A PRODUCER: He or she who makes things happen! A word that is used quite loosely in the film and video industry. The producer is the one who is able to obtain the creative ingredients to prompt a project to go, or the person who is able to raise the funding to give the project a green light but who then turns it over to another producer who makes it happen. Producers are looked at as the enemy by craftsmen who work on a project and are often disdained by actors who bring the soul of a project to life. They are scorned by film school students as a necessity but as people who do not have a creative bone in their body. It is a word that sometimes connotes disrespect, because of the business nature of showbusiness and anyone and everyone calls themselves a producer when they are “making that deal” or “bottom fishing” in the business. They haunt the film markets looking for that “one” deal, or package and they are the people who call film schools with enticements of multiple picture deals looking for the next Shane Black, John Schlessinger, Brad Silberling, Penelope Spheeris, Mike Werb, Alex Cox or Sydney Lumet, but instead make empty promises to students who are chasing dreams.
Students in my directing classes have told me that the producer is not creatively involved but merely someone who raises the money and turns it over to someone else to provide the creativity to a project. But then I ask them one question: “Who receives the Oscar® statuette at the Academy Awards® for best picture of the year?” Answer: THE PRODUCER. Not the director, the writer or the actor. They have their own statues. The Best Picture Award is given to the Producer of the motion picture, who stands with such producers as Steven Spielberg, Ray Stark, Howard Koch, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner; all producers whose driving force for their projects is integrity in creativity. Creativity in front, behind, before and after the rolling of the camera. The creative producer thinks inventively and ingeniously whether it is in the telling of the story, the casting of the picture, the selection of the director, the raising of the finances, and in some cases, the marketing of the film. The creative producer at any moment in the life of a project plays many different roles: the mother, the father, the lover, the romancer, the persuader, the psychologist, the soothsayer, the comic, the tragedian, the best friend, the teacher, the warrior, the negotiator, the arbitrator, the dreamer … the list seems neverending. The creative producer sees the project completed, dreams the project, gives birth to the project and then holds on as the project takes a life of its own, all the time molding it, shaping it, providing it with content to share with the world, and then leaving it with the hopes that it makes a difference. Does this sound familiar? It’s the same thing we hopefully do with our children.
If we took one foot of film from a thousand-foot reel and held it up to the light what would we see? Well, at first glance we would see an image. But then upon further examination and analysis, and as we thought past the physical presence of the film in our hands, we would see actors, wardrobe, makeup, cinematography, sound (encoded somewhere around the image), set, location, props and maybe special effects.
Thinking further, we would realize that it also included everything it takes to do all of the above.
When a creative producer looks at the same strip of film, what he/she should be looking at are the dollar signs. Now imagine one thousand feet of film. In 35mm that represents a little over eleven minutes of film time and in its reeled version is the size of a 78rpm record (a dinosaur today). Imagine that you are holding this in your two hands (and it takes two hands to hold it), and there are nine more reels stacked on top, making the stack quite heavy. Now look at it. You are holding Titanic, which cost $250,000,000. Or you may be holding The Clonus Horror, which cost $250,000. What is the difference between the two? They look the same; they are the same height, the same weight. But why does one cost .001 percent of the other? What role did creativity play in the planning, execution and eventual completion of these projects that apparently look and feel the same? Does the amount of money spent on a film mean an improvement in the film? Can an understanding of creativity go beyond that which is seen on the screen and include how it got there? What role do the words “ego” and “relationship” play when being creative? These and other questions will be answered throughout this book. You will see various tenets of producing, in maintaining creativity, and be able to make creative decisions based upon the integrity of the work and the ultimate end result of the project.