810 Lead with Love

This is Five Minute Friday. Welcome, everyone, back to the podcast. Very excited about this episode. It's with a buddy of mine named John Chu, who's an American film director, film producer, screenwriter and cinematographer, best known for directing the movies Step Up 2, the Streets, Step Up 3D, Justin Bieber's Never say Never, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. He's an alumni of the University of Southern California School of Cinema Television, where he won many awards.

You look at other leaders and you look at people like our president, or you look at other CEOs of how they run their business. Some people do it through fear, some people do it through communication and love, some people do it through understanding. There's so many different ways and all are effective to be honest. It's sort of what fits your own style and what kind of life you want to live as well. Because as a director, I could scare the shit out of people and make big, do big tantrums and leave the room and quit and get what I want. And that would be actually really darn effective. And sometimes I do want to do.

That to get my way, but I.

Don'T really want to live that life. I think life is bigger than those things and that affects your energy anyway and I just choose not to do that. And I do think that like a computer, like a multi-processor as a group, as long as you're choosing the right things, there's a lot of great ideas that can be mined and those things together have a synergy that one person could never create. Sure. And so I love that idea but as I get through it, I think the the most important thing I've learned about communicating the vision or getting a unified vision is literally just one by one. Like, when it's too daunting to think like, oh, I need to get, I need to make sure everybody, we have that scene in the right place. I need to like send, blast out this email that like cuts down their ideas and gets to the vision. It's literally like, it's one by one conversation. Talking to someone, looking them in the eye and saying, Let me understand your concerns here. Most people have concerns for the right reasons. They may not have the right answer and you may not have the right answer. But as long as you have the same goal of trying to fix this concern of like, I'm just not feeling this character, you know, some person could say, well, can you cut this scene? I think you listen to more of the note of, oh, what does it mean that they don't feel this character? Which means they actually don't care about what they or they don't know what they want in this movie, which means it's not about that scene. It's about two scenes before that. And so by communicating with that actor, it's like, you know what? I think it's actually this point in the scene where you open your diary and we see exactly what you want. So by this point later, we'll be rooting for you instead of not knowing why you even want that thing. And I think it goes, it's a much more effective way. It takes a lot more time and a lot more energy and a lot more back and forth, but it's a much more, I think, healthier way. Sure. But also you, The process of finding it makes you connect with that actor, with that producer, with the studio much more. And it is a harder process sometimes.

Much harder. And then just saying, suck it up, do your job, let's go.

Yeah, I always say I would make movies for free. If you gave me a camera and actors, like, let's go, I'll do it all day long. I can eat ramen all day long, it doesn't matter. What I get paid for is dealing with the politics and doing that job, which is also part of storytelling. but also a part about understanding why you want to tell this story or why someone else wants to tell it. Everyone came to this story for a different reason and by understanding the purpose that everyone came here for, you may not be able to fulfill that for every single person, but you can find your balance of how you want to fulfill those things. And maybe they have a purpose that is actually bigger than yours that you jump on.