Once there are no more delays, the assistant director calls for people to make any last minute adjustments to hair, position or lighting, then calls for quiet on the set, rolling the sound and camera, confirms (with hand signals) that both sound and camera are rolling. Once this is done, everyone stays out of the frame; the camera assistant uses the clapper board common to everyone’s vision of how movies are made and the director calls for action!
Now, that describes the day-to-day aspects of what the assistant director does. Where a lot of small budget films do is economize on this job. They either roll it into the production manager job or have the director do it all (who usually burns out in the process well before the shooting schedule ends).
When looking for an assistant director, look for a person who’s organized. This is a person who has a day planner and uses it. Look for a person who has good communications skills—he’s going to have a lot of information passing through his head and part of his job is making sure the information goes to the right person at the right time to do the maximum amount of good. A good assistant director has an ego, but knows it’s subordinate to the producer and the director. His job is to make sure that things happen on set, without chaos or strife or confusion.
Good assistant directors can improvise and always have a B plan (or C plan, or D plan…). There’s time after the shoot to have a nervous breakdown. When everything is going to hell on a rocket sled, it’s the assistant director’s job to be calm, clear and composed while trying to avert the disaster. Every assistant director knows the importance of providence and having backup plans ready to go.
It’s important to understand that an assistant director cannot afford to play politics with the crew or the cast. That’s in the producer’s bailiwick. Unfortunately, as the person on set who has the most authority with direct access, the assistant director is the person who gets whined at the most. The temptation to whine back is overwhelming, particularly since the assistant director ends up being the go-to guy for solving all problems on the set that can’t be handled locally. When presented with a problem by someone else, an important skill for any assistant director to have is to direct them to the person who can SOLVE the problem.
