Filmmaking: Where do You Fit In?

There are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of jobs associated with filmmaking. In this interactive chart, you can view the hierarchy of diverse roles on set, from pre-production to post-production, to help you identify what career suits you best.

Consider for a moment the last feature film you saw in the theater or on Netflix, did you dutifully sit through the entire credit roll? Probably not. Somewhere, the negative cutter on Jurassic Park is crying inside.

Major motion pictures are massive undertakings, moving through the processes of development, pre-production, principal photography, and post-production. The average film crew can easily swell into the hundreds, and even thousands, for mega-budget movies. Therefore, for someone looking dreamy-eyed at the prospect of a career in pictures, it can be a daunting and confusing task to understand where your aspirations fit in amongst the dozens of artistic, technical, and logistical departments. We’ve got your back.

Get In Media has put together an organizational chart that breaks down the different phases of filmmaking, listing the various crew positions associated with each department, and illustrating the hierarchy among them.

Of course, not all productions are the same. Crews, and therefore the departments they work in, vary widely depending on the needs of the film. We’ve put together a chart of the most common roles; consider this an introductory guide to the average studio motion picture.