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Thursday, February 08, 2018
What is Producing? A Group of Sundance Producers Share Insights on Financing, Selecting Projects and Making a Career out of Making Movies
Filmmaker Magazine: What is producing? I ask myself this question a lot, and the title on my business card literally reads “Producer.” I’m staff at a rad women-run studio in Brooklyn while also producing my own films as well as a handful of others. I say all this to reiterate just how amorphous the craft of producing can be.
3 comments:
Evan Schild
said...
This article was incredible interesting and super important for me to read. While I don’t know much about Film producing, I have worked for a Broadway producer who has done a couple films one is the film adaption of Hello again. One of my assignments during my time there was to read a book about producing in film and all aspects to it such as rights and payments. Getting funding is extremely difficult and a very weird process. For theater you could get someone to write a check for 50,000$ and that goes into a big pool of investor money. Meanwhile for film you get money which than goes into disruption which than needs to get picked up from a company. It’s a very long process and money for funding is very weird. Hopefully in the future I will get to learn and work for a flim and tv Producer.
This is such an interesting and informative article for me because even as the niece of a producer, it was never clear what my uncle specifically DID for his job in the TV industry. I always thought of producers as the ones who payed for and backed the project in name, while I saw my uncle as a sort of director-figure. I guess both of those images were partially correct - it turns out producers are the ones who obtain the film's funds in some way, wether paying for it themselves or getting funding from grants or other companies. It's also sort f like a film or TV shows production manager, which explains my view of what my Uncle did. Producing is very different, clearly, from what I first thought it was, but looking into it it also feels very familiar, unlike the mysterious profession I used to think it was.
I remember in my Design Production interview with Carnegie Mellon University I told Molly that I want to be a producer. I’ve always dreamed of making movies, however, I’ve never wanted to hold the camera, or act in front of the camera. It’s really hard to describe the role of a producer, and I think this article is really important because it applauds the hard work of a person whose role within the industry is never acknowledged or fully understood. Film producers have their hands in so many different parts of a project. I’ve always wanted to be a film producer because I believe film producers are like the gardener's of a good film. They purchase the seeds (find an idea), they find a good shovel (director) and they make sure their garden gets many minerals and water (actors and money). Film Producers cultivate the success and platform for directors and actors to have the opportunity to have a voice at Sundance, Hollywood, and other film festivals.
3 comments:
This article was incredible interesting and super important for me to read. While I don’t know much about Film producing, I have worked for a Broadway producer who has done a couple films one is the film adaption of Hello again. One of my assignments during my time there was to read a book about producing in film and all aspects to it such as rights and payments. Getting funding is extremely difficult and a very weird process. For theater you could get someone to write a check for 50,000$ and that goes into a big pool of investor money. Meanwhile for film you get money which than goes into disruption which than needs to get picked up from a company. It’s a very long process and money for funding is very weird. Hopefully in the future I will get to learn and work for a flim and tv Producer.
This is such an interesting and informative article for me because even as the niece of a producer, it was never clear what my uncle specifically DID for his job in the TV industry. I always thought of producers as the ones who payed for and backed the project in name, while I saw my uncle as a sort of director-figure. I guess both of those images were partially correct - it turns out producers are the ones who obtain the film's funds in some way, wether paying for it themselves or getting funding from grants or other companies. It's also sort f like a film or TV shows production manager, which explains my view of what my Uncle did. Producing is very different, clearly, from what I first thought it was, but looking into it it also feels very familiar, unlike the mysterious profession I used to think it was.
I remember in my Design Production interview with Carnegie Mellon University I told Molly that I want to be a producer. I’ve always dreamed of making movies, however, I’ve never wanted to hold the camera, or act in front of the camera. It’s really hard to describe the role of a producer, and I think this article is really important because it applauds the hard work of a person whose role within the industry is never acknowledged or fully understood. Film producers have their hands in so many different parts of a project. I’ve always wanted to be a film producer because I believe film producers are like the gardener's of a good film. They purchase the seeds (find an idea), they find a good shovel (director) and they make sure their garden gets many minerals and water (actors and money). Film Producers cultivate the success and platform for directors and actors to have the opportunity to have a voice at Sundance, Hollywood, and other film festivals.
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