Every producer eventually gets asked to shoot something with fewer people than the project really wants. Sometimes it's budget. Sometimes it's a client who doesn't understand what a crew actually does until they're short one. Either way, the question is never "can we cut people," it's "which people, and what does it actually cost us when we do."
The Roles That Look Optional and Aren't
A script supervisor looks, on paper, like a role a small shoot can live without. In practice, cutting that role means someone else, usually the director or the DP, is now tracking continuity in their head while doing their actual job worse. The cost doesn't disappear when you cut the role. It moves to post-production, where a continuity error that would have taken thirty seconds to catch on set takes an extra half-day to fix in the edit.
Where You Actually Can Save
Not every cut is a false economy. A dedicated gaffer and a dedicated grip can, on a small enough shoot with the right gear, sometimes be one experienced person instead of two, if the lighting setup is simple and the day is short. A second assistant camera role can often be absorbed by a first AC on a single-camera shoot with a controlled environment. The difference between a safe cut and a costly one usually comes down to complexity: simple, controlled, single-location shoots tolerate a leaner crew far better than anything with multiple locations or moving parts.
The Multiplier Effect Nobody Budgets For
Cutting one role rarely costs you just that one role's worth of capacity. A skeleton crew means everyone left is doing more, which means everyone is more tired by hour eight, which means the mistakes that show up late in the day become more likely and more expensive. I plan skeleton-crew days shorter than normal ones, not because the work is less, but because the margin for error shrinks fast once fatigue sets in.
How I Actually Decide
Before I agree to a leaner crew, I ask one question: if something goes wrong on this specific setup, who's covering it, and what does that cost in time. If the answer is clear and cheap, the cut is probably safe. If the answer is "we'll figure it out," that's the version of the plan that turns a half-day shoot into a full one, and costs more in the end than the crew would have.