I am going to give a typically philosophical answer, but just to buy your patience for the process of philosophy, I'll give you a piece of low-hanging fruit. If you are planning to make a campy movie, the philosophical essay by Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp will almost certainly help. 98.4% guaranteed.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/facul...

Don't try to distill specific actionable to-do items from it. Just read it, re-read it, let it seep into your consciousness and subconsciousness, and your movie will just turn out better, as that philosophy informs your individual decisions. That's how philosophy adds value. By adding subtle flavors that make big differences without you needing to do anything specific.

Now for the philosophy of whether philosophy can add value.

There is a (possibly apocryphal) anecdote that might be illuminating. The Greek philosopher Thales had an argument with a skeptical businessman friend about the practical value of philosophy. Thales argued that while philosophers could do business, businessmen couldn't do philosophy. They made a bet, and Thales won, by pulling off a successful business venture (he bet correctly on olive futures basically).

It's a rather self-serving story, and I actually believe good businessmen can be better philosophers than "professional" philosophers, but the general point is, yes, philosophy can help achieve practical ends.

But for it to do that, you have to stop thinking of it as a "profession" with "experts" who should be "hired." Such an assumption is buried in this very question for example -- it suggests that studio bosses (or actors or directors or producers) can't also be philosophers and that philosophy is a job function that can be defined and hired against.

Such either/or thinking applies to professions. It is highly unlikely that a doctor is also an engineer unless s/he is superhuman. Professions naturally absorb a lifetime. Philosophy though, doesn't really occupy any "space" in a life. It merely flavors other professions. There are philosophical and non-philosophical ways of being other things. It CAN fill an empty life if you want it to, but the fun part is that it can also fill a life that is already "full" of something else.

So the very idea of "philosopher" is antithetical to the notion of "professional" or "specialist."

It is interesting that the answers so far are saying "no" or "depends on what you mean by improved" or pointing to specific philosophers and philosophies (if you are thinking you need to know about the specific ideas of Deleuze for instance, you've already lost 99% of the potential value). These answers seem to operate by a professionalized notion of philosophy is or can be. In particular a view of philosophy as just another kind of specialized skill like programming.

One answer (from Neil Edelstein) has an implicit assumption that philosophy is the opposite of decisiveness. Again, this only applies to professionalized philosophy.

Good philosophy can add as much value to rapid read-fire-aim decision-making as it can to slow and reflecting decision-making.

The finest fighter pilot in history, John Boyd, was also one of the finest philosophers in history. He wasn't a professional philosopher though (which is why -- cheap shot ahead -- he was a good one).

Paul Graham is primarily a philosopher of startups (he's a good philosopher, which is why -- cheap shot #2 coming up -- he dropped out of professional philosophy), and at the same time someone who has actually played the central role in speeding up the tempo of the startup world 100x.

You get more insight if you switch to the adjective rather than focusing on the noun. "Philosophical" rather than "philosopher." A philosopher can help you add the adjective to your work if it is a) missing and b) needed. So yeah, you can hire a good one to add the flavor if the adjective is missing in your staff. But that's a practical detail. The broader intent is to make work more philosophical.

Judiciously applied, anything can be improved by making it more philosophical. The nice thing is that philosophy comes with the judiciousness required for its own application. The mark of a good philosopher is actually knowing when being more philosophical can help.

So the best way for a studio boss to figure out if philosophy can be useful is to ask a good philosopher. Unlike other professions/consulting practices, such a question is central to a philosopher. Other types of professionals can only be honest about when they can be helpful IF they are philosophical about their work. Most types of knowledge don't come with a self-referential self-awareness module.

Non-philosophical professionals operate by the "hammer" heuristic: when you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. Non-philosophical programmers think all problems can be solved by software. Non-philosophical political science majors think everything can be solved by sophisticated politics.

So what's a good philosopher? It certainly isn't an academic or someone who knows the philosophy literature deeply. That's neither necessary, nor sufficient. It could be some random homeless guy.

What defines real philosophy is a basic sensibility that is captured in some common definitions of philosophy, such as "philosophy is not about answering the questions, but about questioning the answers" or "philosophy is thinking about thinking." The former is NOT necessarily about naive, drag-inducing second-guessing, it can simply a more aware way of doing even formulaic thinking, where mind-blindness to meaning is removed. The latter does NOT necessarily mean that it s a meta-cognition process that competes for attention with the underlying process. It can merely be a flavor of "mindfulness" that informs cognition without occupying scarce attention.

"Real" philosophers naturally think in super-charged ways that force an awareness of assumptions and perspectives, default beliefs and unexamined doctrines. They are able to tease out and make hidden patterns of meta-cognition more legible if that's required.

So a good philosopher will ask and answer questions that you didn't even think to ask, if necessary. If you bring them on board to help answer specific questions like "What is the next level to which I can take the Batman franchise?" the first thing they may do is challenge those questions. They might ask, "what do you mean by 'level'" (or if the philosopher is Bill Clinton, "what do you mean by is'?"). But they may not. They may let a non-philosophical person run with their momentum without challenging it, but they likely have a better awareness of what's actually going on.

So quiet often, the most effective philosophy does nothing except maintain an invisible awareness of what's actually going on. It's valuable to think of this do-nothing gear of philosophy as insurance. You can justify paying for it the same way.

When it DOES become visible due to specific "insured" events, philosophy reveals itself as an attitude and a certain doubt-fueled kind of questioning of everything. Particularly familiar and apparently atomic concepts that everybody uses and nobody realizes they don't understand at all.

Joseph Campbell for instance (a genuine philosopher who is misguidedly criticized by "professional" philosophers) helped film-makers look into their own work and find depths they didn't know existed. His work is now the foundation for a lot of script doctors. Of course, the non-philosophical have turned his work into yet another formula instead of a philosophical lens into narrative.

Philosophy typically adds value by going backwards. It retreats from action. It introduces doubt where there was certainty, stillness and reflection where there was motion, hard questions where there were previously easy answers.

So it can help knock you out of a rut and back you out of cognitive cul-de-sacs. It can also knock you out of a groove and make things worse. It can also waste your time by getting caught up in the distinctions between the groove and rut metaphors.

The good news is that good philosophers recognize this natural bias towards retreat as well, and generally develop a sophisticated and self-critical philosophy of action that corrects it. Which is why, despite this attitude, philosophers can also end up being highly action-oriented in a ready-fire-aim way, the philosopher-warrior archetype.

But this does not mean they merely go back from doubt to certainty for example. They might go from doubt to decisiveness without suspending the doubt. A mind once stretched by philosophy can never go back to mindless doing again. If it succeeds in returning from reflection to action, it does so mindfully.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "I would not give a farthing for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity."

Philosophy is often about complexity and the "other side of complexity."