Before You Commission Crew Guides: A Checklist for Production Teams
A short list of questions to settle before anyone writes an operating manual or training guide for your crew, so the finished document gets used on the studio floor.
Start with who will actually read it
The first question on my list is always the plainest: who will have this document in their hands, and where? A manual read at a desk the week before a show is a different object from a laminated card clipped beside the vision mixer during a live programme. Before commissioning anything, write down the readers by role, not by department. A floor manager, a new camera operator and a freelance sound assistant do not share the same background, and a guide that assumes they do will be skimmed by all three.
I have seen teams ask for one guide to serve everybody, and the result is usually a long file that nobody opens under pressure. It is often better to decide that two or three shorter documents will do the work, each with a clear reader. That decision costs nothing and saves a good deal of rewriting later.
Think also about experience. If your crew turns over often, the guide has to carry more explanation. If the same six people have worked together for years, it can be sparse and act mainly as a reminder.
- Name each reader by role and by how often they use the equipment
- Note where the document will be used: desk, gallery, studio floor or truck
- Decide whether new starters or experienced crew matter most
Decide what the document must settle
A guide should answer a specific set of questions, and it helps to list them before the first line is written. Typical ones are how the studio is powered up and shut down, how a camera is matched to the others, who calls what during a rehearsal, and what to do when a feed drops. If the list runs to forty items, you are describing a training course rather than a guide, and it may need splitting.
Equally useful is deciding what the document will leave out. Manufacturer manuals already explain every menu on a piece of kit. Your guide should explain how your studio uses it, with your settings, your labelling and your habits. Pointing to the existing manual for the rest keeps your own pages short enough to be read.
This is also the moment to be honest about procedures that are unwritten. If a task is done differently by each shift, writing it down will expose that, and someone needs the authority to choose one way.
- List the ten or so questions the guide must answer
- Separate your studio's own settings from general equipment instructions
- Agree who decides when two shifts do the same job differently
Check that the people with the knowledge have time
Good technical writing depends on access. The writer needs to watch the task being done, ask why a step exists, and then have the draft checked by the person who does it every week. If your senior engineer is booked solid through a busy production block, the guide will either stall or be written from guesswork.
Before committing, look at the calendar honestly. A realistic arrangement might be one observation session per procedure, a draft returned within a few days, and a short review meeting. That is modest, but it has to be protected. Mid autumn is a sensible time to do this for many teams, because the schedule tends to settle after the summer events and before the pre-Christmas rush.
Also decide who signs the text off. A guide with three approvers who disagree takes months. One named person with the final word, and others consulted, keeps things moving.
- Book observation time with whoever performs each task
- Fix a turnaround for draft comments before work begins
- Name a single person who approves the final text
Choose a format your crew will tolerate
Format is not decoration. A checklist with short numbered steps suits a repeated task such as line-up before transmission. A short narrative explanation suits a concept, such as why audio is delayed to match picture. Diagrams earn their place where position matters: patch bays, camera positions, lighting grid layouts.
Ask how the crew already works. If everyone carries a tablet, a searchable file might be fine. If the gallery has no spare desk space, a printed card in a plastic sleeve will outlast any file. Think about wear, too: a document that must be updated every time a cable route changes needs a version date and a simple way of replacing old copies.
I would also agree a house style early, covering the names used for equipment, whether labels match what is physically printed on the rack, and how warnings are marked. Consistency here matters more than elegance, and it is cheap to settle before drafting rather than after.
- Match format to task: checklist, explanation or diagram
- Decide on print, screen or both, and how copies get replaced
- Use the same equipment names as the labels on the racks
Plan for the first test and the upkeep
No guide is finished when the writer hands it over. The real test is a crew member who did not take part in drafting following it cold, with the author watching and saying nothing. The places where they hesitate show you what to fix. Build one such trial into the plan, preferably on a rehearsal day rather than a transmission day.
Then ask who owns the document afterwards. Studios change: a new vision mixer arrives, a lighting rig is reconfigured, a routing table is renamed. If nobody is responsible for updating the guide, it will drift from reality within a season and crews will stop trusting it, which is worse than having no guide at all.
A simple review date, written on the front page and tied to something that already happens, such as an annual equipment check, is usually enough to keep it honest.
- Test with someone who has never used the draft
- Give one person ownership of updates
- Set a review date linked to an existing routine
What to have ready before you speak to a writer
If you decide to bring in outside help, a little preparation makes the first conversation far more productive. Gather the existing documents, even the scruffy ones: handwritten notes, old emails with settings, photographs of whiteboards. These show how the studio really runs. Bring a list of the readers and the questions you want answered, and a realistic sense of how much of your crew's time is available.
Be prepared to describe what has gone wrong before. A missed audio check, a camera that was never matched, a handover that lost a detail: these incidents tell a writer where a guide will earn its keep.
Finally, be clear about the budget and the deadline, even roughly. A good writer can then suggest a scope that fits, rather than proposing something you cannot use.
- Existing notes, photos and email threads about procedures
- Your list of readers and questions
- A rough budget and the date you need it by
A crew guide succeeds or fails on decisions made before any writing starts: who reads it, what it must settle, who supplies the knowledge, how it is delivered and who keeps it current. Work through these questions with your team first. If the answers come easily, you are ready to commission. If they do not, that discussion is already useful, and it will make whatever you write far more likely to be picked up and used.