Movie Jargon

Since my life is revolving around this insane movie project that I am working on right now, many of these blogs might end up being about movie related stuff. This particular blog will be about movie jargon. You might have seen these terms if you pay attention during the credits, and you might have wondered what these things meant. Well, here are some key terms for your learning pleasure...

The different types of "producers"

Executive Producer - is basically in charge of the entire business and legals aspects of running a production. They do not handle any of the technical aspects of movie-making.

Producer - is responsible for running the production i.e. fund raising, hiring key crew, arranging distributors. However all the creative story-related, performance-related stuff is left to the director. In a way, I sort of see the producer as the genie for the director. The director says "I want this and that to happen", then a great producer will say, "No problem." He will then go ahead and figure out how to make the directors vision a pragmatic reality.

Gaffer - is the chief electrician on the set. Tis a very important job. Movie lights run thousands of watts, the typical home light bulb may run at max 60 or so watts. The gaffer's job is to make sure there is enough electricity running to the many many lights usually running all at once and not short any circuits. Every time a new shot is set up, the lights are moved to different locations, the gaffer must make sure the electrical juice is somehow always flowing.

Best Boy - basically, this person is the gaffer's main assistant. Then below the gaffer and best boy are other lighting assistants.

Grip - is a person in charge of moving equipment from one place to another. Speaking of equipments...

A Flag is an apparatus used to block and shape lights. They are usually held up in place by C-stands. Using a flag and a c-stand you can pretty much carve out any shape of light you are going to basically need. These flags come in various sizes.



This is a flag and a c-stand.
(image from http://www.efplighting.com/images/grip%20head%20w-flag%20reduced.jpg)


That is all for now. Hope you learned something new today!