When I was 10, my father and I rented Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on VHS. After the film ended, my father insisted we watch the credits. “A lot of people put a lot of work into this,” he said. Ever since that day, whenever I go to a movie, I stay until the end of the credits. And ever since that day, I’ve seen terms like, “gaffer” and “best boy” to describe members of the crew. I’ve always wondered what these people do.
If you’d been wondering, too, read on.
Jon Olts has always loved movies. As a teenager growing up in the former city of Nepean, he worked in a movie theatre, which allowed him to watch a lot of films.
It is perhaps fitting that Olts now works in the film, television and entertainment industry as a gaffer and cinematographer. “Gaffer” is a British colloquial term for “boss.” Olts explains it more specifically with regard to his industry.
“The gaffer is the head of the lighting department,” he says. “I maintain lighting on the set (of a film or television show), deal with supplying power to the set, and keep an eye on the quality of the lighting. I also make sure my crew doesn’t flirt too much with the make-up department, too. That’s pretty important.”‘
After graduating with a degree in literature from Carleton University, Olts realized that he wanted to go to film school, so he headed to Humber College. While still in school, he worked as a camera assistant in Toronto. With his eye for lighting, he quickly graduated to the lighting department, and ended up working on the set of the Canadian television series La Femme Nikita and Earth: Final Conflict.
Since graduating from Humber, Olts has traveled across Canada, filming for periods of time in Montreal and Vancouver. He has worked on movies of the week, music videos, commercials, and television shows.
Some of his recent work has been with La Tele educative du Canada (TFO.) Asked if he fully understood the French-written scripts of such shows as Les Bleus de Ramville, about a Quebec hockey team, Olts explains, “Film and lighting is independent of the script. It has its own language.”
“I’m adding a mood or a colour contrast so the characters in the piece stand out. I bring the action of the script more visibly to the viewer.”
When he isn’t working, Olts likes to cook, work on scripts and short stories, and meet with other people in his industry to discuss future projects.
These future projects may see him becoming more of a cinematographer than a gaffer, which are closely related professions. Olts recently completed a master class in cinematography with the Maine Media Workshops and College in Camden, Maine.
A cinematographer, or director of photography, is, according to Wikipedia, the chief over the camera and lighting crews (which includes the gaffer) working on a film, television production or other live action piece, and is responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image
“It’s the next logical step,” he says. “I’d like to shoot big (feature films) at some point.”
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