1. Duplication of tasks
Sharing a budget via email starts the duplication of work while budgeting a project. The inconsistency of how data and information travels through the grapevine has come at a high cost to the production value in the industry. Handwritten budgets, spreadsheets with and without errors, emails with budgets in the body, toilet paper, not at all, are some of many ways that budgets have been communicated to producers and accountants by department heads. The trading back and forth of budgets can be staggering. Ad-hoc inconsistent ways of communicating budgets slow the decisions made at all levels. Frequently comparing the budgets is an industry standard. Each person keeping their version. Has anyone thought of keeping that information in one place for all to work with and manage before going through accounting?
When processing payroll, call sheets, production reports, daily department time sheets, weekly time sheet, accounting processes their timesheets based on the four sources of information. Yes, four different places. How coherent can that process be? Using that many sources create questions because so many places have to have the same data. Next, the payroll company does it one more time. It is dizzying to follow this one task and its duplication of work daily which compounds to a substantial weekly number. If you add up the daily work, payroll is done 25 times a week to get one result at the end of the week. Payroll departments on projects have discovered digital technology yet they are years away from fully recognizing the value, the corrections that will occur in the labor force, and the shifts in duties.
Is anyone paying attention? Does anyone know that this is not best practice? Does anyone know this practice has compromised the integrity of information? It has been for decades. One of the basic foundations of running a business to pass an IRS audit is, having accurate information. Does what I have explained give you confidence in the accuracy of Hollywood’s project information?
2. Paper technology
The cost of using paper technology is massive in the production offices; we are talking tons of paper being used and even more wasted. Combine that with human resources and the recipe for losing millions at each studio is recognized every year they hang onto the past. Have you ever seen them print out scripts and then redo it for, above the line (ATL), on the same day? Look at the opening credits on a project, take the run time of a movie and consider a minute for each page, and then start counting people and multiply it by 5, and you will have a conservative number of the scripts printed.
Digital on-boarding is a new term in Hollywood, and you should hear some of the reasons why it has taken so long. A lack of urgency, available services, education, and culture lead as the culprits to the lack of innovation in the industry. Solutions to this problem are coming from everywhere because people are finally seeing a considerable opportunity left wide open by the current industry leaders. Crews are finally saying it is enough already with the continued use of old technology.
The paper version of on-boarding consists of anywhere from 20 to 50 pages in the document. I have done many multi-million dollar projects where I kept track of all my wasted and required paper. The results are typical of the projects I worked on over 100 million — ten, 50-gallon bags of shredded paper, 30 plus bankers boxes full of documents per project.
Another gem for studio policy and procedures is the requirement to write checks; some people are not allowed to get direct deposit, some employees are required to have a separate check issued to them for as little as a few dollars to be reimbursed or for rentals. Paper technology has created a duplication of effort that can add hours a week to one or many people responsible for the payments.
3. Email and phone calls are not completing the communication cycle fast enough, if at all.
What happens when a producer thinks she doesn’t have enough money to spend? The reality is she does and doesn’t know it because the information is slow to get around. How can you make a quick decision when it is needed? No one wants to, but it does happen.
Emails are the lowest common denominator, which now does more harm than good for the communications on a production. Let’s set the record straight; emails get lost, deleted, spammed, misfiled, and the list goes on. Emails also create silos of information that turns us knowledge workers into information seekers wasting hours a week looking for information instead of using the information to get work done.
4. Turnover of human resources, cast and crew burnout
Turnover is a huge deal because it costs more resources to bring the new people up to speed and the department can lose its focus. Replacing people also has a learning curve and sometimes causes more replacements of personnel which can turn into a waterfall effect. Before you know it, the department has all new faces.
Production burnout is sometimes an enjoyable experience where it bonds the crew, but it is still unhealthy, and most other times it destroys morale. Either way, working exhausted people has been proven over and over to cost billions of dollars worldwide.
5. No Rewards for Education and Learning
If your degree is more than five years old and you have not continued your education yearly, then you are out of date. Yes, bold words, but also not mine. A Professor at Boston University said it a couple of years ago while I was working on a Masters degree. A common question I get asked by co-workers is, Why? What will that do for you? I even had someone the other day respond with, Why? They don’t reward for education in Hollywood.
To acquire a discipline it takes at least ten years, and now I have two in my repertoire, Accounting/Finance, and Information Systems/Software Development. Many production companies do not have the education in technology and information systems needed to make decisions, yet they do. There is nothing more dangerous than a person or a group of people making uneducated choices, and it happens all the time at the studio.
What is it going to take for Hollywood to embrace education and manage the shift in the business processes? How about rewards for education and training? It also takes full commitment to the change management and leadership needed to anchor the change in a companies culture.