I initially had the idea of doing the sound work - boom mike operating, minidisc stuff - myself, as well as directing. While it is probably obvious that this is a bit of a stretch, it certainly wasn't at the time, and the thing that really leaped out at me when we were filming on the first weekend, when I really was trying to do the sound work and directing at the same time, was the real reason that you can't do both of these things at once. And it is pretty simple.

The director watches the performances of the actors in each take.

Nobody else is doing this.

Y'see, if you don't have a hugely bloated crew, pretty much everyone involved has got a job to do. The actors act, the camera people make sure the actors are in frame and well lit, the sound people make sure the sound is running properly - and the director watches the acting. Nobody else is doing this. It is not the job of anyone else. If you try and double up the directors job with something else, they won't be able to watch the actors act. So after the first weekend, I got a sound guy. In hindsight, I'd get two.

Here's the crew that we had for Once Upon A Time.

Linda Wilson was the director of photography, a role that she took with astonishing calmness and competence, considering the

stress levels that were flying around the set, and the fact that she had a project to submit and a thesis to write very shortly after the filming completed. She had mentioned at some previous point that she had experience with cameras, though, so we had no choice really, she was the one. In general, I was very pleased with the camerawork (the single exception being a snafu on my part, believing the Sony manual which said that progressive-scan footage was at 25 frames a second, instead of the 12.5 frames a second that we had). In general, the director of photography and/or camera operator makes sure that the actors are in frame and properly lit (and I think in your first project you can double up here, and I highly recommend calling them Director of Photography).

Jimbo Versace is capable of remarkable acts of generosity, such as wandering what being part of the crew for a short film would be like

within earshot of me. This was after the first weekend of filming, and I was very enthusiastic to get someone else to take over the role of Mr. Boom, a name which I concocted because it sounds a great deal more exciting than it was. Jimbo did the boom-mike operation, and I did the sound recording. Even that was probably not enough, as I was too busy directing to concentrate on making sure the sound was good. I strongly recommend having two dedicated sound people, especially if you're not recording sound directly to the camera - the boom mike operator is going to have enough problems making sure the boom is pointing at the right person and is out of shot, to get too concerned with the sound quality. If you have that extra person, get one person listening to the sound quality and the other operating the boom mike. The boom mike operator should still have earphones, of course, but that extra person will not be wasted.

Carey For was one of the two assistant directors, and general helpers. This kind of role was enormously handy for the many, many things that need doing almost continuously - for example, Carey was responsible for, at various times, moving

the home-made dolly (ie. the role of a Grip), holding reflectors (Lighting) updating the log sheets (Assistant Director), keeping track of the time, doing makeup, writing up crib board notes for the actors, notifying the Director and Director of Photography of which shot was next in the shot schedule, and doing clapper-board duty. It is also vital to have somebody in this role with tremendous enthusiasm, as they are the person who generally keeps things rolling!

Winnie Cheung was the other of the two assistant directors. She too did all of the associated oh-god-could-you-help-out jobs, and she too was

filled with boundless reserves of energy, and boy was it needed. The assistant director's main role is to make sure that everybody knows what is happening, and to keep people doing it, setting rest breaks when they can see that people are tiring, and making sure that the film stays on schedule.

If you're making an amateur film, you will probably have a pretty small crew - you'd be surprised how few people are really interested

in doing ten hour days for two weekends running just to be involved in an amateur film one of their crazed friends has decided was a good idea. Inevitably, you will call desparately upon members of the cast to help out. Thus it was with Once Upon A Time. All of the crew helped out enormously, whenever they weren't on screen, helping by holding reflectors, doing each other's makeup, clapperboard duty, even helping with the Dolly. It particularly helped that Jon had done directing before, and he ended up doing much of the shooting schedule planning and quite a bit assistant directing as well, even as he was trying to memorise his lines... I'm really not sure whether we'd have ever finished had he not carefully gone through and worked out the schedule on the last days. It really drove home that if you're making a short film, your best resource is someone who's done it before.