Maintaining a Positive Working Environment

Teamwork.

Through production we will all be required to work as a team in order to progress through to the show. It's important to maintain professional and positive relationships between each other to keep a positive working environment for everyone.

Morale

As producer, I am responsible for much of the decision-making and delegating through all stages of production. I value a positive team and so I strive to ensure that everyone in the team is happy with the direction in which the production is going. We also hold regular meetings so that any issues are addressed by every member of the team and we can foster a creative learning and working environment. Working together is key for a production like this to work, so cooperation, delegation and openness is required from everyone. it also important to acknowledge that problems with the production are never personal or a reason to get upset. Problems are just there to be fixed. (Owens, 2016:19)
As I am responsible for delegating jobs, I try to make sure that the person is happy with taking on the task before giving it to them. I want the workload to be spread equally across the whole team.
Positive reinforcement is also something that I try to use very regularly. Responsibility should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time framed. (source) If I like someone's work, I make sure that they know they are doing a good job and to keep it up. This is proven to boost confidence and motivate workers (source).
After all, "Without these people to actualize the project, a producer is useless. He needs people skills not only to attract qualified people to the project, but to keep them motivated and collaborative." (Kellison, 2013:13)

Rehearsals

It was important to get started on the rehearsals as quickly as possible so that we could get the most out of them, and bring in the presenter so that he could start rehearsing, so we needed our first day blocking the show to be very productive. Everyone took on their designated roles for the first time and we taped out the floor plan that was designed by the set design team and myself. This gave us all a chance to practice within our roles, and Lauren went the whole day with camera-blocking. This was useful so that we could iron out how the programme was going to be shot as early as possible and get rid of any problems early on (School Video News). This saves time in the future.
With problems being addressed immediately, this alleviates stress on the team so that they aren't worrying if something is going to work out or not, because we have the chance to rehearse.

Meetings

We have regular crew meetings where we can go around every member of the team and address any issues they might be having head on. We have all worked hard to make sure that nobody feels singled out or blamed for anything that goes wrong, as things are bound to go wrong, it's just a case of facing any issues with a calm, positive, and professional mindset. Rather than worrying about a problem, I immediately address it with the question "so how can we fix this?" As everyone is in the meeting, everyone can have input and be involved in the discussion if they're concerned about it too. It also means that everyone is aware of where we are at with every aspect of production and stays updated with jobs that need doing. "By the time the meeting is called, the director and producer should know almost all of the answers to the questions that will be asked by the participants". (Cury, 2017:49)

Bibliography

Owens, J. (2016) Television Production (Edition 16) New York: Focal Press.

Kellison, C. Morrow, D. Morrow, K. (2013) Producing for TV and New Media (Edition 3) Burlington: Focal Press.

Cury, I. (2017) Directing and Producing for Television (Edition 5) New York: Routledge.