My whole job was coffee, walkie batteries, and standing in a parking space so nobody took it.

I was not in a hurry.

Partly because I knew there were levels, and I wanted to learn all of them. Mostly because there was no feed. Nobody posting the set they were on that day. I had no idea what I was missing.

So I put my head down and did the small jobs for as long as the small jobs took.

What made that work was the director and the producer on that shoot. They let me stand where I could see. They explained what was happening instead of sending me off while the adults talked. They took a chance on a kid whose job was parking spaces.

You cannot learn the levels if nobody lets you near them.

Twenty one years later I am an EP, and I still think about those two more than I think about anybody who was impressive that week.

Nobody held a meeting about my development. There was no program. They were just decent on an ordinary Tuesday, and it lodged in me for two decades.

That is how low the bar is, and how long the effect lasts.

Which also means the reverse is true, and I have been on the receiving end of that too.

The second AC becomes a DP. The PA sorting receipts in a van becomes a producer. The intern reading briefs nobody asked them to read becomes the art director who decides who gets the call.

It takes about ten years. Which feels like forever when you are twenty six and feels like last twenty six weeks ago when you are forty five.

Everybody currently beneath you on a call sheet ends up somewhere else on it.

And they remember. Not the shot. Not the budget. They remember whether you made the day feel survivable.

This took me too long to understand.

A client sees you on the job. One day, maybe three. They see the version of you that knows it is being watched.

Everyone else sees all of them. The prep calls. The morning the location fell through. The hour nobody could get an approval and the whole crew stood around waiting for somebody to decide something.

Your reputation is not built in front of the client. It is built in front of the people working for you.

Restaurants worked this out a long time ago. Front of house and back of house, and anybody who has worked in either one knows the back is where you find out who someone actually is.

Our industry has the same split. We just never gave it a name.

None of these are hard. That is the point. They cost nothing and they get noticed every time.

If the invoice gets cut, it comes out of my margin. The assistant's rate does not move. The retoucher's rate does not move. A discount funded by somebody else's day is not a discount. It is a transfer, and the person it got transferred to knows exactly what happened.

Call time is a promise. If I said seven, we start at seven. And if we are running long, the overtime conversation starts with me, before anyone has to work up the nerve to ask.

Credit goes where it went. Whoever solved the problem gets named in the room where it mattered, not in a thank you text afterward where only one person hears it.

Names before lunch. All of them. I am not naturally good at this. I write them down.

I have been the guy running a tight day who forgot to say thank you until the trucks were loaded.

I have cut a number and let somebody else absorb it without looking closely at who.

These are rules because I needed rules. People who are naturally gracious under pressure never have to write any of this down.

I did.

1. Learn three names you do not currently know. On your next job, whatever your title, pick three people you would normally just nod at. Use their names out loud before lunch.

2. Find out who paid for your last discount. Look at the line items. If the number came out of somebody else's day instead of your margin, change it on the next one.

3. Name the person who saved it, in front of the client. One sentence, in the room, while it still counts.

4. Make room for one person this week. Answer the email from someone with nothing to offer you. Take the fifteen minute call. Explain the thing instead of doing it faster yourself.

See you next Tuesday.

Honored to be here,

Chris Whitten