ENDA Episode 31→ The time when the Endless Apprentice learned the importance of Production (Part 3)

One of the other reasons why I could not be a producer is because I failed to make my team independent.

When I decided to drop the production role, my teammates were at the beginning understanding. However, circumstances changed.

Due to curriculum issues, one of our courses gained more students, some unknown and others that we wished not to know. We were 18 and there could be only 2 groups of 9 people for the production and shooting of a TV program each one.

The SAMA team quickly merged with our group, but there was a problem: we were 10 at that moment and my teammates played a move that was borderline blackmail: if I did not want to be left out for another person and end up with the other group, I will have to take the production role again.

Given the circumstances and knowing the history of some of the members of the other group with whom I did not have the best experiences, I accepted to become a producer once again.

The program was a success, but I did not want to repeat the role. I knew that I was committing more mistakes than before: schedule problems, catering issues, tight postproduction times, etc.

Nevertheless, for some reason, my teammates still want me as a producer for the next semester. However, at that time we were 12 people again and we had to act as a unique group for the rest of the year.

During that semester I stepped off the production role and different people took over during the 3 projects we had to shoot:

➡️ The first project was good but with an extremely high budget.

➡️ The second was almost a failure and the shooting had many issues with the location’s size, the art production, and the budget.

➡️ The third and final project had many problems managing people and many things were being done in secret even by other members, which created a tense atmosphere.

I naively thought that after that semester, my team would have realized that they could do the production part without me being involved, they now had more experience. But instead of that, they prepared a trap for the next semester so I did not have a choice to be the executive producer for the final project of the Career.

Honestly, I had never considered myself a good producer, I know I’m lacking a lot and I do not enjoy doing it anymore.

Nonetheless, my teammates and the SAMA team got used to how I did things and they wanted me always to produce their projects.

And that is my biggest failure: I allowed them to get used to it so much that when they had to do it themselves, the results were not always what they expected. So they played safe going again with me, not because I was the best choice, but because I was the least risky. Exactly as I did with my decisions.

However, not everything was negative, there were positive things too.

What were those?

Well, that's for next episode.