The DGA Director-UPM Committee hosted a discussion with feature film Directors, Unit Production Managers, and First Assistant Directors on May 21 at the DGA in Los Angeles. The goal of the half-day event was to explore ways of increasing collaboration and communication within the directorial team. Although in the past year the Committee has held two other events focused on improving working relationships between UPMs and Directors, this was the first discussion to include 1st ADs.

The participants broke into groups to discuss various topics and formulate suggestions on how to make the Director/UPM/1st AD Director collaboration stronger. Afterwards, each group reported their findings.

The primary conclusion reached by both groups was that communication is the key to a smooth production process. 1st ADs Mark Hansson and Chip Touhey explained that their group advocated beginning the production process with an initial meeting between the UPM, Director, and 1st AD preferably on the first day to open the lines of communication. This initial meeting would be followed by one-hour mini-meetings every week during which the first 1/2 hour would be directed towards the Director’s concerns and needs and the second 1/2 hour would be spent discussing needs of the departments. 1st AD Yudi Bennett noted that “mini-meetings” allow UPMs and ADs to work on specific issues rather than only having infrequent meetings where a Director often becomes overwhelmed with information. “You’ve got to be sensitive and prioritze issues,” Bennett said.

In terms of prioritizing issues, some 1st ADs and UPMs questioned if it was always necessary to inform the Director of any and all potential problems or if perhaps the directorial team should first handle certain issues. Director Bob Butler felt absolute communication is necessary. “There’s no point in keeping secrets. A lot of time inexperienced Directors go into a studio situation and feel very manipulated by the UPMs and the ADs. Everybody is not on the same page in terms of what they want on their agenda and it creates problems. This whole notion of not getting available information from the UPM or the AD is nonsense. Why would you not tell the Director what the potential problems are and how they’re going to affect the picture? It’s a collaborative effort that everybody has a stake in.”

In another effort to improve communication, one group recommended that the AD have more direct access to the UPM. Hansson verbalized a group’s view that the UPM should be invited to the set more frequently thereby keeping constant verbal communication between the UPM and the 1st AD. “We came to the conclusion that the lines of communication between the UPM and the 1st have to be more open,” said Hansson. “It’s not even necessarily so much the Director and the UPM. It’s that the AD and UPM need to have a much better line of communication.”

The Director/UPM Committee has been regularly meeting since summer 2003 to find ways to open a dialogue between Directors and UPMs. The Director/UPM/1st AD roundtable brought together 1st ADs Randall Badger, Yudi Bennett, Alan Curtiss, Mark Hansson, Rodney Hooks, Chip Touhey, Julian Wall, Darrell Woodard, Alexander Yurchikov, Jonathan Zimmerman; UPMs Marie Cantin, Patricia Chapman, D. Scott Easton, Jodi Ehrlich, Cleve Landsberg, Tosca Musk, Richard Prince, Dwight Williams; and Directors Bob Butler, Jerry Jameson, Randal Kleiser and Jim Westman.