American Cinematographer - February 2002 - 96

raphy's hands. "It's a great place to
start out," says Mark Weingartner,
who has gaffed on documentaries
and independent features and also

Right: Andrew
Glover takes to
the skies

during

shoot. Below:
David Bedesky

a

handholds
Dedo

a

works

light on

a
music-video
shoot with the
rock band
Oleander.

on

visual-effects

crews.

On any

kind of dramatic
is bigger, and the
gaffer gets into management issues
work, the

crew

that don't arise in documentaries. If
the

project is

will be

set

on

very small, the gaffer
with the cinematogra¬

pher, lighting as he goes. But as jobs
get slightly bigger, there may be
enough equipment for the gaffer to
go and prelight the next setup. At
that point, the gaffer needs to try to
get inside the cinematographer's
head to figure out what will be
and features (Idle Hands), says that
he would like to see gaffers become
more

interested in the

feelings that

light can convey. "I'd like to see
people more interested in the mood
not just contrast, but how light

-

affects the character and the person¬

ality [of a project]." He says that with
the wide latitude of today's film
stocks, gaffers and cinematographers
can be much bolder with their light¬

ing than they were in the past.
Finally, the gaffer's manager¬
ial duties have become

an

increas¬

ingly important part of the job,
although those duties vary depend¬
ing on the size and type of project.
On documentary jobs, the crew is
often very small, so there aren't
many management issues; in those
cases, the gaffer is primarily an
extension of the director of photog¬

needed, and then allocate the
that it

happens.
job gets big enough,
the gaffer is once again back on set
with the cinematographer, while a
rigging gaffer or two works ahead
on other sets, getting things as close
to ready as possible. On that size
project, the gaffer's job becomes
even
more
managerial, with a
department of as many as 60 to 70
people split into numerous rigging
resources

to see

When

and strike

a

crews.

bigger jobs, the gaffer's
ability to communicate becomes
increasingly important. "On smaller
jobs, you don't have to communi¬
cate
you just do it yourself," says
Weingartner. "As you rise up the
ladder, you become more of a
On

-

of an accountant,
politician."
Weingartner says that on large
projects, it's critical to have a gaffer
who can work through the oftenconflicting agendas of different
departments. "On a good show,
everyone works together," he says.
"On a bad show, the agenda
becomes making sure that whatever
goes wrong is someone else's fault.
As you get into bigger and bigger
jobs, you need more political profi¬
ciency to survive those situations."
As the size of the project
increases, so does the gaffer's intermanager, more
more

92

February 2002

of a



American Cinematographer - February 2002

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