On traditional sets, one of my mentors likes to call the assistant director the “traffic cop, directing traffic”.
I think that statement over-simplifies the important, complex and often stressful job and responsibility of the assistant director.
A good assistant director can save a production tons of money by making sure there is no lag time due to preparation. This can be invaluable, because often you will be trying to fit as much as possible into a day without getting sloppy. A good assistant director can help you do that.
On set, the assistant director always has to be thinking 5 steps ahead of where everyone else is.
“While we’re shooting scene 35, we are preparing the other actors for scene 63, and then, if we can finish shooting that by lunch, and have the exteriors lit by lunch, then we can bang out scenes 44 – 46. I’ll sent P.A. Jane to pick up lunch in 20 minutes so that she’s back by 3pm.”
Short films are not nearly this complicated and often times the assistant director (or A.D.) position resembles that of a Key P.A. position on a feature film.
In the past, my A.D. has usually just helped where there needed help. He was much less about organizing and scheduling and more about making sure lunch was picked up (usually it was he who was picking it up) or confirming to me that the actors had arrived and were in holding and doing well.
Still important, but not really the job description of a feature film A.D. (Although even on some features, it’s the A.D. that is doing this stuff.)
As a side note, sometimes with short films it helps to double up on positions… Like the Assistant Director also ends up being the Script Supervisor. The A.D. who is not traditionally a script supervisor will not do as good a job as someone who does this as a career and has been trained to do so, but if all you need is to keep a record of which were the good takes for the editor, then that work out well.
