War Stories: Managing a Photo Shoot on Location

E-mail to client: “I must strongly recommend against the proposed photo shoot location, on the grounds that one or more of the crew members could plunge 150 feet down the sheer cliff face to their death.”

E-mail reply from client: “Life is risk.”

Managing a catalog photo shoot on location is harder than it looks. In fact, a key part of a good project manager’s job is to make the job look easy, because a jittery project manager upsets the crew and slows the work. Whatever happens, as project manager your job is to take it all in stride, consider all your options and make the right choice at every point, no matter what’s going on.

I pulled into the park manager’s driveway as the rest of the eight-person crew headed toward the sheer rock cliff half a mile away. Last week the park manager had assured me that a permit would be no problem; I could pick it up when we arrived.

“I’m here for that photo shoot permit we’ve been discussing,” I said.

“I’m not sure I can let you shoot,” said the park ranger.

“Why not?”

“The eagles are not happy,” he said.

A typical location crew will consist of one or two photographers, an art director, one or more client representatives, one or two stylists, one or two styling assistants and any models you need. It’s possible for one person to simultaneously handle both art direction and project management, but it’s better if the jobs can be divided, because project management for even a relatively small crew can take a lot of time. Here are some basic project management issues to consider:

1. Transportation to/from the shoot. The photographer and photo assistants will handle their equipment—but the client will usually need help organizing the photo samples. Make sure somebody labels every sample in advance with the product’s name and what shot it appears in. It’s discouraging to stare into the back of a 26-foot truck brimming with closed cardboard boxes, all labeled “samples,” while the photographer is asking, “Where’s the first shot?”

2. Photo props. Don’t forget these—they’re almost impossible to scrounge on location.

3. Beverages. People consume a lot more beverages than they used to. If you bring a cooler, do NOT bring one with a drain. Drains will leak and stain very expensive hardwood floors, very expensive carpets, very expensive decks...

4. Food. Food is impossible—nobody agrees on anything. Pay primary attention to the requirements of the client and the models—everybody else is generally a trouper and will live with what they’re given. On the first day, notice what doesn’t get eaten, and make whatever adjustments you can.

5. Lodging. People hate sharing hotel rooms. People would rather camp out than share a room. If you have a fairly large crew, you can usually cut a deal on rooms if there’s a hotel around.

Permit in hand, I reached the shoot location. The crew had already filled all the no-parking zones and disappeared toward the sheer rock face a quarter mile off. When I reached the cliff face, the art director had already set up the camera. It pointed directly off into empty space over the cliff.

“Take a look,” said the photographer. The lines in his forehead seemed deeper than I recalled.

Through the camera, the shot looked like nothing—shooting straight into empty space looks impressive and scary in person, but boring on film. It’s the classic problem with vistas—everything looks tiny and far away on the print.

“We need a short conference,” I said to the client.

One of the key parts of project management on a location shoot is looking ahead for trouble. As soon as the crew is working on a shot, your job is to look ahead to the next shot. Do you have the samples? The props? Will the sun be wrong by the time you get out of the current shot?

At the same time, you must pay close attention to the progress of the current shot. Otherwise, even a good crew will bog down in details. In any crew, there will be one or more persons who will slow down the crew. They usually aren’t doing this on purpose. It may be the photographer, who loves to tweak lighting. Or it may be the art director, who can’t quite decide to go to film. Or it may be the client, who keeps assuming that the crew will work things out but, at the final moment, sees that it isn’t so, steps in and throws a monkey wrench into the shot.

During the first day of a shoot, quietly identify these problems, and figure out how to deal with them. Is the client stepping in at the last moment to revise shots the crew has been tweaking for hours? Then get the client involved much earlier. Is the art director endlessly experimenting with layout in front of the camera? Then start arranging sets in advance, so the art director can arrange them before the photographer arrives.

“OK, how about we shoot it pointing back this way instead?” asked the client, pointing back about 10 feet away from the cliff.

The photographer glanced at me.

“That would look better,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, to get that shot, the camera would need to be set up somewhere out...there.”

I pointed about 20 feet into space, directly off the cliff face.

“Don’t we have a ladder?” asked the client, looking about.

Project managing a photo shoot becomes more interesting if you’re managing more than one crew simultaneously. This may sound awkward, but it has many benefits: you’ll be getting the most out of expensive locations, and if the crews are working some distance apart, the client won’t be able to look over the shoulder of each crew continuously.

However, managing two crews at once does make project management harder. Buy some two-way radios and equip the crews, yourself, the art director and the client with them. Wear sturdy shoes. Clearly understand the shots in advance, and have a quiet talk with each photo crew, focusing on where they think problems will crop up. Then move yourself back and forth between the locations as efficiently as you can, positioning yourself mostly where the client and the art director are (they’ll tend to be together). The key is to be at the problem spots as they arise. With experience, you can do this.

“OK, look at this,” said the photographer. I’d remembered him as a more cheerful man.

He pulled his head out from the view camera’s dark cloth and inched slowly down from the top of a ladder poised at the edge of the cliff. An eagle circled curiously a few hundred feet off—150 feet above the valley floor below, but approximately level with the photographer’s damp brow.

I was standing directly at the cliff’s edge, rotating an eight-foot reflector to get fill light onto the set, which was 10 feet inland. A wind blew smartly up the cliff, shoving the reflector around like a sail.

The client looked up at the ladder. “It looks dangerous.” His eyes turned to me. “You have a look.”

Even on a small shoot, it’s best to have extra pairs of hands. This may look wasteful to budget-minded clients because some of the time these extra people will be sitting around, gazing at the scenery. But extra hands are vital to moving a complex shoot along, and their cost is quite low. Here are some of the ways I’ve used extra hands on various location shoots:

• Bucking bales of hay into a lodge as props.
• Driving half a mile up the road for doughnuts.
• Rewaxing the hardwood floor where the stylist’s steamer had whitened a 10-inch square patch in a museum.
• Directing downtown traffic around a photographer who was standing in the middle of an intersection to shoot.
• Sorting out 50 very expensive ballpoint pens that had gotten separated from their boxes in a complex shooting session.
• Locking a rich woman’s small, white dog in the bathroom to stop it from biting the toes of the crew members who were walking around barefoot to avoid making heel marks on the pure white rug.

If you’re worried about the cost of extra hands, seek out volunteers. People outside of cataloging tend to view catalog location shoots as a glamorous activity. And they work cheap.

Balanced on the ladder, I studied the ground glass in back of the view camera. As a product shot, it wasn’t bad—the product showed prominently, the photographer’s boots looked good as props (he was now barefoot, the client had commandeered his boots), the natural lighting was good. Just one thing....

“Of course, the camera is pointing completely away from the cliff, so you can’t see that there’s a cliff at all,” I said. “We could have shot this back in the parking lot.”

The grooves in the photographer’s forehead seemed to deepen.

“I like it. Shoot it,” said the client.

As the photographer inched back up the ladder carrying the film packs, the stylist gazed back towards the distant parking lot.

“Should a ranger be ticketing our cars like that?” she asked.

After a long day of shooting, many of the crew members (especially the client and art director) will feel ready for fun. This may seem odd to you—you may feel ready to drop—but part of your job is to make the end of their day rewarding and memorable. If their memories are favorable, they’ll be eager to work with you again.

Later, back in the office, everyone was looking at printed samples of the finished catalog. Everybody ooh’d and aah’d, until they reached the shot on the cliff. Then they looked puzzled.

“Isn’t this the shot on the cliff?” someone asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Where’s the cliff?”

“Directly behind the camera.”

They looked at me curiously.

“You had to be there,” I said.

“Ummm,” they replied.

By the way, sales from the shot were good.

Susan and Dan McIntyre run McIntyre Direct, a catalog consulting company based in Portland, OR. They can be reached at (503) 735-9515.