The Path to Building a Cross-Disciplinary Film and Television Project Team: Challenges and Breakthroughs

In the film and television industry, a field brimming with creativity and opportunity, when a project aims to create a film or television work with international influence, it often means assembling a cross-disciplinary film and television project team comprised of talent from different countries and with diverse professional backgrounds. However, this process is far from smooth sailing; it involves numerous complex problems and challenges that require the core team members to exert tremendous effort and patience to overcome them step by step, gradually building this potentially powerful team structure.

I. Numerous difficulties in the recruitment process

(a) Language communication barriers

In the process of selecting professional talent from different countries, language communication is a major challenge. The film and television industry is inherently a field that relies on communication and collaboration. From project conception and creative brainstorming to specific execution, every step requires clear and accurate communication among team members. However, talent from all over the world speaks different native languages. While English, as an international language, alleviates communication pressure to some extent, the varying levels of English proficiency among people from different countries, along with differences in accents and vocabulary habits, often lead to misunderstandings.

For example, when recruiting for an advertising and marketing position, Ah Yu conducted a phone interview with a senior professional from a European country. While the candidate possessed extensive experience and unique insights in the field, their heavy accent and use of local industry jargon made it quite difficult for Ah Yu to understand them. Similar situations arose when other team members communicated with candidates from different countries, making the interview process lengthy and inefficient, and sometimes even leading to the loss of potential talent due to misunderstandings.

(ii) The complexity of professional qualification review

Different countries have their own film and television industry standards and professional qualification certification systems, which greatly complicates the professional qualification verification process during recruitment. The requirements for advertising and marketing, art design, and business investment vary from country to country, making it extremely difficult to assess whether a candidate possesses the professional skills required for a project.

Taking art and design as an example, Zhong Hua discovered during talent screening that some countries emphasize the inheritance of traditional artistic techniques, focusing on hand-drawing and traditional modeling abilities in professional qualification assessments; while other countries place greater emphasis on modern digital design skills and the ability to utilize emerging art media. This makes it difficult to use a unified standard to judge whether a candidate is suitable for participating in art design work for cross-cultural film and television projects. It requires spending a lot of time to deeply understand the industry background of the candidate's country and the suitability of their personal professional abilities for the project.

(III) Considerations on film and television industry standards in different countries

The film and television industry has unique development trajectories and operating models in different countries, resulting in diverse industry standards. These standards cover all aspects from project planning and filming to post-production distribution. For building cross-disciplinary film and television project teams, ensuring that recruited talent can work collaboratively within a unified project framework requires careful consideration of these differences.

For example, in advertising and marketing, the Chinese market has a strict advertising review system and unique audience preferences and communication patterns, while some foreign countries have drastically different standards and habits regarding advertising channels and content presentation. When recruiting advertising and marketing personnel, Ah Yu discovered that some outstanding foreign talents, while possessing excellent marketing planning abilities in their home markets, were almost completely unfamiliar with the advertising rules of the Chinese market. This undoubtedly poses a potential risk to the subsequent promotion of projects in both the Chinese and international markets, requiring additional time and effort to provide them with targeted training and guidance.

II. Specific Challenges in Recruiting Talent in Various Professional Fields

(I) Recruitment of Advertising and Marketing Talents – Differences in Understanding the Chinese Market

Ah Yu is in charge of recruiting advertising and marketing personnel. A prominent issue in this field is that some foreign talent lacks understanding of the advertising rules and audience preferences in the Chinese market. As one of the world's largest film and television consumption markets, China has a huge and unique audience, whose cultural background, consumption habits, and acceptance of advertising are significantly different from those of other countries.

Some foreign advertising and marketing professionals, accustomed to the relatively relaxed advertising environment and specific audience feedback patterns in their home countries, often encounter difficulties adapting to the Chinese market in areas such as creative conception, channel selection, and promotional language. For example, in some multinational advertising and marketing cases, some foreign teams simply copied humorous and witty advertising ideas that were successful in their home countries, without considering that certain humorous elements might not resonate with the Chinese cultural context, or even lead to misunderstandings due to cultural differences. Ah Yu understands this well, so when selecting talent, even when encountering highly skilled foreign candidates, she must carefully consider their understanding of the Chinese market. For those with insufficient understanding, she needs to spend a lot of time communicating and training them to help them familiarize themselves with the characteristics of the Chinese market, so as to better develop advertising and marketing plans that are compatible with both international and domestic perspectives.

(II) Selection of Art and Design Talents – The Challenge of Cultural Style Integration

In selecting art and design talent, Zhong Hua bears the heavy responsibility of balancing the integration of artistic styles from different cultural backgrounds—a highly challenging task. Film and television projects often need to convey stories and create atmosphere through visual art. Different countries have rich and unique artistic styles. The biggest challenge Zhong Hua faces is how to skillfully integrate these styles, avoid stylistic conflicts, and create novel and unique visual effects that fit the overall positioning of the project.

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