Thanks for the positive feedback! I'm more than happy to answer your questions, some of which may come off a bit surprising. Everything my team and I do is done on an incredibly small scale in terms of production. We work in a small unit but produce large projects in a two week turn around.
I write, direct, and edit all of the projects we work on---editing includes main cutting, visual effects, sound design, and titles. We had a dp, but after college moved everyone around a bit he was unavailable to come back for our last 4 productions, so I've also taken up the DP mantle and but for many of the shoots I'm in the production so we have two people that serve as camera operators. Our casts are relatively small --- never more than 5 people really --- and we'll rehearse as a full cast two days in the week leading up to a shoot. Since our shorts are no more than 2:30-3:00 long, I take a lot of time to rehearse all of the actors so that we create an actually engaging short video that stands strong in character performances, rather than just as visual-eye candy.
All of us in the team have insanely hectic lives, more so than we anticipated before going off to college, but we work around that as best we can for scheduling. Each short video we make we'll shoot in a single day, at most two if there's a big company move required. But that being said, our crew, on a perfect day, is 4 people, plus our 3 cast members. However, the cast consists of myself and three other friends whom I've worked with for over 5 years now on different projects, and they've served as both actors AND crew on every production, so even though I have 4 people (myself included) as dedicated crew members, I can have as many as up to 6 or 7 crew on hand to help out as grips, gafs, or boom ops depending on what a shot requires.
In terms of maintaining interest/morale amongst a crew, it comes down to two things (in my experience at least): working with people that genuinely like you/are interested in what you're creating, and demonstrating incredible enthusiasm for any given project. My first short film had one actor, one camera man, no dialogue (so no on set audio required), and between everything we needed for that film, there were a total of two people involved in creating the entire project. We did a handful of festival runs with the project, won some awards, and afterwards some local close friends expressed an interest in doing what my best friend and I had done. From then on (five years ago), we formed what's been our crew ever since, so those initial relationships were built on a familiarity and trust that came with being friends with many of these people before asking if they wanted to help us with our film projects.
To keep all of them aboard for the last five years though requires more than just a past friendship, because on a film set you can destroy even the best of relationship in a heartbeat. Like I mentioned, your enthusiasm for any given project will trickle down to the rest of a crew---if they sense you're making something just for the sake of making something then they're not likely to care about the project in even the slightest respect. You'd be surprised how far confidence and lots of enthusiasm will help carry a crew --- make them believe in what they're helping to create (give the project meaning, both to yourself and to the crew) and they will work hard and stay on board with you through whatever you make --- assuming you treat everyone respectfully haha. That being said though, you don't want to fake this enthusiasm, whatever you're making should be a distinct choice --- think why you're choosing to make this project, as opposed to something else --- make sure you're choosing something that you have a genuine passion for, that way the enthusiasm expressed isn't a necessity in order to get the project made, but rather it's a result of the project you've chosen to make.
As you create more and more with the same people they'll be more and more excited to work with you in the future and start asking you when the next project will begin and things like that. Once that happens, then it'll motivate you to keep producing content, and it turns into a happy cycle.
Our main website is under renovation at the moment, but we invite everyone to subscribe to our youtube channel, as that is where you'll without a doubt be able to keep up to date with all our new projects that we release! (sorry for the novel of a response)