What does a second assistant director do? Depending on the size of the movie or video production, a second assistant director has a variety of important responsibilities. From arranging shooting schedules to tracking daily shooting progress, the second assistant director has many details to attend to. What may not be well known is one of the second assistant director’s main jobs is to wrangle extra actors. While having the responsibility of extras carries specific hidden benefits, at the same time it can be an extremely demanding job.

Photo: Michael McDonough

The opportunity to hire extras
Many times the hiring of extras will fall to the second assistant director. This is can be a great experience, as you may well imagine. You can gain a lot of valuable insight about actors when you are in charge of extra casting. If you have ambitions to direct your own projects one day, this experience will come in handy. You will learn what “it” qualities to look for that make an actor shine on camera. You will also discover how to recognize personality traits that tend to take direction better than others.

Directing Extras
Another challenge second assistant directors deal with is directing extras. On a production shoot of any good size, this job always falls to the second A.D. Directing sounds so glamorous, but handling extras, that may or may not be paid well, can be stressful. You will have actors who will insist on doing what they want to do. You will have people gossiping about what they did up in the club the other night. You will need to get and keep their attention long enough to get them to understand what they will be required to do in the scene. Some second assistant directors do this by yelling a lot. You will develop your own style.

Photo: Michael McDonough

Directing the General Public
In scenes shot off set, in the general public, second assistant directors may have the added task of directing civilians. Once I had to direct extras in a train scene. The scene was set in 1940, so we had to use a train from that time period which we found in a small, quaint little town. The train was a working train and visitors paid a fee to ride this train. Can you imagine directing the extras mixed in with pedestrians? How do you tell people who paid good money to ride the train to keep quiet and keep their little kids silent, because we’re shooting a video? An impossible situation like that is an example of what a second assistant director is expected to solve. The director finally made a decision to use the extra crowd noise as part of the scene. I don’t think that worked out too well in post editing though.

Photo: Michael McDonough

Supervise Rehearsals
On many productions, it is the second assistant director who has the bulk of the responsibility to organize and supervise rehearsals. The second A.D. will schedule call sheets that tell which actors to show up on set and at what time. The second assistant director also has to track down missing actors. They may be late or simply lost, but you have to find them and get them to the set fast. Once you have everyone where they should be, you run them through rehearsal of the scene direction you’ve given them. Be prepared to adjust your direction once you’re on set and things may look a lot different. And pray you were smart enough to hire extras that can actually change direction.

Maintain Order
In the middle of all of this production activity with wrangling extras, the second assistant director is expected to maintain order on the set at all times. With time you will learn your own ebb and flow to control. There are times people are just having fun and a good laugh. Let them have fun when possible, so many productions forget this is supposed to be an enjoyable experience. Most of scene rearranging or organizing needs order and of course during actual scene shooting, there must be dead silence. Each set will differ with every new director, crew and actors you work with, so be flexible with your iron fist, and adjust with each new situation.

Photo: Michael McDonough

What does an assistant director do? Since the duties of a second assistant director can vary so widely depending on the production, get clear on your job expectations with each new assignment. It will help to get your duties specified in writing. The second assistant director may have the toughest job on the set, but you can get the experience that will make you an invaluable, paid asset on any production. You can move up the production ladder pretty quickly, especially if you are known as the second assistant director that gets the job done without yelling all the time.