WHY SKELETON CREW COULD BE AN ALTERNATIVE FOR YOUR VIDEO PRODUCTION

People often ask me how to effectively shoot a film with a skeleton crew. For those of you that don’t know the term, a skeleton crew is a film crew that is stripped down to the bare essential crew members, usually in order to save money in production, or to be less conspicuous when shooting without permits.

While I have directed and produced many shoots that were done with exceptionally small crews, there is no cut and dry formula for putting together a crew of this scale. The reason being, is that different films simply have vastly different requirements. For example, if you’re shooting a short film that primarily consists of voiceover and there is little or no dialogue being recorded on set, then you would of course be better off not bringing in a location sound recordist, and rather filling that position with someone else that would add more value to your production in other ways. Conversely, you may be shooting a feature with lots of exteriors and have minimal time for set ups, in which case a great sound recordist is your best friend. The bottom line is there is no right or wrong way to do this. And in fact, there is no exact answer to how large a “skeleton crew” really is to begin with. By some definitions it can be as little as 2 – 3 people. or by other definitions it may be as large as 12 – 15.

Check this video about the skeleton crew below.