Reflection on “The Alexis Project”
AKA Setting Expectations.
As I mentioned before, my next film is going to be “The Alexis Project”. I actually wrote most of a whole other blog post detailing pre/production of the project but for a lot of reasons —mainly it calls people out and the blog is just not that interesting — I’m not going to publish it. Besides, quite frankly, despite issues that I’ll get into in this piece, the film is really good. Airing the “dirty laundry” behind it’s pre/production doesn’t do anyone any good.
Instead I’d rather write a more self reflective piece. Before we get into it you should know I made the film for the “Film Riot Make Film Challenge”. While winning these kind of things are a crapshoot and I *generally* don’t win them I like submiting. I like the deadlines, the constraints, and I do enjoy the competition.
I personally feel my issues with some of my cast/crew stems down to one thing — expectations and managing them. Somewhere along the way of making “The Alexis Project” I went from wanting to do something small and contained (1–2 crew, 1–2 actors) to full on go big or go home, fuck it full stream ahead without informing people of the change in my mentality, in my expectations.
I did a really poor job of managing my own expectations for people and was disappointed when people didn’t rise to an occasion that they didn’t know existed.
Realistically though a cast and crew totaling 9 people isn’t big. While it’s big for me and is the biggest crew I’ve assembled as a director/producer it’s still on the smaller side. That being said I did want to take this to another level, get an idea of what Reaper, Inc. might be like, and really see if I push myself what I can accomplish. Truthfully its a lot and while somethings in the film didn’t quite work out as well as I would have hopped the film it’s self is overall way better than I could have imagined.
However pushing myself and trying to go big is where I think things got lost in translation. I could easily blame people for not being as dedicated as I would liked, which would be 100% fair, I’m not. I’m going to blame myself for not talking to the crew before, giving them my expectations, and an out if they couldn’t handle it.
What I should have done and will be doing before we shoot Reaper, Inc. is to sit down and have a very very uncomfortable and painful conversation with people. I’m going to be fair but honest. I’m going to let them know my expectations for them, if they can’t handle it give them an out, and let them know that if they are not performing or as dedicated to the project as needed I will have to let them go from the project and bring someone on who can cut it. It’s going to be painful, hard, and I don’t want to do it but it’s the best way to get people on the same page and manage mine and their expectations for the project.
The thing that makes it extra hard are that the people I’ll be talking to are my friends, people who’ve been with me for a long time, and people whose company I do enjoy. While it won’t be personal (I mean that), if it comes to cutting people, I’m sure they will take it that way and that will be really hard.
However the thing is for Reaper Inc. to work and be the best possible film I not only need everyone to know what page we are on but to be on the same page.
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