I can say without a doubt that my movie wouldn’t have been half as good as it is if it weren't for the talented people that I partnered with along the way. Specifically, a cinematographer who had an eye for quality, actors who were not only kind enough to give me their time but who also had no qualms about giving me 110% of their talent and effort, PAs and interns who didn’t mind doing more than they had to because they knew that this was a small, low-budget indie film and that they contributed as much to the production as anyone else did. The key when it comes to finding and managing talent is perseverance, combined with a strong sense of vision and an unwillingness to settle for low quality.
Lots of folks hire their actor friends just because they know them, and they know that they could get them for $0. Lots of folks settle for the person offering the cheapest rate as opposed to finding other ways of working with more talented (and more expensive) people by offering them credits, pro-Bono work, and other forms of compensation. What I’m saying here is that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and just because someone appears to be out of your reach, that doesn’t mean that they actually are.
You can hire people by offering all sorts of incentives, and in my opinion, it’s better to try and do that than to settle for a person who has a low standard for quality, I call this the Acting-Daughter Motif. Settling for something because it's cheap when there is a clearly better alternative is lazy and, in my opinion, the quickest way to kill your vision and butcher what otherwise could have been a better film.
“When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it’s you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.”
~ Steven Spielberg
