The drawings arrive on a Thursday. A two-storey hotel lobby with a sweeping staircase, to be ready on stage two in sixteen days and strong enough for a fight on the stairs. The construction manager works out how many carpenters, painters and plasterers that takes, which materials have to be ordered today, and what the lobby will cost to build and to take down again. The construction manager is the person who turns set drawings into something solid that can be filmed.
What a construction manager does
The construction manager works for the production designer and takes daily direction from the art director. They join in pre-production, often as soon as the first set drawings exist, because building is slow and has to start weeks before the shoot. They price each set, hire the construction crew, order materials and plan the build so that every set is ready, painted and safe before its shoot day.
During the shoot the construction team builds the next sets, adapts the current ones and stands by for changes. After the scenes are done they strike the sets, which means taking them down, storing parts that may be reused and getting rid of the rest. On location they build or alter parts of real buildings, together with the location manager, and make sure everything is put back as it was.
Responsibilities
- Price sets from the drawings and agree the construction budget
- Hire and lead carpenters, painters, plasterers, riggers and labourers
- Order timber, steel, paint and other materials
- Plan the build and strike of every set around the shooting schedule
- Make sure sets are structurally safe, together with the health and safety advisor
- Build rigs and platforms for stunts and special effects
- Store, reuse or dispose of sets after shooting
How the role touches the budget
Heavily. On a production with built sets, construction is often one of the largest lines in the art department, and much of it is labour paid by the day or week. The construction manager prices each set in advance, tracks hours and materials as the work goes on, and reports to the line producer or production manager when a set is heading over its estimate. Overtime to get a set ready in time is one of the classic causes of a cost overrun.
How people become construction managers
Almost all come from a trade, usually carpentry, and work their way up through film construction crews as chargehand (team leader) and supervisor. Experience in building or theatre workshops helps. What makes a good construction manager is the ability to price accurately and to run a crew under time pressure.
In TV and commercials
On a TV studio production, construction often builds standing sets that stay up for a whole series and are refreshed between episodes. In commercials the build is short and intense. A set may be built in two days, shot in one and struck the same night.