Associate Director and base-60 math
In my career as an Associate Director, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in varying AD capacities such as Control room, tape, post-production, sports and music. All those roles come with their specific responsibilities, as well as their own skill set needed to do the job.
Me calling the shots on Giants Opening Drive Live
One AD role is not necessarily tougher than the other. Each have their own challenges, and like everything else, the longer you do it, the better you get. Being organized, good at multitasking, maintaining your cool and able to work in chaotic environments are crucial skills, but the ability to do base-60 math, is essential.
Unlike normal math, which is based on 10’s, base-60 is the addition, subraction, division of seconds, minutes and hours. All these calculations are made within the confines of time. Television programs and all their elements are timed to fit within the confines of the time allotted. Elements can be any item that pertains or is to be used in the show, an item being an interview, playing a video, graphics, a host reading from a script,
etc. All those items have individual, preset total running times or TRT for short.
A one-hour program may contain only 45 minutes of actual show content. The other 15 minutes is set aside for commercials. The average commercial break is probably around three minutes, so simple division results in five individual three-minute breaks. Based on the five commercial breaks, the 45 minutes of the program will be divided into six segments. These six segments are usually not timed equally. The first segment may be 8:00 minutes, the second; 3:30, the third 4:45, etc., but at the end of one hour, all those different segment times will have to add up to 45 minutes. Throw in the 15 minutes of commercial time, and their sum should add up to one hour.
In a perfect world program segments would always be to time but rarely, if ever does that happen. In moments like those, that’s where the Associate Director’s role is most crucial, and base-60 math comes in handy.
