Tag: producing

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Truly Free Film

15 Ways To Show Your Collaborators You Appreciate Them

As an indie film producer, what can you do to show appreciation for all those that are helping you make your film?

  1. Do your job well. Make a film everyone is proud of. Give the team memories that they were lead well.
  2. Provide timely information and decisive actions, as clearly as possible. Don’t try to hide anything. Don’t sugar coat; speak truthfully about the situation — reality may not be pretty, but presenting it clarifies your mutual trust.
  3. Recognize how well your collaborators do their jobs and show how much you appreciate them. Show respect. You can’t make this film without them; they chose to join you and you are fortunate to have them.
  4. Learn everyone’s name. Learn something about them. Take interest in their lives. Remember & celebrate their birthdays. Thank them for their work.
  5. Demonstrate that you are concerned for your crew’s health. Provide vitamins and sun screen. Can you provide flu shots on set? When someone is sick, send them home.
  6. Have a true commitment to safety. If working long hours on location, provide overnight accommodations. Don’t let people drive when they are over tired. Really have a safety meeting each day.
  7. Good food is quickest route to someone’s heart. Provide thoughtful craft service: healthy food, fun food, new food, fresh food. Work with your caterer to make sure people are getting what they want.
  8. Provide a constructive work environment. Keep the workplace clean and orderly. Don’t joke around camera. Don’t let people read in view of others. Give everyone access to information.
  9. Don’t contribute to a bad world. Help your team recycle. Don’t force them to waste due to their work situation. Use less paper.
  10. Bring some fun into their world. Provide entertainment or education at lunch breaks. Do “dollar days” at the end of the week.
  11. Let them help the world at large. Organize a blood drive at lunch during production, a toy drive, or coat drive during the winter months. Get absentee ballots when they will be working during election periods.
  12. Adopt and post/display strong anti-discrimination, anti-sexual harassment policies.
  13. Help them enjoy themselves. On location, provide an extensive entertainment list for all visiting crew and cast, including restaurants, theaters, medical, specialty stores, massage, and directions. Organize some group outings during non-working hours.
  14. Go that extra distance to make things better for the team. On location, provide laundry service. In booking travel, always enter everyone’s Frequent Flyer miles. Provide direction books in all vehicles.
  15. Recognize everyone as a key part of the process. Get them the tools they need to do their work well. Screen dailies and invite everyone. Create a blooper reel to screen for crew. Give them posters, DVDs, t-shirts. Inform them as to the progress of the production. Allow them to comment on the website.
When I have asked for some of these things from past production teams, I have occasionally met with some resistance. “I am a production manager, not a camp counselor!” “These people are adults; they should be able to take care of themselves!”.
 
I don’t agree. Everyone works hard. We need to show that we appreciate it. It’s funny though, when I put this question out there to the Facebook & Twitter worlds, I think people mostly recommended alcohol and backend points. Money and booze, maybe that’s all it takes…
 
Special thanks to all of you who contributed to this. This was a crowdsourced post.
Categories
Truly Free Film

Why Indie Film Industry Needs Producers

It’s not about just bringing the money…

Time and time again, I get the impression that the “Film Industry” generally does not value producers. I suppose I shouldn’t deduce that The Studios’ abandonment of Producer Overhead First Look Deals means that the business doesn’t value Producers, and just that The Studios need to control costs or that they have other ways of accessing content, but…

 
Well, it’s hard not to feel that it’s just that Producers aren’t respected. I suppose that financiers willingness to under pay Producers should not lead me to think that they don’t know how much a Producer does. Maybe they are just trying to get a good deal. I suppose that I could take it as flattering that experienced folks in the business, assume that my overhead is covered, that my assistant’s salary is taken care of.
 
So what is it that Producers do for the Film Industry at large?
  1. Producers bring new investors into the business, both in terms of sourcing them, and structuring deals that make sense from an investors’ perspective
  2. Producers look out for investors’ needs (substantially more than distributors do), as Producers think long term and need private equity to stay in the game.
  3. Producers provide development supervision to get the scripts right — and they usually get a lot more writing done without additional costs — because the authors know they are doing it to get the best movie made, and not just to justify their jobs.
  4. Producers inspire talent to embrace work for affordable yet just rates — because everyone knows that the producer is doing also for the love but for a whole lot longer.
  5. Producers counter-balance industry pressure to increase costs and keep movies’ budgets at levels that make sense — which is good for the industry.
  6. Producers innovate — be it in the search to deliver a better film or to control costs, innovation is in their blood.
  7. Producers develop talent and take the chances on emerging artists.
  8. Producers keep in touch with the audience, weighing where their tastes and habits are.
  9. Producers bring content, talent, technology, audiences, investors together.
  10. Producers help show the business and the culture where they might aspire to be going.
Categories
Truly Free Film

Ten Steps (Plus One) For How To Survive The Current Indie Producer Hell

I was talking to a comrade in the field a bit back, and mapped out this survival strategy for the exceedingly tough times that producing indie film is these days. See it’s simple, right? Just do these ten things (and then a little more) and you got it made (if you don’t have to actually earn a living that is!):

1) Cut all your budgets by 60% — but recognize your fee is going down by an even greater percentage;
2) Meet all the marketing, distribution, publicity, social network, widget & app designers, web strategy, & transmedia story world builders you can possibly meet, because “producing the marketing and distribution” of all your films under $4M has become part of the producer’s job description — but recognize that is going to be a major time-suck on your schedule;
3)Aggregate viable projects under $500K to build a new media distribution apparatus, recognizing the lack of fees and time suck involved — but that the low budget is required to experiment with new platforms with unproven financial models and a multitude is necessary to learn;
4)Continue to try to get one of 10 or so available slots for prestige specialized film budget over $10M so you can actually earn a fee, but recognize the odds are really really low that yours will be the one out of 500 or so that are competing with you;
5)Do everything you can to get a studio picture and/or television series since they are the only ways to legitimize yourself in the industry’s eyes, the quickest ways to promote your brand to potential new fans, and the most likely ways to earn enough money to sustain yourself;
6)Spend some time every day building your own audience and deepen their level of commitment to you by you giving back to them regularly — so that ultimately they will follow you and help promote your work, because you aren’t going to be doing it alone;
7) Find some other way to earn money on a regular basis since the film industry will remain unstable for a very long time and we all need to pay the bills;
8) Fight for affordable health care and education because if you have to go into substantial debt to pay for what should be available to all then you will never be able to consider a career in the arts to begin with or ever again;
9) Try to give back to a younger generation who are much different than you (other than their interest in film) because if things don’t make some substantial changes soon, their won’t be a film industry for you to work in either (i.e. we’ve all done the same things for too long and the system is broken and we don’t seem to know how to fix it) and besides, maybe you will learn something;
10) Keep your overhead as low as possible forever and ever and ever, as you will need to remain very flexible in the days and months to come.
Did I get the list right? What did I leave out? I mean, other than the obvious one of having a large fortune to squander. You do know that this is a quiz, right? I mean, I did leave some things off the list just because the internet likes top ten lists best. And of course because I want to test you. But really there was one, that I thought was obvious and is really why I have an energy to do any blogging or social networking whatsoever. It’s the most crucial if Indie Film will live:
If Indie Film is going to truly survive — and once again flourish –we all have to do everything we can to organize our community, to encourage participation, to share information.
Choose the culture you want.
Get on the bus. Please.
Thank you.
Categories
Truly Free Film

Lee Daniels On Moving From Producing To Directing

On Episode Five of Christine & Ted Talk To Directors At Sundance ’09, Lee Daniels, director of Precious, talks about how talking as a producer, is much different that talking as a director:

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Truly Free Film

Sundance Creative Producing Initiative

This past summer I was a mentor at Sundance’s first Creative Producing Lab.  I was completely impressed.  In regards to Jane’s earlier post today, this is that program.  Granted it can only be accessed by a very limited number of participants (there were 4 fellows last year), but it was a comprehensive and intensive program that I would advise for everyone.

And you know what?  The deadline to apply is quickly approaching.
You can also find the application and additional information on the program at the link below:
http://www.sundance.org/applications/CPI/

The Sundance Creative Producing Initiative much more than just the summer lab though  (from Sundance’s own literature): 

it is a year-long creative and strategic fellowship program for emerging American producers with their next project.

The program was conceived to develop and support the next generation of American independent producers. For over 27 years, the Sundance Institute has offered in-depth year-round programs for feature screenwriters and directors. In an increasingly competitive and complex marketplace, the health and excellence of the independent film movement hinge on sophisticated creative and strategic producers with whom these directors and writers can collaborate.

The initiative focuses on the holistic producer, who identifies, options, develops and pitches material, champions and challenges the writer/director creatively, raises financing, leads the casting/packaging process, hires and inspires crew, and navigates the sales, distribution, and marketing arenas. The program is designed to hone emerging producers’ creative instincts in the scripting and editing stages and to evolve their communicating and problem-solving skills at all stages of realizing a project.

Five producers will be selected for a one-year fellowship and participate in the following:

Creative Producing Lab (described below)
Producers Conference attendance
Sundance Film Festival attendance (screenings, networking opportunities)
$5,000 living stipend; $5,000 pre-production grant
Year-round mentorship from 2 industry advisors
Community building among producing fellows
Year-round support from Sundance staff
SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING LAB

Fellows will attend a 5-day lab focused on creatively strengthening their projects from script to screen. The idea is to give producers the chance to explore their own creative take on material and to give them skills and experience in evaluating and developing this material at script stage and beyond. Scripts will be discussed in one-on-one sessions with advisors, as well as in a collective notes process with the group. Case studies will be used to explore creative issues in the production and editing processes, while techniques in communicating with writer/directors and potential production partners will also be addressed.

ELIGIBILITY

Candidates must have produced at least one short or feature-length narrative or documentary film (no more than 2 narrative features total).
Producers must have a completed, legally-optioned, scripted narrative project in hand with a director attached to the project.
Candidates may not be writer or director of submitted project.
Candidates must be based in the U.S., although submitted project does not need to be English language nor filmed in the U.S.
Sundance Institute strongly believes in strength in diversity and actively encourages applications from women, people of color, differently abled people, and all persons who support the Institute’s mission.

I should also add on another front, it is also deadline time for IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs.  I just blogged about it on Let’sMakeBetterFilms over on HammerToNail.  Check it out too.  Get those applications in the mail!  These are great programs that we are fortunate to have.