Professional Practise - Main goal - Post 7

In my last Main Goal post I said that I would put more effort into clarity of communication and knowing what I want before I walk on set, so that I am doing everything I can to help the shoot go efficiently and not stress the 1st AD out. I am happy to say that I did both of these things on Tuesday and never saw Lisa stressed (although she may have been hiding it?), and for the first time in my life I finished a shoot early. That's a little off topic from my main goal, but it was a task I lay down for myself, so I thought I'd better comment on it.
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Understanding and respecting boundaries did not actually go superbly well last week I must say, although I'm still in mixed minds as to whether that was my fault or not. Lisa and I had a minor personality clash via email the night before the TVC shoot last week. This is particularly awkward to blog about because Lisa will no doubt read and comment on this blog (hi Lisa!). How do I discuss this objectively and take care not to reopen a rift that seems to have been sealed?

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Basically, Lisa sent out a call sheet on Monday night that, and I noticed a few small issues with it. Although a couple of this issues were of no real consequence, a couple of them could have had serious repercussions for the shoot. Because it was titled "Draft Call Sheet" I assumed that Lisa must have accidentally attached an old draft to the email, rather than her current one, so I responded to the email asking about this and raising the issues that I had noticed, which made Lisa feel that I was questioning her ability to do her job.

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So here's the thing. After every single screen project that we have made at Unitec we have a feedback session with all the screen arts tutors, and without fail, during every single feedback session, the directors are told that they are responsible for everything in the final product and that they must double check everything. It always happens; a tutor will comment on a problem, the director will explain how that problem came about, and the tutors' reponses are always the same: "It doesn't matter, people forget things. You need to check and double check everything. Accidents happen and people forget. You are the one who needs to be sure." In my mind, this is what I was doing when I pointed out the issues to Lisa.

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On the other hand, call sheets are not my job, so am I overstepping the boundaries? But when the consequences of a couple of the issues could have been be really really serious for me, how could I possibly keep quiet?

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Perhaps the issue is the way that I pointed out the problems.

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On the weekend, my boyfriend gently raised an issue with me, pointing out that sometimes I need to let things go. He said that I need to let people be wrong about things, let them make mistakes, or if I hear them ask a question but it's not directed at me then I don't always need to pipe up and answer. He wasn't talking about us, but rather the way I act around other people. I need to be careful not to come across as a know-it-all. Perhaps this was the real issue here. When I pointed out the issues to Lisa I pointed out all of them. What I should have done was point out only the issues that could have had really serious consequences, and let the smaller things slide. That way perhaps she would have taken my concerns more seriously, instead of me coming across as a nit-picking know-it-all when there was no need.

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As for delegating tasks appropiately, I'm starting to wonder whether this was really appropriate for me to add as a main goal, as I don't really seem to come up against any serious problems in this area. I did end up doing all of my own art department prop buying the day before my TVC shoot, but that was not because I had not allowed the art department to do it themselves. I think it must have been a communication issue and somehow they missed out on realising that they were supposed to do it, although to be honest I'm not really sure how that communication issue came about. I don't think I misinterpreted the role of art department on these shoots; I expected them to source the props. Why else would we havemeetings discussing what I was looking for? And they certainly knew the shoot date from the beginning. It may have simply been poor time management on their behalf. My fear is that I may have given off an impression of not trusting them to find the best props, and therefore made them hesitant to go out and get them. This is possible as I was quite particular in our meeting about how the props should be. Nevertheless, this still should not stop them from doing the job. I really should chase them down and have a chat to find out what went wrong.