In the end, what really makes or breaks a good filmmaker is his ability to motivate the people around him. As a student in highschool I find this especially hard seeing as though everybody around you is either bored or busy. My suggestion is to be inspired in what you are doing. Don't let other peoples oppinions interfere with you work. When you're inspired, the people around what to be.

That's great advice, and it's very true. Since getting others motivated is so hard, I've usually stuck to projects that don't require a lot of people (especially after the feature film that I co-produced and DP'ed over the last 3 years; we had scenes with 100+ hungry extras).

I tend to think that the only way to be sure something is done right is to do it yourself. Independence doesn't hurt.

I definately agree with you about how what makes (or breaks) a filmmaker is his ability to motivate the people around him. However, I don't think we should always neglect other's opinions (look at our president...the same concept applies to filmmakers). I think we should definitely seek advice from others who we know are trustworthy and know what they're talking about. I strongly suggest doing that with the script. I've found it very helpful.

I agree that getting people motivated is important, but also there are the unmotivatable people. Those are the worst, and somehow I always get stuck with them in projects in my video calss, lol.

I don't want to use the word "stuck" but its the only word I can think of.
For the past 3 years I've been pretty much "stuck" with the same people in my crew. Occasionally we bring someone new in, but they never want to help on the next project because they realize how much work it is. Nobody wants to dedicate that much time to something anymore.
So find a group of friends who you can always trust on and occasionally bring in a new face just to keep things fresh.

I tend to like smaller crews, I especially like being an auteur and doing everything only because you don't have to communicate to the camera ops, and you pretty much have all the vision in your head and all the motivation comes from you so yay! I dislike larger crews, for example this year I'm in a large group of six or seven and I'm camera op, I don't know what shot the director wants because he's good at communicating to actors.

Here's a secret:

The Hollywood film industry is full of a lot of unmotivated people.

with high schoolers, or any teenager, money is great motivation, that is if u have some extra money lyin around. u culd give some money at the start and then promise them more if they finish all the shooting, even a bonus if they have to come back for a reshoot that u notice u need in post.

yeah..but some of us can't afford to pay people to help us make movies. i think giving your crew small amounts of money [like $10 or something..] for helping with a shoot is actually more cheap than convincing them to help you because of the experience of making a movie..or something.

Paying the crew on a low budget student film is an absolutely horrible idea. You will wind up with people who are only working for money, and for $10-20 for a few days of long, hard work, you'll waste more time getting them to do their jobs than it would have taken for you to do it yourself.

Delegating responsibilities on projects (in small scale) only leads to BS bureaucracy and falling behind schedule. It's much easier to do everything possible yourself, and at most, use 1 or 2 assistants for some things (triggering effects, holding the camera, etc.).

It's probably better to offer some food at the end of the shoot, instead of actual money.