On both soaps and sitcoms, I worked largely as an Associate Director, a job I often described to my non-TV friends as a traffic cop who watched numerous camera monitors and coordinated the moving and shot framing of a group of cameramen while shooting a TV show (and made sure what we shot was editable. But that's a different story).
The cameramen were, across the board, older and more experienced than I. And despite the low, steady voice that I had worked to develop for talking to them over their headsets, they were, perhaps not surprisingly, not necessarily eager to trust my choices. They had been creating shots in their viewfinders for all the years when I was still making coffee and answering phones for the producer--what could I possibly have to add?
And yet, with my lowered voice, designed to be easier on ears that had to handle so much yelling and chatter, and with my genuine respect for how much they brought to the process, we found common ground, a collaboration that made me excited to go to work every day.
When I think about what I miss most from working, it is that collaboration, the energy born when the men (no sexism here--they were mostly men) who had pushed heavy cameras and made pictures for years learned to respect the work-her-way-up pipsqueak who appreciated their efforts and their creativity and wasn't afraid to say so. The energy of building a story while joking over headset. The energy of reacting together as things changed.
Learning to work with and earn the respect of people coming at the process from so many different directions has been one of the high points of my career, and I look forward to having more of that soon.
Because I miss my cameramen.
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