By Resilience Speaker, Jamie Mason Cohen
The people you hire is everything on a production — more important than processes, strategies or the set. A director’s #1 job, according to director, Alfred Hitchcock is to hire the right actors.
Trust your team. Once you hire them, work collaboratively. Don’t micro-manage. Trust them to discover, co-create and take full ownership over their role. Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage — as a college professor once said.
#2 with every member of the crew. Let each expert be the expert. Let make-up do make-up. Let sound do sound. Ultimately, it’s the director’s call to make the decision based on his or her vision, and it’s the team’s choices that help shape the outcome.
Eat lunch with the crew. Not sometimes. Not just when things are going well. Every. Single. Day. Right. In. The. Middle. This was the advice the cinematographer of my first short film, Chance, gave to me during our pre-planning process.
He worked on several Hollywood films and observed a famous director, whom the crew disliked, never sit with his crew once.
Never lose your cool. Find a way to keep calm and composed.
