cleanup, and so on). In traditional animation, the nature of the medium meant that everything was literally flattened into the drawn lines and solid colors that became the characters, making nearly all live-action positions irrelevant. Because animation has traditionally been so labor-intensive and thus expensive, animation films normally have a separate story department in which storyboard artists painstakingly develop scenes to make sure they make sense before they are actually animated.
However, since the turn of the 21st century, modern 3D computer graphics and computer animation have made possible a level of rich detail never seen before. Many animated films now have specialized artists and animators who act as the virtual equivalent of lighting technicians, grips, costume designers, props masters, set decorators, set dressers, and cinematographers. They make artistic decisions strongly similar to those of their live-action counterparts, but implement them in a virtual space that exists only in software rather than on a physical set. There have been major breakthroughs in the simulation of hair since 2005, meaning that hairstylists have been called in since then to consult on a few animation projects.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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