Shooting Stills Behind a DP: What 5 Minutes With the Talent Gets You
The pictures you are hiring me to make on your commercial set are shot in 5 to 15 minutes with the talent, while I follow your DP. The pictures in my portfolio were shot on days where stills were the only thing we were lighting and blocking for. Same photographer, different amount of time, different result. That is the honest version of the conversation, and I would rather have it in pre-pro than on the day. I have shot unit stills on commercial and TV productions for more than 20 years around Orlando and Atlanta, and it’s the first conversation I have with producers.
Why don't the stills from my commercial look like the photographer's portfolio?
Because most portfolio images were made on shoots where stills was the sole job or the main priority, not a second thing happening alongside video.
On a stills shoot, the whole set and crew serves the picture. We block for the picture. We light for the picture. If the talent's hand is wrong, we go again.
On your commercial, the DP is lighting for motion and the AD is running a schedule built around coverage. I am working in the gaps. I get the talent when the DP is done with them, and then I have a couple of minutes before the unit moves on (hopefully).
Look at the lifestyle and advertising work on my site and a lot of what you are responding to came out of the first situation. The job you are booking is the second one. Neither is better photography. They are different amounts of time.
What is a unit stills photographer actually doing on a commercial set?
A unit stills photographer on a commercial set is shooting a separate camera, from a separate angle, for the stills deliverables, while the commercial itself is being shot.
I read the call sheet like everyone else. I work around the AD. I shoot on electronic shutter during a take so the sound department never has to give me the evil eye.
The rest of the day is finding the gaps: the moment after the DP calls it, the setup change nobody else is using, the beat where the talent is still lit and still in wardrobe and not yet released. That was the setup on the Scotts ProVista campaign with Skystorm Productions, my own camera running alongside the commercial.
How much time does a stills photographer need with the talent?
On a commercial set, I usually get 5 to 15 minutes with the talent per setup, and that’s the number that oftentimes dictates the quality of the photography.
I can do a lot in 15 minutes. Direct, adjust, get 2 or 3 usable looks and know I have something.
5 minutes is one idea executed once. It can be great. But it’s not the same as 15 minutes though.
So when a producer asks what I need, the answer is not a number of days. It is several minutes per setup, protected on the schedule, and somebody whose job it is to fight for that.
What happens when the schedule doesn't leave room for stills?
When stills are not protected on the schedule, they get shot in whatever is left, and sometimes what is left is slim.
I was on a commercial shoot where the 1st AD kept losing track of the fact that I needed to shoot. Not hostile, just busy, which is the normal condition of a 1st AD. I stepped away from set to confirm something, lunch got called, and the entire crew walked.
I came back to shoot and the talent was still standing there but the crew was eagerly in line for the lunch spread. You try prying a crew away from lunch. My assistant and I moved lights ourselves and shot the unit stills on an empty set while everybody else ate.
It’s funny now. It’s also the most common version of this problem, and it is a scheduling problem rather than a photo one. Nobody on your crew wakes up planning to skip the stills. They just have a day to get through, and stills are the thing with no camera department waiting on it.
Does less time always mean worse pictures?
No. Some of the strongest images on my site were shot exactly that way, behind a DP, in a couple of minutes, on a commercial set.
Constraint is not the enemy. Knowing the constraint in advance is what lets me plan around it, pick the one idea worth executing, and get out of the way.
What I want to avoid is a client who booked me off a portfolio of stills-led work, gave me 60 seconds a setup, and then wonders why the two don’t match. In more than 20 years I have not delivered a job where the client was upset or disappointed with what they got. Very often they were standing right there, watched how compressed my time was, and understood before I had to explain it.
What should I tell my 1st AD before the shoot day?
Tell the 1st AD that stills need several minutes with the talent per setup, and tell them before the call sheet is locked.
That one sentence is most of the job. It puts stills on the schedule instead of in the gaps, it tells the AD that the photographer will be asking, and it means I am not the person interrupting a busy day to remind everyone I exist.
Three things worth deciding in pre-pro:
which setups actually need stills
whether talent stays lit and in wardrobe for a beat after the DP releases them
who on the production is the one person responsible for remembering stills and advocating for it
Decide those and you get pictures that look like they were planned. Skip them and you get whatever I could take while the crew was at lunch.
Common questions
How much time does a unit stills photographer need on a commercial shoot? Several minutes with the talent per setup. On most commercial sets a stills photographer following a DP gets 5 to 15 minutes, and that window is what largely dictates the quality of the images.
Why do the stills from my shoot look different from the photographer's portfolio? Portfolio work is usually shot on stills-led days where the lighting and blocking exist for the photograph. Unit stills on a commercial set are shot in the gaps around a DP's schedule, in a fraction of the time.
Can a unit stills photographer shoot at the same time as the commercial? Yes, on a separate camera and a separate angle, using an electronic shutter so the sound department never picks it up. It still is not a substitute for a few protected minutes with the talent.
Whose job is it to make sure stills get shot? Practically, the 1st AD, because they make the schedule. Name one person in pre-pro who is responsible for it rather than assuming it will come up on the day.
Does a rushed setup mean unusable pictures? No. Plenty of strong images get made in a couple of minutes on a commercial set. The problem is expecting a 1-minute setup to match work that was shot on a day built entirely around stills.
Final Thought
If you book a stills photographer off a portfolio and then give the stills 60 seconds between setups, you will get 60-second pictures, and that has nothing to do with who you hired. Put stills on the schedule, give me several minutes with the talent, and you get images that look like the ones that made you call. If there is directing on your production too, that is work I take on. Got a shoot coming up? Email me and let's talk about how you can best squeeze me in.