Why Share Movie Incentives With the Crew?

Ben Affleck knows for absolute certain that a movie is better when the people making it share the incentive to make it good. The environment is better, the likelihood of quality is higher, and the experience of the human beings doing the work improves.

If all twelve other people in the room are invested, they stay a little longer or try a little harder and pick up an extra piece or an extra shot, because people are going to watch. If all someone cares about is the check and going home, and nobody treats the person as important to the process, the extra shot gets no help. A slider that is off is just too bad. Some people still work to a higher standard anyway, just because of who they are, and they give a shit. Ben Affleck does not want to ask someone to care a whole hell of a lot more for nothing, and wants people to feel connected to the final result because they are. The connection was the ethos.

Another panelist says buy-in works, and Ben Affleck agrees. The highest likelihood of predicting a result has to do with the incentive. From a very early age, people learn by reward and punishment: a timeout or a spanking, or a cookie, shows a kid which way to go. In adolescence, the rules make sense because they help everyone get along. Sharing the incentive spreads the awareness that the work has to be good. Without the share, people are less apt to do the extra work.