Third Assistant Directors

Here is how the work lines up. Third assistant directors on our New York roster have come up through the DGA East AD hierarchy that has shaped NYC production since the days of the first Law & Order, NYPD Blue and Sex and the City pickup units, with most having served as background and key set PAs on HBO and Showtime series, Marvel and Sony features, Netflix and Apple TV+ originals and the long slate of Tribeca-launched A24, Killer Films and Plan B indies before earning DGA East trainee tickets and stepping up.

Here is what we have to work with. Their core area is the background department — lining up extras through NYC casting agencies such as Central Casting NY, Grant Wilfley Casting, Sylvia Fay Casting and Background NYC, managing wardrobe and makeup flow in holding, placing background to camera under the 1st AD's blocking, and processing SAG-AFTRA Local 1 vouchers and Cast & Crew time cards at wrap so the production office can submit clean payroll records.

Here is the layout. They know how to scale a holding operation from twenty extras on a SoHo street scene to several hundred on a period crowd day at Steiner Brooklyn Navy Yard, on the cobbled streets of DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights, in the Greenwich Village historic district, on the Brooklyn Bridge during early-morning lock-ups, and across Times Square under the MOME and NYPD Movie/TV Unit protocols that govern crowd work.

Here is how the work shapes up. Beyond background, our 3rd ADs handle on-set lock-ups in cooperation with the NYPD Movie/TV Unit and the unit publicist, talent escorts between basecamp and set across Midtown, Lower Manhattan, DUMBO and the Long Island City studio blocks, traffic control planning with NYPD officers and NYC DOT for public-road shoots, child-performer chaperoning under NY State Department of Labor minor-on-set rules and the linked on-set studio teacher scheduling under NYS child actors permits, and radio communication with the wider AD department across the channels the 1st AD has set.

Here is how it adds up. They have credits across HBO and Showtime series, Netflix and Apple TV+ originals, Marvel and Sony features and high-end commercial campaigns at Steiner, Silvercup, Kaufman Astoria and Broadway Stages, and they bring the NYC fluency that lets them bridge the AD team with extras casting offices, Teamsters Local 817 drivers, the location department and NYPD and NYC DOT officers on the street.

Here is the run-down. They support voucher processing and SAG-AFTRA Local 1 time-card management at wrap, hand background forms up to the 2nd AD for production-report consolidation, and step into talent-wrangling duty when the AD team needs extra capacity. We match 3rd ADs based on background-work scale, boroughs involved and AD-team experience.