I suppose that all depends on what you mean by collaborative.

I've worked with a partner for years now - and it's definitely not for everyone. It's not easy to find someone who not only compliments your sensibilities, but who shores up your shortcomings.

As far as barriers, I think much more than technology, voice, or anything else - it's simply ego. So many of us grew with the the idea of the 'auteur' that it can be difficult to shake sometimes.

That said - filmmaking is a collaborative art regardless of whether the 'directed by' credit has one or two names behind it, and it's always a challenge to find people who can all agree on what film they're making.

I find that what has worked for us has been developing our own workflow - through development, preproduction, production and post. Our division of labor may not work for everyone - but via trial and error we've found what works for us. There is a danger in working with a partner in that it's easy to use the other person as an excuse for lack of momentum... you can become enablers for eachother in negative ways, and it takes constant vigilance to make sure you're keeping eachother accountable. That said - when two people are working on all cylinders towards a common goal it's amazing what can get done in a short amount of time.

I think the first step in being able to productively work collaboratively with other filmmakers is to be able to be honest with yourself in regards to your own limitations. Once you can both do that - it becomes much easier to communicate and develop your own workflow.

Not sure if that answers your question at all - but in the end collaboration is something that defintiely doesn't have a 'one size fits all' recipe. It's all going to depend on the personalities of those involved. But first and foremost honesty and open communication are key - which means ego needs to be checked at the door.

That's been my experience anyhow.

Technology.

The collaborative tools like Kaltura don't plug in to what filmmakers are using to edit, ie Final Cut Pro. There needs to be a way to share Edit Decision Lists between folks in a collaborative environment and have the footage sync in the cloud.

We need a soundcloud.com for movies.

I like soundcloud viddler lets you place comments at any point like soundcloud....

Right now me and my team for asthedustsettles.com use drop.io to share files back and forth.

One problem with collaboration is that you must trust people. And people must do their part in the collaboration. I think that the technology is here. Solutions are available to work with others.

Mike