Project Management for Filmmakers: Knowing Why and Assigning Whats

Knowing why and assigning whats is the most succinct way for me to share the value of the preceding articles in this series. As a leader, you are intimately connected the why behind the project. You are responsible for that connection. It’s the “why” that makes a project memorable. Remember, if you can’t sell a story to your team, they won’t be able to sell it to others. Every interaction you have about your project is, in some sense, a sale. When you’re not trying to get someone’s money, you’re looking for other investments: time, understanding, listening, or even just awareness of your project.

Everything, consistently, must be connected to the why. The story behind your project should be iterated at every opportunity.

The “whats” are the tasks and responsibilities. But before you ever get into the whats, every team meeting, every team update, must allude to the why. It doesn’t matter if the team member’s job seems to have nothing to do with the why. They have to know that you are seeing the why behind everything you expect them to do. This helps to build trust in your delegation process. You have authority to assign the whats when you demonstrate your investment by sharing the why again and again.

Another thing about the why: it should always take narrative form. If you can’t reiterate the story, you can use an anecdote about your experience working on it. Share what you are learning and it will encourage others to learn. When people learn from their work, they are more engaged with it. The why will contextualize the whats. Tell them what the project is about at its core, say it until you’re blue in the face, and then keep saying it.

Although sharing the why is a hallmark of a great leader, it can also backfire. Remember, it’s not about you. You do have to separate your ego from the why. You’re meant to inspire, not self-indulge. Some filmmakers iterate their story again and again, less for their team members and more for themselves. Making that distinction comes down to two things: intent and language. Keep your intent focused on giving clarity to your team members, and use conscientious language. Always speak as if you are talking to an individual rather than an audience.

This post concludes my four part series on project management for filmmakers. You can look at the preceding three posts for the other parts. Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on building a my first press kit for Delta Phi, so I’ll be sharing what I’m learning from that, as well as my challenges in polishing, exporting and distributing a feature-length film. 

Project Management for Filmmakers: Consistency

In the post about margin I talked about allowing room for circumstantial error. That’s only half the picture. Your project needs room for human error.

You’ve got to have a system that’s idiot proof; not because anyone on your team is an idiot, but because no one is perfect all the time. Expect and respect mistakes.

That’s not to say that you should ignore mistakes. In fact, I make a point to quench them when they arise as part of a pattern of behavior. But when a mistake is an outlier, coming from someone who usually doesn’t make such errors, then it’s best to acknowledge it and let it go. You’ll have this luxury of letting mistakes go just so long as you make sure that everyone is on the same page. It's up to you to set the expectations and, like I said in the article about delegation, your team members will only take their job as seriously as you take them. 

This is what workplace newsletters are for. If you’re a filmmaker or any other kind of creative producer, you can use a production newsletter. I use my own format for these newsletters and send them out to my team weekly. They are customized for filmmaking. You can download a template of it for free on my products page.

Ironically, the most important thing about newsletters is not the content. It’s the regularity. The confidence that comes to your team with the knowledge that they’re getting an update in their inbox every week without faith, regardless of fluctuations in the project, is priceless. It forces all members to take the project seriously and, more importantly, to be clear with you about how much they can actually commit.

When you project consistency, the people around you will behave with consistency.

They will feel armed with information. It builds trust.

I could probably make a whole workshop on this concept alone, so it’s worth downloading my production newsletter template. It’s free, so you have nothing to lose. And if you’re not heading a project right now, you can share this post with someone who is.

Project Management for Filmmakers: Delegation

Delegation is distributing work in the right way among team members. It’s a leadership task that demands a steady, humble ego and good listening. It’s not enough just to give people work, you must listen to them. Learn their strengths and desires. Understand their current commitments and know what season they are in in their life. Some team members might be able to take on more work than others, or do certain kinds of work more effectively because of their strengths. This will help you delegate work effectively for your project. Delegating work appropriately makes your team members feel heard and understood. When your team members feel heard, they’ll show you what they are most excited about doing, thus making your job easier and giving everyone  better experience.

I hope to do a series on leadership in the future, but since we’re on the subject with delegation, I’ll talk about vulnerability for a second. As a leader, everything you do sends a message about expectations and limits. You are their example. Prove to them that you accommodate vulnerability and expect their strength: then they will give you their honesty. Team members will not try to deceive each other if there’s no reason to do so.

As an example, in the making of Delta Phi, the commitment levels were hugely uncertain. I was asking for long shoot days, weekly, over the course of nearly a year and with very little notice given my academic timeline. It also included weekly meetings and rehearsals that were hours long. But if someone was sick, if a few members were overloaded that week, or if the weather was bad, I cancelled. No questions and no debate. As far as I know, I had a better turnout for this project than I or any of my colleagues have had. Why? I pre-empted cancellations and flake-outs by showing my team members that I would accommodate conflict instead of seeing conflict as a threat to my success. People most often are absent from their responsibilities when they feel unsafe in them, when they feel like their leader or supervisor has no benchmark or standard for when enough is enough. When you show the people you work with that you don’t see humanity and mercy as a threat to your goals, they have the freedom to be honest about you about their real level of commitment. If a commitment doesn’t threaten people’s individual weaknesses, they’re more likely to stick to it.

This is important to delegation in the event that you are unsure about what to assign. You may find that instead of chasing people down, your team members feel empowered to come to you to tell you what they have to offer because they know you won’t take undue advantage of them.

This is the second in a four part series on project management. Come back next week to learn hacks and tricks for keeping everyone in your team on the same page.