Studio Production Positions - COMM 360

One of my biggest fears of my future career is that I will get stuck with a job that requires doing the same miniscule job over and over again.  Like being a sound guy where all I do is mic up talents over and over again.  No... I'd rather do it all.  Operate the camera, direct the camera shots, switch video, and anything and everything.  This is why I have enjoyed my studio production class lately.  We have filmed several different talents (which happen to just be my own classmates) and every time the production ended we all switched positions. So, this way, we all got at least one turn with each job. Never did the same person have the same job over and over. Most of my positions were not supportive but hands on and thankfully they were all behind the camera or in the production room.
I used the cameras and received directions from the director. I had to encounter troubleshooting with complex settings with the other camera operator's camera (some zebra pattern setting that took for ever to fix) then after we figured out the exposure settings and made sure the audio was not being sent to the video switcher, we were ready to shoot. The first thing I noticed when shooting (and found the importance later after I got to be director) was that it was important to listen to directions of the director and to change shots as soon as possible so that the switcher can switch and the shot can be used. Slow camera operators can hurt a production easily.
The next notable position was the video switcher. I was very excited about this position, but I found it was rather boring because all you would do is listen to the director telling you to push a button.
The director was my favorite position. I was able to control everything the way I like it.  The most difficult thing to learn was to anticipate who will be talking next rather than who is talking at the time.  Generally, as a director wants to set up a shot (for example, a close up on the person talking) the director will generally set up the shot to early and by the time the camera operator is done, the shot is lost.  Instead the director should anticipate when someone else will be speaking.
Other positions were floor manager, sound man, lighting director, and much more.  They weren't my favorite positions, but I found that they are very important to the whole production because the director should not have to worry about these jobs or any of the troubleshooting.  I believe this is why many productions have these multiple small jobs.