Creative Attention in Production

I’m on a real film set today for the first time in quite a while. Two years ago, I transitioned to a more businessy role at my production house. I’m still involved in the creative process, but I’m pretty much out of the execution part.

This is as it should be.

I love the film medium and I love the shooting process. I love the collaboration, the melding together of so many different art forms. Part of me even loves the pressure. Unfortunately, most of the pressure comes from the overwhelming cost of the process.

For most crew on a production, the jokey characterization is “Hurry up and wait.” The larger the film crew, the more specialized each person is on set. One person’s job could be just to watch a couple of strands of hair on an actor’s head for continuity or post-production needs.

Someone unfamiliar with the process can look at a film crew, maybe one who has shut down a couple of blocks in your city, and think “What are all these people doing? No wonder these things are so expensive. There’s gotta be a better way…”

They’re not completely wrong…

But as with most things, there’s a reason it’s done this way: Creative attention is a hyper-limited resource and this has never been more stark than when a camera is rolling, microseconds are elapsing, and dozens of nuanced interactions are simultaneously unfolding in the frame.

When directing an actor’s performance, as I was today, I am fundamentally unable to notice anything about what the actor is wearing. I can’t check lens focus. I don’t know what else is in frame. All I’m focused on is “Do I believe and understand this character?”

Now, I’m a particularly monofocused person in general and there are some people with the talent to take in a whole frame, every detail, and give actors good notes on top of that.

For the record, I could have a wider awareness of the frame, the shot, and how it fits into the edit if I had rehearsal time ahead of the shoot to dial in performance, but that’s rarely available in commercial work.

And I’m still never going to notice a stray hair.

I used to be able to creatively lead multiple projects at once, and I think I did an adequate job (customers were happy and came back), but it eventually led me to burnout, one of the reasons I switched roles.

Context switching between high stakes creative projects and further context switching to business/sales/management and the hundreds of little details involved in each of these… I spent a few years pulling an all-nighter at least once a week.

I really fucked myself up.

Creative projects, especially complex creative production projects, deserve focused, loving attention. And creative people can’t provide that level of attention to six projects at once, at least not healthily. And everyone deserves to be healthy.

It’s a treat when I can let myself become fully enveloped in a film production but in the meantime I’m very happy assisting at the idea stage and watching my amazing colleagues execute at a level they (usually mostly hopefully?) have the creative attention for.