But being alone (or very few) has many adventages: first of all: financial - you have to pay only one salary. Second: organisation: no lates, no busy schedules, no transport fees and no catering obligations. Third: total artistic control. Don’t have to fight with a once-painter-now.-cameraman who takes long hours to light an easy scene just to be able to put it later on his/her showreel tape. No fight either with a too maximalistic/perfectionist sound engineer who stops recording if a plane crosses the sky 10 kms above the location. Fourth: you can keep the intimacy of the scenes if for psychological reasons we speak about hard scenes for actors. Debuting actors can perform much better when there is only 1-2 persons in the room.

On the other hand, sometimes the stress, the warzone-like tension of a bigger crew can make wonders to the movie, not to talk about the comfort of having always the right person for the right job. So it is no wonder why productions who can allow themself to have a big crew always have a big crew. They are not stupid to waste money. As soon as you work with reputated actors, you cannot go below a certain comfort – which includes buses for wardrobe and makeup, catering….well, thats another story.

by Barnabás Tóth