How Production Teams Work Together
Teamwork is essential to narrative production. But how do teams work efficiently? What makes a team successful? In this blog entry, author John Tyrrell reflects on teamwork inspired by the article Notes on collaboration: Assessing student behaviors by Ted Hardin.
The Secret to Effective Teamwork: Understanding Roles and Encouraging Each Other
by John Tyrrell
Understanding your role is an essential aspect of any team dynamic. Hardin (2009) discusses tools that he uses as a professor to help his media students understand themselves and their teammates. He details the usual tropes one will run into when making a film, people like the dictator-like director who “terrorizes” the crew or the sly producer who “takes credit for much of the effort” (Hardin, 2009, p. 31). These things are cliches because they do indeed happen and if you want to avoid these pitfalls, you need to understand team and crew dynamics (Hardin, 2009).
The real meat of Hardin’s writing is talking about John Bilby’s “Wheelbook.” The Wheelbook is a great visual aid when figuring out what people excel in and what those same people might struggle with. It accomplishes this by having two parts of the wheel: the passive hemisphere and the active hemisphere. The passive side will take personality traits that would be admirable, and the active side will look at the negative aspect of those same traits. The best example of this is with the first slice of the Wheelbook. On the passive side, it has the can-do person, somebody who can rise to the occasion whenever the group gets stuck and creatively think of ways to push forward. The active angle of the can-do person, however, is the dictator, a person who also rises to the occasion, but is taking control of the operations and accepting too much power in the group. These are flip sides of the same personality type (Hardin, 2009).
Luckily for the Producing and Directing course, we established strengths and weaknesses before we even formed our groups. When we formed the Crestwood Productions group, there was no confusion about who would do what or how we would operate together. The directors immediately got to retooling the script while the producers started to organize everything down the line so that production days would go smoothly. Our group was not only okay with people taking certain roles but were encouraging of each other to do what they are good at and let others handle what they struggle with.
When it comes to making narrative movies, the truth is you really can’t do it yourself. You need a team around you to not only keep yourself sane but to elevate the project in areas you struggle in. When your creative side is allowed to flourish and everyone is appreciative of each other, you really can create something special and entertaining.
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References:
Hardin, T. (2009). Notes on collaboration: Assessing student behaviors. Journal of Film and Video, 61(1), 31-50.