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The Important Role of Assistants in the Creative Process of Film Production

Updated: Oct 13, 2021

Written by Heather Li


With technology developing and improving at a rapid pace, many administrative tasks that personal assistants perform may soon be replaced by software services. If computers can start organizing your calendar, scheduling appointments and trips, and manage your files, what does that mean for the future of the assistant job? Beyond certain tasks that are still currently limited to human intervention (like fetching coffee for the mornings), how will assistants remain relevant?

The human aspect of creativity shines importantly on personal assistants, something that technology will find difficult to replace with algorithms and machine learning. The creative process can be broken down into an idea journey, where a spark of an idea moves through different phases to evolve into the final creation, whether an innovative product or a blockbuster Hollywood film.


Generation:

The stage where the idea is just a rough concept, where something or someone sparked the thought, ideation.

Elaboration:

The central idea is developed with details. Besides being just a thought, it now has supporting ideas, storyboard process of creation.

Promotion:

During this time, a prototype or a creative script is mostly complete and creators start to pitch the idea for funding and partners.

Implementation:

Once the idea is accepted and the creators have found funding, this is where the idea is produced.


With the way that success stories are told in our society, we often only credit ingenuity and success of a film to its director or writer. While they may have been the visionary creator, some of the best films in the modern era were remarkably only made possible with intervention from assistants.




The iconic 1960 film “Psycho” by Alfred Hitchcock was actually introduced to Hitchcock by his assistant. His assistant, Peggy Robertson, saw a review of the book the movie is based on and recommended the story to her boss. Her role in the generation phase made it possible for Hitchcock to receive inspiration for his new film.

In more recent times, the groundbreaking horror movie “Get Out”(2017) also had an assistant play a crucial role. The promotion phase is particularly difficult for many

films in the industry since it is difficult for smaller, less acclaimed writers to receive funding; many projects stagnate in this stage and can stay in movie “limbo” for years before getting the money to move forward.


The CEO of Blumhouse Productions, the production


company that was the main financial backer for “Get Out”, heard about the project from an assistant. After speaking with director and screenwriter Jordan Peele, they decided to partner and move forward with producing the film, leading to one of the best films of 2017.


These assistants are rarely featured in the limelight, nor receive public adoration for their contributions. This social connection, between makers and creators with their assistants, is vital for the creative process, and we can see the results of their influence in many of today’s great hits in film and media.

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