The Families We Make
Family.
Our feelings about our families are as unique as fingerprints. For some, the word conjures cotton-candy-colored nostalgia: laughter, togetherness, Sunday dinners, the sort of imagery that might have been manufactured by the Hallmark Channel.
For others, family is more complicated. The word can summon sorrow, regret, or conflict. It conjures complicated memories that don’t fit neatly into a greeting card.
Unhappy families may each be unhappy in their own way, but there is one curious commonality: they frequently produce creative offspring.
And what do those creative offspring often do?
They create families of their own.
Sometimes the families we cobble together deliver a kind of transcendent joy that has little to do with shared DNA. They can be assembled from acquaintances who become friends, friends who become collaborators, and collaborators who discover that they genuinely enjoy being around one another.
It’s why the Friends’ Friendsgiving still resonates decades later.
Work can create those relationships. It’s just that this is where the metaphor gets problematic, even dangerous. Too many times, our Horrible Bosses love to describe their workplace as “one big happy family.”
That’s usually followed by a memo cutting benefits, cancelling overtime, or demanding Sunday work.
The boss is partly right except it isn’t a happy family.
It’s a dysfunctional one.
Still, making a movie really does create a temporary kind of family.
Like summer campers thrown together for a few intense days or weeks, we are bound together by a common destination. We may disagree. We may celebrate.
We may occasionally drive one another crazy.
But we also spend twelve or fourteen hours a day together, five, six, sometimes even seven days a week. And when we’re on location, analogies about summer campers or families become even more apt.
That’s because laboring in the low-budget world often means sharing a space even when we’re not filming. We’ll share a kitchen and a living room. We’ll discover who snores and who wakes up before everyone else. We’ll learn how everyone likes their toast.
Or even if they eat toast.
That kind of proximity can create something remarkable. It also reveals a lot about people very quickly.
Which is why building a crew isn’t simply about finding talented people. It’s about finding people you can trust.
Trust is a core component.
So is faith.
A producer has to believe that the people they’ve hired know how to do the jobs they’ve been hired to do. That doesn’t mean disappearing. It means knowing when to step in.
And when to step back.
Talented creatives create miracles when they’re given the space they need.
Which is perhaps one of the strangest contradictions about producing. Sometimes the most difficult thing to do is to let go.
You’ve spent months imagining the movie. You may even have written the words in the script. You’ve planned the logistics. You’ve worried about the money.
And then the actors arrive.
The director arrives.
The cinematographer arrives.
The production designer arrives.
Suddenly, the movie belongs to a room full of people.
And that’s when something magical can happen.
The finished film.
JOIN THE FUNDAMENTALS
The Fundamentals begins filming August 24 in Wilmington, North Carolina, but our production family isn’t complete yet.
We’re still looking for production assistants, grips, talented background performers, and select filming locations in the Wilmington area.
If you’d like to be part of the production—or know someone who might—we’d love to hear from you.
