Project Size and Multiple Roles

The size and scale of a media project describe how big and complex it is, including its budget, timescale and number of outputs. This affects how many people are employed and how many roles each person performs.

Small projects

On a small project or one with a low budget, there may only be enough money to employ one or two people. One person therefore often carries out several roles. For example, someone making a short safety film for a skate park might plan the shots, operate the camera, record the voiceover and edit the footage. The roles still need doing, but they are shared rather than given to separate specialists.

Large projects

A large project usually employs many specialists, each with a narrower responsibility. The work is bigger and more complex, and several tasks happen at once, so specialists can focus on their own part. For example, a weekly esports highlights show could employ camera operators to film the players, a video editor to assemble the best moments, a sound editor to balance the game audio and a production manager to organise the schedule. This helps the team maintain quality and meet deadlines.

Why roles combine

The size and scale explain why individuals may perform more than one role: smaller teams and tighter budgets make it impractical to hire a separate person for every task. Technical roles can be highly specialised on a large production — one person might operate the camera throughout the shoot while another only records the audio — or combined on a low-budget one, where the same person sets up the audio equipment and films the shots as well.