Producing for Film and Television
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Producing for Film and Television

Sue Austen

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eBook - ePub

Producing for Film and Television

Sue Austen

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About This Book

Producing for Film and Television offers a comprehensive overview of the different stages of film production, from development of an idea to delivery, distribution and festival entry. Written from the producer's point of view, the book guides the reader through each stage of the process, offering helpful tips, industry guidance and example paperwork. Supported with over fifty illustrations and photographs, this new book includes advice on copyright and working with writers; pitching your idea; raising production finance; budgeting and scheduling; risk assessment and health and safety management; the roles within production teams; post-production work and marketing and distribution. With helpful information on industry terms and timeframes, this essential guide is aimed at film students and aspiring producers who want a greater understanding of the role of the independent producer or is planning their own production, whether feature length, short film or drama series. A comprehensive guide to the different stages of film production, from development of an idea to delivery, distribution and festival entry, it is fully illustrated with 23 colour photos and 34 line artworks.

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Publisher
Crowood
Year
2019
ISBN
9781785005329
1
WHAT IS A PRODUCER?
A producer is a man with a dream. I say ‘I don’t write, I don’t direct, I don’t act, I don’t compose music, I don’t design costumes’. What do I do? I make things happen.
David Wolper, Producer
(Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, LA Confidential, Roots)
image
Many people have no idea what the producer of a film actually does.
Most people interested in film and television, whether they are a consumer or a practitioner, know broadly speaking what a director does. He or she directs the cast towards their Academy or Emmy award-winning performance, designs the set-ups and shots, supervises the edit and much more. Many people also have an understanding of the job of the production designer, cinematog-rapher, editor, sound recordist, screenwriter and other key roles in filmmaking. But many of these same people have only a very sketchy idea of what the producer of a film actually does.
The traditional image of the Hollywood producer is typically of a large rich man (and yes, it was then always a man!) smoking a huge cigar. Nowadays this is a long way from the truth. This book will mainly focus on the modern independent producer, the person I describe as a ‘creative producer’. This individual does not have major studio backing, and is probably earning their living on a project-by-project basis. They may very well be working across film and television, drama and documentary. They will be someone who develops film and series ideas, works closely with the writer or writers, finds the right director and talent with whom to collaborate, raises the finance to make the project happen, hires the team to work with, produces the film or series, supervises the post-production, delivers the finished work, and is still involved when it comes to distribution, festival screenings, marketing and transmission.
I think of production as a drama in five acts. As will become apparent through the next chapters, the producer will have a crucial and evolving job to do throughout these different stages, which are:
Act One: Development
Act Two: Pre-production
Act Three: Production
Act Four: Post-production
Act Five: Distribution
DEFINING THE PRODUCER’S ROLE
One of the difficulties of precisely defining the producer’s role is that it is ever changing. There are as many different types of producer and as many titles as there are formats and genres. At the start or end of most feature films and more and more drama series and documentaries, there will be a number of people – sometimes as many as ten – who have some kind of producer credit. In addition to the term ‘producer’, we often see credits for the following:
Executive producer
Line producer
Development producer
Associate producer
Co-producer
The rest of this book will focus on the creative producer, but who are all these other people, and what do they actually do?
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
The credit of ‘Executive Producer’ is in reality a courtesy title. This doesn’t mean that this person is not very important: they most definitely are, and without them the film or series would probably never get made. But they don’t necessarily have a tangible role on the production. The executive producer may have invested money into the film or series. They may work on the permanent staff of one of the major funders of the film – for example a film fund or broadcaster. They may represent the production company. They might be the writer. They might be a piece of key talent, such as an actor, whose commitment to the project has been instrumental in getting it funded.
They may work for the distribution company, the studio, or even the bank who is cash flowing the shoot. They have definitely earned their credit. But if you are working as a member of the crew on the film you may never see them, except at the film’s premiere or on Oscar night.
LINE PRODUCERS
By contrast the ‘Line Producer’ has a vital and very tangible role in making dramas and documentaries happen. All productions need a line producer and their team. One way of understanding the line producer’s role is to think of the top sheet of the standard film budget. It is divided into two main sections: ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’. ‘Above the line’ sit the fees and payments to the writer, director, producer, executive producers and main cast. ‘Below the line’ is everything else.
The line producer is essentially responsible for the ‘everything else’ part of the budget. He or she runs the production office, manages the budget, negotiates deals with facilities houses, personnel, suppliers, studios and key locations. The line producer also shares responsibility for certain health and safety requirements, including risk assessments and insurance. They must also ensure that all departments are accurately reporting their spending on a weekly basis. Ultimately it is their job to make sure the shoot is completed on time and within budget.
This is a complex and critical job. On some very low-budget films, shorts and dramas, the producer may do some of the line producer’s work, and there might be a production manager instead. But this is more or less the same job, just less well paid. On very large productions with multiple units there might be both a line producer and a production manager.
DEVELOPMENT PRODUCERS
It is becoming increasingly common to see the credit of ‘Development Producer’ on films and series. Usually this means the person who has developed the project up to the point when it has been ‘green lit’ for production. In some cases this may be someone who works on staff at a production company or studio or broadcaster, and whose job it is to find, develop and sell ideas.
Development producers have important key relationships with agents, publishers and writers. They know when a ‘hot’ book is coming out and how to get advance copies. They know which writers sell, and they nurture these relationships to make sure they get a first look at their new project. They will work on the scripts, may attach directors and other key talent, and may be involved in pitching and fun-draising – but they will then step aside when the film or series goes into production. Normally they will be working on multiple projects at once.
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS
An associate producer is often a more junior job, and the title may be offered to a promising young producer with limited experience. In documentary and factual programming, the ‘Associate Producer’ credit may be given to a person stepping up from being a researcher but not quite ready to be made a producer. The role may involve development, research, packaging or supervising other departments. In fiction and drama the ‘Associate Producer’ credit might be given to someone from a small production company who initially developed the project but is not considered experienced enough to be the sole producer or to be offered a ‘Co-Producer’ credit.
CO-PRODUCERS
The term ‘Co-Producer’ is another catch-all title. Almost all film and television drama now involves some kind of co-production. Aside from studio pictures, which may still be fully funded from a single source, the majority of films have multiple investors. Some of these may be described as co-producers, but as we have seen earlier, they are as likely to be given the title of producer or executive producer on the credit roll. A co-producer may also be a junior producer, or an individual who is not quite important enough to have a full ‘Producer’ credit, but has still made a valuable contribution to the production.
There is more about co-production in Chapter 5, ‘Raising Production Finance’.
THE WRITER AS PRODUCER IN US TELEVISION
The US television system for creating drama series is somewhat different from that which has traditionally operated in the UK and Europe. On this side of the Atlantic we tend to commission individual writers to create new dramas, and to credit them with the authorship of the work. If other writers are brought in to write further episodes in the series, this is normally in consultation with the original writer. Writers take ownership of their episode, and receive a credit as the writer or screenwriter on it. The original writer may receive an additional credit, such as ‘based on an idea by’, or ‘series created by’.
In the USA, however, a system is operated known as ‘the writers’ room’. A number of writers, usually between eight and twelve, gather together every day to conceive, create, plot and write the series. The lead writer and originator of the series is known as the ‘showrunner’, while the other members of the room will range in experience from those with a lot of network credits, to those who have just graduated from film school. Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), David Simon (The Wire, Treme, The Deuce), Matthew Weiner (Mad Men) and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) are examples of American showrunners.
On US drama series everyone who belongs to the writers’ room and has contributed to the final script of an episode of the series receives an onscreen credit as a producer. This may be as executive producer, producer, or co-producer. This situation has come about because of restrictions placed on the credit system by the all-powerful Writers Guild of America. All writing credits have to be approved by the Guild, so to get around this restriction, the writers customarily take a producer credit instead. This is despite the fact they may have had nothing at all to do with the production processes other than as a writer. The actual producer of the show is listed under the credit ‘produced by’.
WHO IS THE PRODUCER?
At the 2017 Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles there was an unprecedented and embarrassing mistake when Faye Dunaway announced the winner of Best Picture as La La Land when in fact Moonlight had won. The person who stepped forward to correct the error was not La La Land’s director Damien Chazelle, but its producer, Jordan Horowitz. This is because the Academy awards its highest honour, the prize for Best Picture, to the film’s producers. In Hollywood’s profit-driven world they understand very well that it is producers, and not directors, who make films.
In the early days of the cinema industry the studios controlled all aspects of production. They owned the studios, the back lots, the directors, the writers, the actors, the technicians, the laboratories and processing plants, and the cinemas. They paid their staff to write scripts, employed their staff to direct and film them, they cast the actors they had under contract, and finally they showed the films in their own cinemas. This was known as ‘vertical integration’, and the early movie moguls (the producers) made a lot of money this way.
But in 1938 the US Department of Justice brought an anti-trust case against the studios, accusing them of creating a monopoly. The main defendant was Paramount Pictures, which at the time was the largest of the Hollywood studios. But in reality, the case was brought against them all – namely MGM, Warner Bros, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures and United Artists. The studios resisted change, entered into a bitter battle, and appealed for almost ten years. Finally, in 1948, the case reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled against the studios, insisting that they give up some of their control over the industry. They were forced to sell their cinemas and give up the exhibition side of their businesses.
Although initially the move caused a slump in audience figures, it opened the way for independent distributors and allowed independent producers to get access to audiences for the first time. Now it was possible for talented individuals to create films and put them before a paying public without having to go to a studio and have the studio interfere in how the film was made. This was the birth of the independent producer.
At the same time as the Hollywood studios were losing some of their grip on the industry, a new medium was emerging: television. In the USA there were three main networks or broadcasters: NBC, CBS and ABC. There was also a much smaller public broadcasting system known as PBS. Television production soon moved from the east to the west coast, and live broadcasting made way for filmed dramas and documentaries as well as sporting events, news and entertainment shows.
In the UK there was just one channel to begin with: the British Broadcasting Corporation, known as the BBC. Then in 1956 an alternative channel known as ITV was launched. The critical difference between the two networks was that the BBC was publicly funded via a compulsory tax known as ‘the licence fee’, and ITV was a commercial station whose income derived from selling advertising slots. But both networks operated a production system not dissimilar to that of the US film studios. They made programmes ‘in house’, and then showed them on their own network. There were producers on staff, directors on staff, cameramen (no camerawomen then!), editors, designers and sound recordists, all on staff. Only the actors and writers were hired on a project-by-project basis. This is how all UK television programming was created until the early 1980s.
In 1982, the UK’s first new channel for more than a decade was launched as Channel Four. The important difference between C4 and its predecessors was that it did not intend to make any of its own programmes, but rather would source them from independent production companies. C4 operated like a publishing house, in that its commissioning editors chose the projects they liked, and then handed over control to the producers, who were expected to deliver back completed programmes on time and on budget. If there was a shortfall between the sum that C4 paid for the series and its cost of production, it was up to the producer to fill that gap. But the producer also benefited from the opportunity to exploit the programmes in other territories or markets by selling them to other networks and stations.
This new model created a whole new breed of independent producer and production companies, and a new industry was born. But C4 was a small broadcaster with limited funds. The ...

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