I've not wanted to talk too much about the trouble I've been having with Ruth on this blog, but honestly it's been difficult. I still don't really want to say much because I would rather push through to get the job done, but I feel it's important. It's been affecting the film and it's been affecting the crew.
Ruth is a very talented producer, but to be honest she doesn't seem to fully understand the film we're trying to make; I don't think it's something she would tend to watch. That's not an issue, but she doesn't seem to be making much of an effort as she hasn't watched the films I've been referencing.
However, the main difficulty is that she can be quite overbearing and often has a very negative attitude. She shoots down other people's ideas too quickly, seemingly unwilling to collaborate. Several crew members and an actor approached me to say how they'd been struggling with Ruth, so I knew I had to do something.
Juliet Brown, our sound designer and one of Ruth's close friends, was kind enough to offer to join me when I spoke to her. She sat down with me and we worked out what we were going to say.
This is what we came up with:
I’ve been talking to a lot of people in the group about this and they all seem to agree that there is something wrong with the group dynamic; particularly in team meetings and with regard to crowdfunding. This is why Juliet’s here, because I was talking to her about this a couple of nights ago. It doesn’t feel like a team and morale is low. It doesn’t always feel like we’re working together on this.
Do you feel that too?
We thought that now is probably the best time to talk about it; air out all out so that we can all start afresh and move on, for the good of the film and our experiences working together.
With regard to the crowdfunder and the raffle, you’ve clearly taken a lot of that work onto yourself, which is amazing, but you’re probably very stressed.
But don’t forget, you’ve an entire team of people who are there to help out with things like that. But at the moment, the rest of the group largely isn’t really involved in any of it, beyond sharing the occasional post on social media. People feel excluded from it because they were never involved in the process. But that’s not too late to change that.
We rarely have meetings as a whole group, because people don’t feel like they are contributing anything. When people do try to contribute ideas, you can sometimes dismiss them quite quickly. And I understand that as producer it’s part of your job to decide whether or not something is going to work practically. But it’s quite damaging to shoot down an idea before it’s had a chance to properly develop; maybe it would have developed in a way you didn’t expect, maybe it sparks off an entirely different idea, or maybe it really is just a terrible idea, but you need to show that you have properly considered it, because people stop trying to contribute when all there ideas seem to be shot down instantly. People don’t come forwards with ideas and don’t contribute to the group, because they expect to be shut down. They don’t feel valued.
Because nobody is coming out with ideas or contributing, your communication can be seen by people as quite passive aggressive. And that just pisses people off. That’s why people don’t reply in the chat half the time.
We’re not trying to just pin everything on you. Not at all. This is an issue with the entire group dynamic and every single member of the group contributes to that dynamic. But to change, sometimes these things have to start from the top.
Do you agree? Do you see what we mean?
In this meeting tomorrow, I think we should keep it incredibly relaxed. We’re not there to just read a bunch of information off to the group; that can just be an email. That’s not the point of a group meeting.
We should focus on the crowdfunder tomorrow and ask people how they feel it’s been going. Get their feedback and listen to their opinions. Then we should ask if people have any ideas for how we can improve the crowdfunder. We can try to organise an event as an entire group to raise money. If people feel that they are involved and that their contribution matters, then they will be much more invested and much more likely to contribute further.
Juliet suggested that we could maybe have a games night or something as a teambuilding thing, so we could ask if people are up for that.
So there you go. Ruth seemed to take it pretty well. She said she'd been struggling for a while and we agreed to be more open with each other and try to work together more effectively.
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