One of the trickiest hurdles to get over while pursuing your career is finding your people. And what I mean by that is the people you like, respect, appreciate their skills, and want to collaborate with. You will need to ally yourself with both senior people to get your projects made, along with people that are at your own level, and will be moving up at the same time you are. These are the folks that you will want to work with again and again when the opportunity presents itself. And this rag tag group will likely be cobbled together over many years as you have good and bad experiences with your colleagues.
I think it’s imperative before you know who, and what you’re dealing with not to make promises you don’t want to keep. Unless someone comes highly recommended by a friend, and you do not yet have any experience with them, think twice before getting into bed. That is unless you are in a situation where they can be replaced if things don’t work out.
One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my career was taking on a business partner I knew personally…but not professionally. I attached this human being to a project I had created and started to move forward. That’s when I felt like telling this person to pat down their hair because their horns were showing. A little dictator emerged who wanted things done their way…and when I had the gall to ask questions as to why they felt so strongly about certain things I was met with the response “Because I said so!” Now that’s an answer I wasn’t expecting! I removed myself so fast from this project you would have thought something was on fire. That’s because the writing was on the wall before we’d barely even gotten started.
If you’re in set dec or wardrobe or one of those pursuits, you know when things are coming to an end. You’re working on a project for a certain amount of time and then you go home. But when you’re on the business end of things these relationships last years. Projects literally take years to develop and finance so you’d better know from the beginning that you can weather the many storms that are going to present themselves with the human beings you’ve chosen to work with. You need to be in respectful relationships where there is a give and take and everyone’s needs are being met. If that’s not the case don’t even start going down that road, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
Sometimes you’ll find you’ve made a bad choice and will have to deal with the fall out. But you’ll know next time around you don’t want to do business with this person anymore. Lessons have to sometimes be learned the hard way. How someone appears on the surface can sometimes prove to be the wrong impression once you get into the trenches with them.
I’ve seen meek individuals rise to many challenges and impressed the heck out of me. I’ve seen other human beings who appeared to be the picture of self-confidence break at the first sign of trouble. What you see isn’t always what you get. Sometimes you’ve got to figure out who somebody is on the job, so make those mistakes on the small projects at the beginning of your career. Someone can be charming as all get out at the bar, but put them in a work situation and they suddenly morph into the guy from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
There is a lot of pressure and long hours to be worked in this industry. Some people deal with it well…others not so much. Do you want to be standing on set for 12 hours with a negative nelly that complains all day about how sore their feet are and what a miserable job they have? I’ve been there! I’ve met these people!
Then on the other end you will find people who when you go into overtime clap their hands together and say “Goody! I love my job! Sleep? Who needs sleep?”
And like I’ve said before until the game has begun, sometimes you don’t know what a human being is made of. Do they rise to meet challenges, or do they sink under their weight? You need people on your team who can deal with challenges, because there are lots of them that crop up. Sometimes a location falls apart at the last minute, or a cast member gets sick, or someone forgot to buy the key prop for the next scene…the potential problems are endless and need to be met with as much humor as you can muster. And you want the people around you to have this attitude as well, because the days are long, things can get rough. Do you need people around you who are going to make the situation even worse?
You have to take the forming of these relationships seriously. As seriously as you would someone you are dating or could potentially marry. Some of these relationships can last longer than an actual marriage…this I’m very familiar with! We all make mistakes and sometimes need to get a divorce but hopefully it doesn’t have to be in the middle of a project that’s in the midst of production. This can be tough to recover from having to find another warm body while things are in progress. Hopefully if you’re the one doing the picking and choosing you’ve done your due diligence and checked everybody out to the best of your ability.
Even if you’re working on a no budget short film, don’t feel bad about asking for a reference and checking somebody out. No, and low budget projects are tougher still because people are working based on wits alone and not much more. You want to be dealing with somebody who is going to deliver the goods…not let you and everybody else down. Or worse yet have an actual melt down when things aren’t going their way!
Things will go off the rails occasionally…they always do…but the more time that goes by and the more people you’ve crossed paths with, the more you’ll know who are the people you can rely on in a pinch. They might not always be available to you as the years go on because they’re busy working with somebody else, but eventually you will come together again. You will because you want to!