I've had a few re-occurring conversations with people, and I've touched on this before lightly in my "Assisting" and my "testing" post a while back. It goes beyond assistants, and into the attitude of the rest of the team. It's an overall attitude of the person. I was having dinner with some fellow photographer friends last night and we were talking about the attitude of a certain makeup artist. I bring this up not to talk trash, but to illustrate a my point on attitude(hence why no one will be named). This makeup artist has been negative in dealing with this friend of mine on one of their tests, and come to find out a few other people in the industry had the same thing to say about her. Negative attitude, unhappy, grumpy, etc. Who wants to work with that? Paid or unpaid.
In my crew, I look for people that are down to create and have a great attitude about it. I look for people who will build a relationship with me and collaborate on personal projects and are excited about it. This is a testing ground for me to hire them for a real job and it's very likely(unless they just do a terrible job). A: are they talented at what they do? B: do they have a positive attitude? C: do they like to create projects when they're not working? I like to create a team of people that bring a positive vibe to the set. People who think their work is fun. I love creating on going relationships with positive talented people. It's all about creating a crew blackbook that will provide a great service and product to your clients.
That is the catch though, everyone's work has to be up to par including and especially the photographer's. The photographer's work has to be at a quality and level that will inspire a talented crew to sign on to a project if it's a personal project or test.
In addition, and I thought I might add this to my Assistants post, but it goes with anyone from the team as it came from a conversation with a friend of mine that brought it to my attention. If you're part of a crew and something comes up and you can't make it, you should always find a replacement for yourself. Regardless the type of job.
Who likes working with Downers anyways? Maybe some people do, but not me.
Amen...life is too short to be a grouch...and if we want to be bitter we can watch the news.
Great post.
Posted by: stikman | November 25, 2008 at 04:05 PM