I don't think this will get through to anyone. The only reason people can respect the time used up by a director is because every minute of filming has a massive directly attributable dollar cost to the company. In normal employment, the company is going to spending that money on either yourself or your replacement, so there's not an obvious, immediate economic incentive in allowing you to do what you consider "real work" (building something) instead of allowing the manager to do what he considers "real work" (sitting around and talking about stuff).