Today I have a different kind of tip for you. A lot of the time I’m going over what the crew can do to get jobs and do better in the industry, but today, I’m going to go over some advice from a producers point of view. It’s about how you can respect the crew and get more valuable work from them. A lot of people, when they’re new to the industry, they understand that they’re learning and they get that the producer and everyone else is learning. So one of the most important things that you can do, especially if you’re not really paying or other benefits, like good craft services or anything like that, the most important and helpful thing you can do is to respect the crew.
This can be demonstrated in very basic ways, by having breaks on time, like lunch for example. Goingover by15, 20, 30 minutes, is not the best idea. I was on a low budget set and they basically said that we weren’t union, which meant that they thought it was ok to go over forty-five minutes. I literally had to use the restroom, so I had already been waiting for an hour and hoping to use the restroom and then I had to go an extra forty-five minutes. Basically, I held it for two hours while we were going over while doing more shots, and it absolutely wasn’t necessary. So, one of the things that you can do, as a producer, to respect the crew is just by starting breaks on time and treating them politely. Saying please and thank you can really, really go a long way.
Of course, I understand that the assistant director isn’t always the producer, but, you know, even though he has the right to yell at the crew and tell everybody to be quiet and all of those other things, there are ADs and producers that I know that take the time to actually talk to the crew, learn their names and just treat them with respect. Directors and producers that do that become so much more valuable and better at what they do. You will also find that people want to work on their projects and they want to do more, put more effort in. It’samazingwhat you can achieve when you just do a little thing like remembering someone’s name, breaking on time, talking to people, helping them with their jobs.
I mean, sometimes people are working on projects with no budget and they’re getting paid very little and they’re doing their best to do everything for the director. And then the director just flips out or does something crazy or weird it’s unpleasant and realistically, you know, there aren’t people management courses out there. So, it’s really important to understand that treating people well can go a very, very long way with your production and can guarantee you will get more people wanting to work for you and want to help make the project go better, even if they’re getting paid very little. Sometimes they’re getting paid nothing at all, which is insane, but people are doing it because they want the experience and they want to learn and they don’t want to be yelled at every time they make mistake. You know, you’re not hiring somebody that from a big, established crew and in honesty, if you were hiring someone that was the big crew and you treated them like that, you Wouldnt have them.
Losing crew can seriously jeopardize the production because even if you get somebody better in on the job, they’re just not as qualified as the person who’s been working on the project all along and putting their blood, sweat and tears in during pre-production. I hope that you can see why its just a really good idea to do the best you can to respect people.
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