If you close your eyes and picture a Hollywood film set, you probably imagine people everywhere, trailers, lights, and those fancy chairs that the director and talent sit in. Movie sets can be filled with hundreds of people, all standing around, waiting to do their specific jobs. Need an electrical cord? Call the electrician. Need to move that light? Radio a grip or two. A Hollywood set is a well-oiled machine with decades of nomenclature, union rules, and traditions that dictate how it operates.
Whenever I head out on production, I always laugh a little because, when I think about one of our sets, the image couldn’t be more different. Imagine three weeks on the road, three people lugging Pelican cases through airports, into rental cars, and shooting for 12 to 16 hours a day. The world of outdoor film production varies significantly from a traditional set. It’s rare to have crafty prepared for you, and it’s rare to have a comfy chair to sit in between takes. Our version of a set is a few people working like crazy to bring a vision to life, all while trying to keep the cameras dry in pouring rain, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.
When it comes to staffing a film project, there are a few ways we approach it. There’s a balance between cost, efficiency gained, and creative synergy. Yes, I did just use the word synergy, but when a crew is humming along and the creative juices are flowing, it’s a flow state that can’t be described any other way.
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When we crew projects, we work with anywhere between two and 20 people. At Port Side, we employ a “Hollywood model,” which means that crew members are hired for each project and then disbanded until the next one. This approach has a few primary benefits:
1) Every job has different requirements and scope considerations. Some jobs are heavy on pre-production and need a line producer, while others are production-heavy and require a G/E team. Sometimes, post-production is the biggest hurdle, and multiple editors are needed. Being able to hire team members and expand or contract certain aspects of the production is vital to managing multiple projects at once and ensuring a quality output, on time.
2) The world of outdoor media is niche. Not only does it require an understanding of production, but it also demands an intimate knowledge of geography, the sport, and the athletes. Being able to flex our crew based on these needs is also important. We’re able to hire talented DPs and photographers who are well-versed in disciplines like mountain biking, rock climbing, skiing, etc.
3) This Hollywood model doesn’t just apply to crewing projects. It’s also a phrase used to describe the breakdown of the agency world into smaller, specialty shops. As clients now often go directly to production companies for work, this internal model allows us to double down on our expertise and avoid the “feed the beast” trap that many agencies fall into as they expand, diluting their expertise in the process.
This model does have a downside: If you’re always hiring new people for different jobs, how do you maintain culture and develop creative efficiency every time? This is a tough question to answer, and it does keep me up at night. Maybe our model will change in the future, but for now, we try to overcome this shortcoming by pulling from the same group of people for projects. Over the years, we’ve developed great relationships with team members throughout the production process. While we might not work together on every job, it’s these lasting relationships that we count on when the time is right.
