Traffic-light code

The traffic-light code is a three-step feedback system for the running shoot: green means continue, yellow means slower, quieter or a short pause, red means stop at once. Instead of a single ripcord it gives you a scale with which you can steer the situation while it is running.

The system was taken from the practice of consensual sexuality and from the theatre. In film production it is useful because a shoot day is long and the load does not arrive suddenly but rises slowly.

The three steps in operation

• Green. Everything is in order, continue as discussed. Given on request from direction or the scene partner, and the confirmation that consent still holds.
• Yellow. It still goes, but not like this. Tempo down, intensity down, take a breath, change position. The take does not have to end; it has to change.
• Red. Immediate stop, as with the Safeword. Camera off, distance, no question about the reason.

The gain against a single stop word

A Safeword knows only on or off. Anyone who only wants to correct a small thing therefore often holds it back and works on even though it is becoming unpleasant. The load grows until in the end a complete stop stands anyway.

Yellow catches exactly those cases. It reports a need to adjust without ending the shoot day, and it lowers the threshold for speaking up at all. A set on which yellow is said regularly is not a difficult set — it is one on which red is needed less often.

For the production that is an economic advantage. A scene that is adjusted by two steps goes into the cut. An abandoned scene costs half a shoot day.

When speaking is not possible

There are setups in which you cannot speak or in which a spoken word ruins the soundtrack. For that a non-verbal signal is agreed beforehand: two taps for yellow, three for red, or an object in the hand whose dropping triggers the stop.

The signal belongs in the pre-talk just as much as the words themselves. And the same requirement applies: it must not arise by chance from the scene.

Fix it before the shoot, not during it

The code is agreed in the briefing, passed to everyone in the room, and not invented spontaneously during the take. Ask for it directly in the pre-talk — if nobody on set works with the system, you can still introduce it for your scene.

A production that dismisses such an arrangement as overdone is saying more about its way of working than about you. What else you should clarify before you accept is under process.