Twelve craft departments — the working anatomy of a Texas television or film unit. Roles, responsibilities, and how the trade slots into a call sheet.
Grip department owns everything that shapes light without producing it — flags, nets, diffusion, silks — plus everything that moves or supports the camera that isn't the camera itself: dollies, jibs, cranes, sliders, speed-rail, scaffolding, truss.
Rigging grip is the build crew, often working ahead of camera to pre-rig sets and locations so the day's shoot can hit the ground running. In Texas, grip-house competition is healthy, with both dedicated specialty grip outfits and full-service rental floors.
Gaffer's department. Everything that produces light or distributes power on set: HMI heads, tungsten, LED panels, sky-panel arrays, practicals, generators, ballasts, and the distro that hangs them all together. Best Boy Electric runs the truck and the paperwork; the gaffer designs the shot's light with the DP.
Genny ops are a discipline of their own — a 1,200-amp tow plant on a Texas exterior in August is not a forgiving piece of equipment.
Capture on the day. Mixer runs the bag or cart and the multitrack record, boom op plants the mic where the words live, utility wires the talent and manages comms and timecode. ENG-fast for non-fiction and commercial work; feature-deep for narrative.
Sound design and the post-production sound mix happen elsewhere — this trade is the day-of capture.
DP designs the image; operator runs the body; 1st AC pulls focus; 2nd AC slates, marks, and runs the magazine and the cards; loader manages media; DIT manages data, on-set look, and quality control. Texas-based assistants and DITs work with ALEXA, VENICE, and RED bodies as their daily-driver kits.
Production design owns the visual world: sets, locations, color, period, atmosphere. Set decoration handles everything inside the frame that isn't a person, a costume, or a prop; props handles what the actors touch; scenic paints what construction builds; construction builds what design draws.
Designer drives the look. Supervisor runs the truck, the trailer, and the day's continuity. Set costumers handle the talent on the day; the seamstress and alterations team build and adjust pieces; the standby keeps the on-camera looks tidy. Texas crews work everything from rural-period western to high-fashion contemporary.
Two distinct trade tracks that share a trailer. Beauty HMU keeps a contemporary look consistent through long days in Texas heat; character HMU builds aging, period, and physical transformation; SFX makeup builds the practical effects — wounds, blood gags, prosthetics, creature work. SFX makeup overlaps with the practical-effects discipline downstairs.
Locations is half logistics, half diplomacy. Scouts find the look; managers negotiate access, permits, neighbor agreements, and traffic plans; assistants and PAs run the day-of operation. Texas has a deep bench — the same crews who placed a unit in Marfa for a feature in March can land a national commercial in the Hill Country in May.
Captain runs the department; co-captain runs the trucks; drivers run the picture cars, the cube and stake-bed vehicles, the crew vans, the honeywagons, the water trucks. Picture-car coordinators source and prep the vehicles that appear on camera. Mechanics keep all of it on the road.
On-set VFX supervision plans plates, witness cameras, lidar, and on-set tracking. The increasing presence of virtual production volumes — LED walls and real-time engines — pulls more of post into the day-of process. Off-set, post supervision runs editorial, color, finishing, sound mix, and delivery.
UPM owns the budget and the schedule. Line producer carries the show day-to-day. Coordinator runs the office. APOC handles the paperwork flow and the cast and crew movement. PAs run point on every department that hasn't yet sent their own runner. Without the office, nothing on the call sheet happens.
Stunt coordinator designs the action and the contingency. Stunt riggers build the safe failure mode for every gag. Animal wranglers handle the working creatures on set. Armorers run weapons. Medics own the medical posture, the AED, and the call to 911 if it comes to that. Safety is a separate craft, not an add-on.
Trade jurisdiction across most union work in Texas (and Oklahoma) belongs to IATSE Local 484 — the Studio Mechanics Local of Texas & Oklahoma. Local 484 covers the studio-mechanic trades across film and television production: grip, electric, set construction, paint, props, set dressing, wardrobe, hair, makeup, and adjacent craft categories.
For productions weighing a Texas shoot, the practical implication is that crewing through Local 484 is the default for any signatory project of meaningful scale.
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