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Tips To Improve Your Communication With Your Gaffer
The name “gaffer” comes from the hooked metal pole that was used to adjust the stage lights back in the days, which was called “gaff”. Today, the Gaffer, also known as “chief lighting technician”, has a very important role on set because he is the one responsible for executing and sometimes even designing a production lighting plan. There is a close connection between the DoP and the Gaffer and the two must work together and their communication skills are important for the smooth running of a shoot.
Talk to your Gaffer
The Gaffer can help if you talk to him. You can talk with your Gaffer about the quality of a light that you want on your subject to send a specific emotion of the scene. Based on this information, the Gaffer can make a few helpful suggestions.
Make the plan with your Gaffer
You are not alone on set and you have experts that are willing to help you achieve the best results. The lighting plan can be produced by the DoP alone and executed by the Gaffer, but it would improve the outcome if the DoP would work together with his Gaffer during this process.
You can ask your Gaffer: “If I wanted to do this, what do you think would be the best lighting for this?“. Then, the Gaffer can come up with a few ideas and take care of the technicality.
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2 Replies
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You can always achieve better results if you work together with your team instead of working alone. After all, they have a lot of experience in that exact thing – which in this case is lighting.
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A Gaffer has clearly the experience and know how to create surreal scenes by using the proper lighting techniques. He just needs to understand what exactly the DoP is looking to accomplish with a scene in order to help him.
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