From our ongoing exploration of ways to become a faster and more efficient camera assistant, today’s tip is:
7. Make One Trip When Swapping Batteries
Swapping batteries on a camera (or other gear) is a common occurrence between shots and doing it well is essential to an efficient shooting pace. Yet despite that fact, many camera assistants still waste time with this exchange.
On more than few occasions, I’ve called for a fresh battery from a 2nd assistant camera (AC) only to have them run to the charger, grab a charged battery, place it in my hands, then I give them the dead battery, they bring it back to the charger, and finally come back to set.
Seems a little redudant, no?
The better (and faster) way to do this is to take the dead battery from the camera, go to the charger, start charging the dead one, grab a fresh brick, then bring it back to the camera.
In this case, you are only making one trip instead of two.
If you want to be even faster — and I know you do — check for fresh batteries during downtime on set and keep them in a ditty bag near the camera.
The workflow would then go like this: 1st AC calls for new battery, you hand them a fresh one from the ditty bag, take the dead one to the charger, grab any batteries that are fully charged while there, and then head back to set.
That’s still only one trip — more than enough to get done what you need to.