"The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I mean, it's crazy. So you can't improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibility"

Bille August isolates a fundamental trade-off in filmmaking: scale offers resources and security but taxes spontaneity. The bigger the crew, the more every creative impulse becomes a logistical event. A sudden idea isn’t just a tweak; it ripples through lighting, camera, sound, wardrobe, makeup, set decoration, continuity, and safety. Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people must be re-briefed. Equipment needs repositioning, permits and schedules might be jeopardized, overtime looms, and budget lines flare red. The sheer inertia discourages deviation, steering the production toward the planned shot list and away from the inspired accident.

Small productions invert that physics. With fewer stakeholders and lighter gear, the director and actors can chase a moment: shift a scene to a hallway because the light looks better, let an improvised line reshape the blocking, rewrite on set without triggering a bureaucratic cascade. The crew’s intimacy fosters trust; decisions are faster, risks feel manageable, and unexpected gifts, sun breaking through clouds, a passerby’s behavior, an actor’s unplanned gesture, can be caught rather than controlled.

There’s a creative psychology at play too. In a large machine, everyone’s duty is to protect the plan. Departments harden around their mandates, and the set becomes an engineered environment optimized to reproduce previs and coverage. On a small set, curiosity competes with caution; exploration is affordable because resetting takes minutes, not hours.

August isn’t romanticizing scarcity. Big films deliver scale, polish, safety, and craft depth that small teams can’t always match; ambition sometimes needs mass. But he argues for recognizing how mass shapes expression. If the goal is to capture lightning, alive, responsive, human, then methods must accommodate surprise. The wise filmmaker chooses tools with that reality in mind: treat a large production like an ocean liner that demands long arcs and advanced planning; treat a small one like a speedboat that can turn toward the shimmer on the water and see what it is.