Tag: producing

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Truly Free Film

The 5 Most Important Questions For Producers

What do we need to know before we make movies?  What do we need to know to make movies well?  Are there questions that we can answer so that we have a sustainable and rewarding career?  Answers are hard to find, but so are the questions.When we identify the questions, whose responsibility is it to declare the answers?

I have a list.  I am sure it will continue to evolve.  Let’s start it off with the top five, and move on to more in the days ahead.  I look forward to your contributions.

1. How do I make sure that in twenty years I will feel good about the choices I make today?

2. What are the qualities of better films?

3. How do you establish trust & confidence?

4. How do you make a project seem inevitable?

5. How do I make sure all the collaborators all want the same thing, all have the same agenda, and are trying to make the same movie?

On Feb 2nd, I promise to have another 18 questions (at least)for you, but I thought these were the most important.  I would be happy to publish the answers here.

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Truly Free Film

What Makes A Good Partnership?

The NYTimes Sunday Magazine has a must-read article on my former Good Machine partner James Schamus. The author, Carlo Rotello, does a thorough job on the difficult task of capturing most of the complexity that makes James someone that is fun to collaborate with: he is not easily defined, has many interests (sometimes conflicting), and enjoys deeply both the process and the product.  People so often look for people they get along with to collaborate with; I think that is is mistake.  Harmony may work in other types of relationships, but in a creative one, it is a formula for mediocrity.   If you truly care about the end result of your work, you should look for someone you enjoy arguing with to partner with.

Rotello sums up our Good Machine partnership by defining David Linde as the business mind, Schamus the intellectual, and me “Hope, an advocate of radically decentralized media democracy, was the revolutionary;”.  I like how that sounds, but what really worked at Good Machine, and in other creative relationships, is when people can argue clearly and without ego for what they feel will make a story work best.  Trust is the next most required ingredient in a successful partnership, quickly followed by a willingness to accept that you may not be right (that non-ego thing again).

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Truly Free Film

What is the hardest thing about being an indie film producer today?

I get asked this question a lot: “What is the hardest thing about being an indie film producer today?” It is worth doing a much longer post on, listing all of the problems we all face.  But as I said, I get asked this a lot, and I don’t think they are looking for 75 or more answers (I have those up here and here).  Usually folks are looking for the short answer.  This is that answer, or rather at least, how I answered it today.

The pay has dropped significantly while the job description has increased ten fold, and the demand for both services and advice have increased even more. We producers are expected to (and must) source and develop new material, package it with talent, put together a production plan, and then find a way to finance it. Of course we have to execute those plans at the highest level possible, all the while dealing with the unique personalities that flock to indie film production, but we are also expected to then put together a marketing plan, distribution strategy, social media outreach organization, and festival plan – and probably raise the funds for all of that (or figure out how to do it without funding).  We need our own community built from the start and we have to provide them with meaningful contact, satisfying information and content, and the opportunity to collaborate together.  On top of all of that, most of this is not a science and the workable business model for indie film in this day and age has not yet evolved and certainly has not been shared. To just discover the tools for this requires more hours than there are in a day. Oh yeah, and we don’t get paid for any of these endeavors until the full film is financed – and then we are asked to reduce our fees regularly. The only way to survive is too work on some many projects simultaneously, you are unable to give each project the attention you want. And I did mention that most of the folks that you collaborate with along the way adopt an approach that they must be your top priority at all times?

Not that I am complaining.  It is a good life (just not a good job).  I am not building widgets (well, okay I am building widgets to help, but I am not JUST building widgets).

That’s the short answer.  For today.  And check out the replies to this question on my Twitter feed & FaceBook page(s).  A lot of good conversation out there.  We can build it better together.

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Truly Free Film

Christine Vachon on the State Of The Indie Film Union

Okay, so the traffic is sometimes louder than the dialogue, but hey, this is Indie!  I had wanted to partake in this interview that David Poland did at TIFF this year.  There was only one hour when Christine and I were both in Toronto though, and it took a bit longer to close the SUPER deal than I had anticipated.  Christine and David paint a pretty good picture of what things are like for  indie producers these days.

9/21 Update:  Seems like the link I found for this kind of jumped the gun.  It came down as I was watching it.  I assume David Poland will post soon on the MCN website.  And hopefully the video will work again.  Hope hoping here…

Update 9/21 #2: It’s up on MCN, but I can’t embed it for some reason

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Truly Free Film

The Hard Truth: Filmmaking Is Not A Job

Unfortunately if I sought to get compensated for the work I do, my movies would not get made. If I sought to get paid like normal people are, I never would have been able to produce any of my films.

I have been fortunate enough to have made about sixty films in about twenty years. I am not foolish enough to think I was the deciding factor in bringing good ideas into cinematic being, but I do know that certain practices of mine, have helped significantly.  Yes, it is also true that good work begets other good work, and a track record certainly helps — particularly a track record of profitability — but generally all of my films depend on two things to get made: 1) superior quality of the material, and 2) the willingness of the collaborators to make great sacrifices.

There’s more though on why these films have happened; there have been commonalities amongst all the films that have helped significantly in their getting made.  I have to repeatedly go out on the limb, believing in the film and the filmmaker for years on end, with no remuneration, pushing to make the project better, figuring out how in the hell to bring more “value” to it, shopping it, strategizing and the like.

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Truly Free Film

Why Producers Are Valued

Ages ago, I wrote a post about why Producers matter. All of that hold’s true, but none of it is why we get hired. In these days when jobs are scarce and many a long time cohort is looking at new enterprises or a new career, I find myself often reminding my brethren of the simple truths of what “they” want from us. Producers are respected for six things I figure:

  • Validation – Your support of them means that the project is real (or at least they think it will mean that for others).  It may be it’s own category, but I think the “Cover Your Ass” criteria is a subset of this; those that are in the employ by others, need to make sure they have someone else to blame or deflect off when SHTF.  That someone is often you.
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Truly Free Film

Why Can’t Producers Get Along & Work Well Together?

Today’s guest post is from NYC-based feature film producer Adam Brightman.

Recently I was asked by a couple of smart but fairly inexperienced producers some good questions about how producing teams can work well together (and not so well).  For better or worse, in my career, which is now in its third decade (ouch), I have averaged about 70/30 good to bad.  Maybe that is par for the course.  Maybe it is reflective of how much of my film work has been on non-studio, extremely challenging films.  In any case, since they asked, and since it is a crucial and, perhaps, unappreciated part of the filmmaking process, here are my thoughts.

1.  Everybody counts.  All producers on films today are important, and unless they are clearly dead weight or baggage (a star’s manager, an executive’s friend, what have you) then every producer makes a valuable contribution.  And whatever the credit one gets on a movie, if you are part of the producing team then you are a producer.  Plain and simple.  So as I said, everybody counts, and the producing teams that recognize and acknowledge that fact work well.  The ones that feel a need, for whatever reason, to undermine and minimize each other’s contributions do not work well.

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