I was having lunch the other day with an old friend and we were discussing the general lack of respect that we see these days for what Producers do.  He’s a Creative Director now, so this is not a phenomenon that’s only noticed by those of us who work in Production.  It seems the folks hired these days to handle the Producer role are younger and less experienced all the time, and their main advantage as employees is the fact that they will work for little money.  I have heard many complaints from Production Companies and Editors about inexperienced Agency Producers being generally clueless, and that they have do their jobs for them.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of experienced Producers around, but Agencies seem to think that any warm body will do, so the cheaper the better.

So my old friend challenged me to define exactly how I (and other Producers with significant experience, and years in the business) add value to projects, and to the Agencies and Clients for whom we ply our trade.  And I did so, and will recap some of that discussion here.

Kara Harris has a website for freelance Producers called “center-of-everything.com”.  This represents the view of a Producer as Project Manager, who’s job is to function as a communications hub, making sure all of the stakeholders are connected and informed about needs and progress though the life of the project.  This is an important function, no doubt, and if it’s not performed well can be disastrous to the success of a project.  But I would argue that anyone with sufficient communication skills and professionalism can perform that function adequately.  You don’t need 10 or 20 years in the trenches to be able to do it.

Another important aspect to producing is the hiring and supervision of out-of-house suppliers of all sorts, and the maintaining of supplier relationships (which, if done right, is a two-way street).  Proper attention needs to be paid to this task, and negotiating with suppliers (either before the job is awarded, or during the production) is an important task and needs some finesse.  But again, I don’t think it’s the most important thing that Producers bring to the table.  One could certainly argue that familiarity with the various Production suppliers available to us, and long relationships with the Principals in those companies are an advantage.  Trust is hard to come by, but an essential lubricant when friction arises.

And it would also be accurate to say that experience in negotiating can be an advantage for the entire team, and that it helps, not only in keeping costs down, but also in ensuring successful and timely deliverables.  (I won’t go into the theory of successful negotiation, but there have been many books written on the subject.)

But I think that the most important added value that an experienced Producer can bring is the management of risk.

Broadcast Production, and Filmmaking for any medium, is inherently risky.  I’d say the process is the perfect embodiment of “Murphy’s Law”.  You can be sure that shit’s gonna happen, you just don’t know exactly what or when until it’s occurred.

The reason is that there are just so many moving parts.  Especially as the number of spots in a package increase.  Most projects these days are packages of multiple distinct finished spots, and as the number of shoot days goes up, and the number of cast members and locations increase, the risks rise exponentially.  Add to that the truncated schedules we are often forced into, and you have a perfect recipe for confusion and errors.  There are so many separate departments doing so many related (but distinct), interconnected actions, that something’s bound to get lost in the shuffle.  And keeping the circus running smoothly takes enormous attention to detail and diligence of effort on the part of all involved.  Especially the Producer who is, after all, at the “center of everything.”

An experienced Producer can not only get the project back on track once some unforeseen disaster strikes, but often they will be able to see the problem coming from a long way off.  This gives the team time to either change course, or (when that’s not possible) prepare a back-up plan in advance.  I have occasionally conspired with my Production Co. partner to create a viable “Plan B” without anyone else’s knowledge (so as not to be seen as pessimists).  If the back-up option is ever needed, we’re Heros, and if not, no one else needed to know.

So that’s how an experienced Producer adds value:  by steering the ship of the project around the inevitable shoals that await it.  And by ensuring that the lifeboats are in working order.

Happy Holidays to all, and may the New Year be better than this last year for everyone.