I always feel like if you have a smaller crew, you can not only get to know the individual strengths of people more specifically, but then, you also give them a longer runway to be able to apply the knowledge that they have learned to subsequent work.
When you're making a bigger movie, you have much bigger set pieces that require more time and more effort and more people.
The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I mean, it's crazy. So you can't improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibility.
After assembly complete, when we have a larger crew on orbit, a more complex vehicle, more laboratories and more robot arms, maybe we'll have room for specialists. But right now we don't.
The size difference on a Warner Bros. film versus the small productions I had been on in Europe was enormous. You go from 20 people on set to 150.
It takes a minimum of six people, working in close harmony, to successfully flush a nautical toilet. That's why those old ships carried such large crews.
'Pod' was a significantly larger crew with Ilium Pictures co-producing. 'Darling' was bare bones. We had less than half of the crew that we had for 'Pod.'
Did you notice what happened when digital photography arrived? Suddenly there were four times as many people on set for a shoot! It used to be a photographer, a couple of photo assistants, stylist and a fashion assistant, hair and make-up and that was about it.
Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy.
The chance for mistakes is about equal to the number of crew squared.
I think my biggest break though came probably on Patriot Games because it was the biggest, longest second unit up to that point. It was like five months of shooting and a huge crew.
The only difference between working on a huge-budget film and a lesser-budget film, is the quality of lunch and dinner.
We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.
In 'Winter's Bone,' it's literally the director and the camera operator. That's it. Just a super-small Kubrick crew. You know what I mean? Like, 8 people.
We still have a lot of international partner modules that need to get up there to make it truly the international structure that it will be, and that's highly important; we need to get to where the crew size is bigger.
There's a lot of work to do - not only the science but maintaining the facilities up here. When you go down from a crew of six to a crew of three, obviously you've lost half of your crew time available, so it does have an impact. But it's an impact we plan for.
On a big film, there's almost no way you can meet everyone. On an indie, there are 30 people and no trailers to duck into.
