Thinkin' Bout Audio Drama, Day #2
Today's theme is, "Leading A Team"!
It's a very rare privilege to get to the point where one can Lead A Team in audio drama. It often doesn't feel like that's what you're even signing up to do, going into it.
It's usually a bit more like..."wouldn't it be cool if...okay, and you're really in?...okay, I think we may finally have what we need...oh! It's happening!?"
And then all of a sudden, where no such thing existed the day before, you're leading a team. Congratulations! I'm sorry.
It is simultaneously the best and the hardest part about making audio drama. Even in good times you never quite have the resources -- time, money, hands, energy -- you'll need to pull off the thing you need to do. If you're like me, that sort of leadership feels a bit less like a power trip, and more "resting on the knife's edge of either disappointing or causing inadvertent harm to some of the coolest people I know".
I've had the chance to work for a fairly broad range of people doing this stuff, and also to lead on a fairly broad range of projects. Everything from the reasonable-and-good-faith, to "if they're suffering, good, this shouldn't be easy." It was a little distressing to learn that the latter camp don't always make bad art -- and vice versa, which is annoying. If cruelty just plainly couldn't produce compelling art, this would be a much shorter post.
But here's the thing: a successful audio drama project isn't just about making a rad thing. It's about figuring out how to create a sustainable workflow where you and your team get to keep making rad things for a long time (and be compensated fairly for it, but that's another post).
If you want to bleed people for your art, sure, it's a choice -- one that it's easy to point to hollywood and say, well, "Fincher does 50 takes a scene" -- but in an industry and community this small, burning people out is...well, to my mind, morally wrong...but also, a crippling business move, and extra dumb.
You want to make something great, yes -- AND you want how it was made to be replicable, sustainable, and therefore comfortable for everyone involved. There are only so many levers we can pull, money so rarely being one of them, so once you find people whose talent can move mountains -- I think good leadership in audio drama, both on a business and a creative level, is protecting and celebrating people first.
Every midnight ask, every close-to-deadline thought or "wouldn't it be cool", is something that absolutely must be weighed against how far above and beyond we're asking the people on the other end to go. I'm not saying it's always wrong to ask for more, especially if you're asking nicely and with an awareness of the established scope -- but I think the calculus of person vs project can afford to be weighed more heavily towards people.
I mean, the truth of it for me is that I've always found that people who are happy and comfortable within a project make cooler stuff than if those same people were crunched. I don't know why this is ever litigated -- and I don't know why I see it litigated so often. Can highly-pressured people make great stuff -- sure. But I strongly believe people who can look at the process and say, "this is my dream," do better.
Sometimes I hear, "oh, if they're happy, that means they're just directionless and frolicking and taking your money", to which I have literally had to say...no, a director still has to do their job.
Even happy people still need to be set up for success -- there's maybe another post about the excel sheets and structure for notes I tend to use -- and setting clear expectations and staying in close communication is also so important.
I'm also a strong believer in Michael Schur's "no assholes" policy. If someone's being a jerk to other people on the team, I haven't found it worth trying my damndest to keep them happy, and I exercise whatever means are most appropriate to end our working relationship.
My mantra these days, in both our internal calls and the highest-stakes rooms, is that "people -> art -> business -> people". If you treat good people well, they make good art. Making the most of good art is good business. And the goal of any good business is to treat the people who make good art even better.
I'd love thoughts on tomorrow's theme, by the way! So far I'm kind of just pulling from whatever felt most pressing during a work day, which I can probably keep doing, but I'd love to know what people...want to know about making audio drama more-or-less full-time!
