Chapter 18 — Exercises

Running a set is a doing skill, and most of it can only be learned by running one. These exercises put you on set — as a crew of one, two, or more — and make you build the documents, speak the protocol, and solve the problems that separate a calm shoot from a chaotic one. Do the starred items in order of ambition; the shooting and document-building ones matter most, because they build directly toward your Project 2 shoot day.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; the biggest gains live here.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Attempt each one before you read its answer — a plan you got wrong on paper is far cheaper than one you get wrong on the day.

A. Seeing the set (Eye & Ear Training)

These need no camera — just your attention. They train you to see the organization behind finished video.

1. ⭐ Spot the crew. Watch a behind-the-scenes or "making-of" featurette for any film, ad, or big YouTube production (they're everywhere). Pause when you can see the set and identify, by what they're doing, at least four roles from §18.1: who's on camera, who's near the lights, who's holding a boom or wearing headphones, who's running or wrangling. Write down the visual cue that gave each one away. (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Hear the protocol. Find a clip of a real set rolling a take (BTS reels often include one). Listen for the call-and-response of §18.4 — "roll sound," "speed," "rolling," "action," "cut." Note which calls you heard and in what order. (Answer provided.)

3. ⭐⭐ The one-take moment. Think of a live or event video you've seen where the makers clearly got one shot at a moment (an award, a first kiss, a game-winning goal). Write two sentences on what had to be ready in advance — framed, exposed, rolling, mic'd — for that moment to be caught at all. Connect it to FIGURE 18.8. (Answer provided.)

4. ⭐⭐ Fatigue on screen. Notice a video (a vlog, a long shoot day documented) where the crew or creator was clearly exhausted. Can you see it in the work — sloppier framing, missed focus, flatter energy? Write one line linking what you saw to the §18.4 claim that "fatigue is a safety and quality issue."

B. Reading the day (Read the Sequence & Fix the Shot)

5. ⭐ Read the caught shot. Re-read FIGURE 18.8 (the gala award moment). Name the four things that were ready before the moment (support/frame, exposure, sound, and the cue to roll), and match each to the crew role that made it ready. (Answer provided.)

6. ⭐⭐ Fix the call sheet. A friend's call sheet says only: "Shoot at Dave's house, Saturday, bring cameras." List at least six fields from §18.2 that are missing, and for each, name the specific problem its absence will cause on the day. (Answer provided.)

7. ⭐⭐ Fix the etiquette. Describe what's wrong on this set: the moment the director calls "action," a crew member walks across the back of the frame to grab a coffee, someone's phone buzzes, and the operator — noticing the light stand is unweighted and leaning — lets it go because "it's not my department." Name each breach and the correct behavior. (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ Triage this morning. You arrive to shoot and four things are wrong at once: (a) a cable runs across the only doorway at ankle height; (b) there's an audible air-conditioning hum in your interview corner; (c) your key light is a stop too dim; (d) you forgot to bring the second camera's spare battery. Put the four in the order you'd handle them using FIGURE 18.7, and justify the order in one line each. (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Diagnose the disaster. A described shoot: a two-person crew arrives with no call sheet, no shot list, and one battery. They "figure it out on the day," shoot four hours of footage with no slates and identically named files, reuse the only card twice when it fills, and wrap at midnight. Write the post-mortem: list every failure, tag each with the section that would have prevented it, and rank them by how much damage each did to the finished piece. (Model answer provided.)

C. Building the documents (Settings Drill)

For this chapter, the "settings" you drill are the documents and plans that make a shoot run.

10. ⭐ Fill a slate. Draw the slate from FIGURE 18.4 and fill every field for a real shot you plan to take: production, scene, take, roll, date, fps, director, DP, and whether it's sync or MOS. (Answer shows a completed example.)

11. ⭐⭐ Write the call sheet. Using FIGURE 18.2 as a model, write a complete one-page call sheet for a real or imagined half-day shoot (your Project 2 interview is ideal). Every field must be filled, including the nearest hospital and route, a meal, a wrap time, and a must-get list. (Model answer provided.)

12. ⭐⭐ The gear checklist. Write the full night-before gear checklist for that same shoot. Group it (camera / audio / support / power+media / light / documents) and mark the three items whose failure would stop the shoot (§18.6). (Answer provided.)

13. ⭐⭐ Stagger the call times. For a shoot with a producer, a DP, a sound recordist, and an on-camera subject, write staggered call times around a 09:30 first-shot, and justify why each person is called when they are. (Answer provided.)

14. ⭐⭐⭐ The realistic timeline. Take a shot list of ten shots (yours or invented) and build an honest shoot-day timeline (FIGURE 18.3) for it: include load-in, setup, a meal, buffer, and wrap. Then audit your own optimism — where did you underestimate setup? Rewrite one block to be realistic. (Model answer provided.)

D. Speaking and running the set (Recreate It)

15. ⭐ Say the calls. Out loud, from memory, run the full verbal protocol of a take from "quiet on set" to "moving on" (FIGURE 18.5). Record yourself on your phone doing it. Play it back — did you get the order right? (Answer lists the canonical order.)

16. ⭐⭐ Recreate the roll, solo. Shoot one take of anything while speaking every call aloud to yourself — sound, camera, slate, action, cut — and self-slating on camera (hand + spoken label + clap). It will feel absurd. Do it anyway. Write one sentence on what the ritual made you not forget. (Model self-critique provided.)

17. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate a role handoff. With one other person, shoot a short scene where you consciously split the roles: one owns picture+light (DP), one owns sound+support. Swap after three takes. Write which role you found harder to own with full attention, and why. (Discussion provided.)

E. On the day (Shoot This)

The heart of the chapter. Run real shoots.

18. ⭐⭐ Run the passes. Do the §18.5 🎬 On Set assignment if you haven't: shoot a 60–90 second talking-head as a solo crew, naming each of the seven passes aloud (FIGURE 18.6), recording and listening back to room tone, and self-slating every take. Self-review: which pass did you want to skip? (Model self-critique provided.)

19. ⭐⭐ Shoot to a call sheet. Run a real half-day (or two-hour) shoot governed entirely by the call sheet you wrote in Exercise 11. Honor the call time, the schedule blocks, and the wrap. Afterward, mark on the sheet where reality diverged from the plan and by how much. (Guidance provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ The must-get discipline. Before a shoot, write your single must-get shot on a card and get it first, while fresh. Then shoot the rest. Reflect: did front-loading the must-get change how relaxed you felt about the clock for the rest of the day? (Answer discusses the expected effect.)

21. ⭐⭐⭐ Two-person shoot, sound owned. Bring one person to a shoot and assign them only sound — mic placement, levels, headphones, room tone, and the authority to stop a take for a noise you can't hear. Shoot a short interview. Compare the audio to something you shot solo. Write what having a dedicated set of ears changed. (Model answer provided.)

22. ⭐⭐⭐ The event run-and-gun. Shoot a real small event or gathering (a birthday, a meetup, a game) as if it were a client job: a mini call sheet, a must-get list, exposure locked in advance for your key spot, and one clean audio source planned. Get one FIGURE 18.8–style caught moment. Write what being ready in advance let you catch. (Model answer provided.)

F. Organizing for the edit (Cut This)

You don't need to finish an edit here — you need to prove your footage is findable.

23. ⭐ Log ten takes. For any ten takes you've shot, write a proper take log: scene/shot, take number, a one-word verdict, and a circle on the keeper — with one phrase on why it's the keeper. (Answer shows a model log.)

24. ⭐⭐ Sync by clap. Shoot one take with separate audio (phone as recorder, camera for picture) and a visible/audible clap. In any editor, line up the clap frame to the audio spike and confirm they sync. Write what the clap gave you that "eyeballing it" wouldn't. (Guidance provided.)

25. ⭐⭐⭐ The findability test. Hand a friend (or future-you, a week later) a folder of your slated, logged footage and a request: "find take 3 of the close-up, the circled one." Time how long it takes. Then repeat with an unlabeled folder. Write the time difference and what it proves about §18.3. (Answer discusses the expected gap.)

G. Judgment and safety (Fix the Shot & Five Ways)

26. ⭐⭐ Five ways to staff one shoot. Take one shoot — say, a talking-head interview — and describe how you'd run it with (a) a crew of one, (b) two, (c) three, (d) five, and (e) a full small professional crew. For each, say which jobs get their own person first as the crew grows, and why. (Model answer provided.)

27. ⭐⭐ The safety call. Describe three specific on-set situations where the correct action is to stop the shoot for safety — and for each, note who is allowed to make that call (§18.4). (Answer provided.)

28. ⭐⭐⭐ No shot is worth a person. A client (or your own ambition) is pushing for a shot that would require someone to stand somewhere genuinely unsafe — in traffic, on an unsecured height, near water with live power. Write the exact words you'd use to decline, and two alternative ways to get an image that serves the same story safely. (Model answer provided.)

H. Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

29. ⭐⭐ The shoot that applies everything. Plan a single one-hour shoot that consciously uses one idea from each of these earlier chapters: exposure (Ch.5), shot sizes/coverage (Ch.7), continuity (Ch.9), directing a performance (Ch.10), lighting (Ch.11), and clean location sound (Ch.15) — all run with this chapter's call sheet, passes, and slate. Write the one-line plan for each, then shoot it. (Model answer provided.)

30. ⭐⭐⭐ Pre-to-set handoff. Take the treatment, shot list, and schedule you built for Project 2 in Chapter 16, and the story arc from Chapter 17, and turn them into the call sheet and gear checklist for the actual day (this chapter's Production Checkpoint). Write a short note on what, in the handoff from plan to set, you had to add or change — and why the call sheet is not just the schedule retyped. (Model answer provided.)

When you've done these — especially the ones where you actually ran a shoot to a sheet — you can run a production. That's the skill Part IV is really teaching: not one more camera trick, but the calm, organized day in which all your camera tricks finally make it onto the card. Move on to Chapter 19, where the most important twenty minutes of your shoot day — the interview — get the attention they deserve.