Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

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I believe being a great cre­ative doesn’t mean being a great cre­ative all the time. Part of the task of get­ting great work pro­duced and not hav­ing it ruined before cross­ing the fin­ish line involves enter­ing what I call air-traffic-controller mode. It’s a phrase I came up with to describe what I do as a direc­tor on a shoot.

Ide­ally on pro­duc­tion day, the major­ity of cre­ative deci­sions have already been made (if you’re wing­ing it on a shoot day, god help you and your end prod­uct). Now it’s up to you as direc­tor, pro­ducer, or cre­ative to make sure noth­ing goes wrong. This pro­vides the best pos­si­ble envi­ron­ment for the actors and the crew to per­form their best. Chang­ing the script or the art direc­tion on the fly isn’t fair to the peo­ple work­ing hard to make your vision the best.

But I think this anal­ogy also makes a lot of sense beyond shoot day. After a great con­cept is birthed, it becomes the cre­ative team’s job to remove all obsta­cles from the work get­ting pro­duced at the best pos­si­ble qual­ity. Cre­atives should focus on all threats and make sure they don’t take down their bril­liant idea.

How?

Be able to artic­u­late how your con­cept dove­tails with the strat­egy. If you can’t, some­one is gonna try and cram some extra junk on your con­cept that will surely make it suck.

Iden­tify threats inter­nal and exter­nal and tai­lor your ratio­nale to fit their bias. This is cost effec­tive because x, y, and z. Or it will moti­vate con­sumers because of x. If you’re not pre­pared to fight for your work, don’t assume some­one else will be. They have far less skin in the game than you do.

Fig­ure out how it can be pro­duced on bud­get your­self or in con­junc­tion with a pro­ducer. Don’t wait for some­one to tell you it can’t be done before you decide to get involved.

If it requires out­side pro­duc­tion, fig­ure out how you’re going to sell it to the best pos­si­ble resources. At Rid­dell, we always sent tight comps to a-list pho­tog­ra­phers before men­tion­ing bud­gets. Pho­tog­ra­phers got to imag­ine how their work fit into con­cepts before they were dis­ap­pointed with the dollars.

Air-traffic-controller mode involves sec­ond guess­ing every­thing so it can be very annoy­ing to peo­ple who work with you. So use it spar­ingly and only on the work you care the most about. Good luck with your next production.