The Traditional Production Hierarchy / Chain of Command
by Jeremy Pang
There’s hierarchy in every industry, but the more traditional industries like the media and filming world tend to all follow a set of rules when it comes to the job role funnel. In the TV world for example, you get the commissioners from the TV channels, who then work with a team of people underneath them who run around like headless chickens with cameras on their backs or lights and lenses shoved in our faces to get every shot that they need to make those at the top happy.
Commissioners are the ones who know their audience, whether through qualitative and quantitative data or just through experience and gut instinct. In this case – the brand owners, you guys, are our commissioners – what you say goes (pretty much), but some flexibility on trying something new is always welcome!
Executive Directors and producers - Creative overview of a series of shows that need to be produced, they point their teams in the right creative direction and set the overall view of the film, but really, they are the ones that deservedly swan around making sure everyone knows they’re the bosses!
The directors and producers are where the real work starts happening. These are the guys who put their heads together and see every new production as a clean creative battleground. The creative direction is usually steered by the directors and then producers’ home in on every last detail to implement the creative and get all the cogs in the right place.
Then comes the crew, who like in any industry, usually sit under the producers and directors, but really are the backbone of any production company. They are often made up of the camera guys, sound and light engineers and editing suite and each one of them plays a crucial part in getting a film or video beautifully made. Without these guys, you don’t get your pretty movie that you can show off to your audience!
As a boutique video production company, we tend to combine a few of these major TV roles into one and see the roles highlighted in green as the most important. We still have a solid setup when it comes to our core team, with 3 full time camera crew, who double up as our editorial suite and animations department, a full time producer and account manager who keeps all our brands up to date as to exactly what is happening with their footage, projects and filmed drafts and always has an eye on which angles we are shooting each and every frame in.
With a strong focus on producing videos for companies who are growing their direct-to-consumer sites significantly, we also have our own Head of Digital who not only keeps an eye on how to use digital video content to sell what we do, but also helps us to give advice to our clients from our own learnings and how we can use video to make the most of their sales and marketing opportunities online.
And then there’s little ol’ me who, as Creative Director of the company, gets involved with all the fun stuff, talking to brand managers, founders, and owners about their brand journeys and what it is that their key messages are today, working with the rest of the team to accentuate the messages in a fun, yet informative way. On a day-to-day basis, I often have my sales hat on, but the lovely thing about being the sales director and creative director at the same time is that there’s a seamless approach to the way we produce our videos for our clients as we aren’t just selling a dream, we’re making that dream happen together once our clients become part of the Curious Crab family. I love the interaction and enthusiasm that oozes off the founders and brand managers who are clearly passionate about their brands and a good agency – client relationship makes all the difference. The hierarchy may be interesting, but we like to run our business with quite a ‘flat management’ style to allow for all creative ideas to find their way comfortably to the top of the table, no matter what project we are working on.
