Treat your people well!

By DTL
Posted December 24, 2010

Movie-making is a collaborative art, involving many craftspeople across many disciplines: actors, crew, designers, marketers. As the Minor Moguls, it’s up to us to pull these disparate elements together. The way to do that is to treat our people well.

Treat your people with respect, dignity, and consideration, and they will work hard for you. That’s very important at the micro-budget level where you can’t bribe people with money to put up with dictatorial, abusive, or just plain cruel treatment. (You shouldn’t treat people that way anyway, but if you pay people enough they will put up with it.)

There are several things you can do:

1.) Listen to your people. This is the most important thing you can do. More than money, what people want out of a job is the chance to contribute to something worthwhile. If you can give them that, they’ll work harder and happier for the project

You never know how many good ideas you’ve cut yourself off from with a “my way or the highway” attitude. But you have to genuinely listen to people. Don’t prevaricate, or hem and haw, or otherwise pretend to listen when you’re obviously faking it. People will sense your insincerity, and resent you more than if you just shut them down.

Of course, sometimes you will have to tell someone flat out, “No, sorry, we’re not going to do that.” That’s your call to make. But even then, people are more likely to accept that verdict if they can see that you have actually listened and considered the idea.

2.) Meet your people. If you’re shy (like I am), you might be tempted to hide behind email and phone calls. But you’re going to have to face your collaborators sometime — and it’s better if the first time is not on the the set on the first day of shooting.

It’s a courtesy to people who answer your audition notice or call for collaborators to show that you appreciate the fact that they’ve taken time and want to be involved with your project.

It also gives you a chance to check ’em out. If your actress looks significantly different from her headshot photo, ask her why. If she hasn’t just finished a role that required her to change her appearance to what you now see, you know that she’s willing to lie to you to get a part. If your potential camera operator is late to your meeting, you know he doesn’t respect you, and will be late to the set.

Making a movie is actual work. I have known several projects that failed because people bailed when they discovered this. More people want to have made a movie than are willing to give up their weekend after working their day job all week.

Don’t hold your meeting or auditions in your home; it’s not professional. As a Minor Mogul, you probably don’t have an office. When you need to put every dollar on the screen, you can’t afford several hundred or thousand dollars a month for a freshly-painted status symbol. I know plenty of self-employed people who work out of coffee shops. That’s a good choice; it’s got coffee, tea, cookies, chairs — everything you need. It’s neutral territory; neither of you is venturing into the other’s turf. And finally, it’s a public place — good for a first meeting. A young actress might be concerned about going to the home of some guy she doesn’t know because he says he can put her in the movie.

You don’t want to hold auditions in a public place, of course, but again your living room is not appropriate. You want a space that’s big enough that you can move around, and private enough that your actor can perform without feeling like a fool in public. You also want a separate place where other actors can wait their turn. (And station an assistant out there with them — not only to supervise, but to note how they treat each other. An actor who treats the other actors like dirt is not one who respects his collaborators.)

You have to search your community to find a suitable location. Does your apartment building have a meeting space or multi-purpose room? Will your school let you use a classroom, or your church let you use the basement hall? Check your local community centre or public library. Sometimes large chain bookstores have a “community room” available. You want to spend forty or fifty bucks for an evening or a Saturday afternoon, not $3,000 for a convention centre’s ballroom.

3.) Schedule your people. At the micro-budget level, we’re all working around other commitments like day jobs and families. It’s not realistic to expect people to take time off from jobs they need to pay the rent so they can volunteer for your movie. If you’ve ever been involved with amateur theatre, you know just about the maximum you can ask people to commit.

People dread being asked to donate an unspecified amount of time for an indeterminate duration. They feel like their being asked to give up the rest of their lives. They appreciate it if you tell them exactly what you need, eg. “Bob, I need you Tuesday and Thursday from 7:00 to 10:00 and Saturday from 10:00 to 7:00”. That way they know what’s expected of them.

4.) Pick up your people. The best way to prevent tardiness and absenteeism is to pick up people and drive them to the set yourself. Hollywood movies don’t send limos for their stars purely to flatter the stars’ egos. Nobody can say, “I got lost,” if you bring everyone to the set in your car.

This has other advantages, as well. You don’t have to worry about parking on location. You aren’t asking people to pay for their own gas or bus fares. You can be flexible and change the day’s location without worrying that people will show up at the wrong place and get mad at you for standing them up.

5.) Feed your people. If you make sure your people are fed and watered, they will follow you with enthusiasm. But hungry collaborators are resentful collaborators, who make poor decisions and quite projects. (See my previous post for more specifics.)

6.) Pay your people. At the micro-budget level, we usually can’t afford to give people money upfront for their work. Most of the ads I see in movie-making forums and groups pay with the “Three Cs”: craft services (you get fed while you’re working), credit (you get your name in the movie), and a copy (you get a DVD with the finished movie on it).

It’s amazing to me that micro-budget movies seldom if every mention royalties. I think it’s only fair that, if you sell copies of your movie, you share that money with your collaborators. It’s better to work out a royalty scheme in advance, rather than waiting until there’s money at stake and then fighting over it. And be fair — indeed, be generous! These people believed in the project when it was just a gleam in your eye; you should reward their faith.

And make sure that you give them that copy! Micro-budget productions are notorious for not delivering the promised copies to the cast and crew. Don’t be one of those guys.

7.) Thank your people. It’s an excellent idea to send everyone who worked on the movie (or who donated supplies, locations, etc.) an actual, on-paper thank-you letter. It doesn’t have to be long, but try to say someting personal to everyone. They might want to use these letters as recommendations or testimonials to help them get future gigs, so make it professional.

8.) Remember your people. If you work well together on one movie, invite ’em back for your next project. Networking doesn’t have to mean “using people to further your own career”. Remember, movie-making is a collaborative art, and good collaborators are worth knowing and keeping in touch with.