Directing a film is a huge undertaking. As a director, one oversees every step of production. Directors supervise casting, pre-production, principal photography, and post-production. Many directors even write their film’s screenplay or help produce the film. While the director does oversee every aspect of production, he is not the one to actually carry out every single task. The director has a crew to help him. Even on low budget indie films, the director hires a crew to work with him.
Long-term collaborations are beneficial for a director’s creative potential because they allow the director to establish working relationships and create a baseline in these relationships while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of these relationships.
A director and a crewmember establish a baseline in their relationship once the two parties have worked together long enough to understand the general principals behind the other’s work. This means understanding the collaborator’s style, motivation, and work ethic. Establishing this baseline does not mean understanding every tiny detail about the collaborator, it simply means learning to the extent that a collaborator is able to point out their partner’s intricacies.
Pushing the boundaries of a collaborative relationship relies on first understanding the baseline of the collaboration. After defining the baseline, partners are able to work together and bounce ideas off of each other within the confinement of the baseline. After becoming comfortable working in the defined baseline, collaborators take a step away from the baseline and begin to evolve their style, motivation, and work ethic together. This does not mean that the two collaborators develop identically. Rather, the collaborators each learn the same things, but they most likely understand and implement these things differently.
Long-term collaborations are beneficial for a director’s creative potential because they allow the director to establish working relationships and create a baseline in these relationships while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of these relationships.
A director and a crewmember establish a baseline in their relationship once the two parties have worked together long enough to understand the general principals behind the other’s work. This means understanding the collaborator’s style, motivation, and work ethic. Establishing this baseline does not mean understanding every tiny detail about the collaborator, it simply means learning to the extent that a collaborator is able to point out their partner’s intricacies.
Pushing the boundaries of a collaborative relationship relies on first understanding the baseline of the collaboration. After defining the baseline, partners are able to work together and bounce ideas off of each other within the confinement of the baseline. After becoming comfortable working in the defined baseline, collaborators take a step away from the baseline and begin to evolve their style, motivation, and work ethic together. This does not mean that the two collaborators develop identically. Rather, the collaborators each learn the same things, but they most likely understand and implement these things differently.