Evaluation of my role as a Producer during preproduction (First term)

When we began the Producer module it soon became clear to me that I was not totally aware of a Producer's full role during a film production.  As the term went on, I found it more and more interesting to learn just how thorough and organised a producer needs to be and I was unaware of just how much work they have to do, especially seeing as they act as the primary liaison for all teams on a production.  I also found it interesting to learn how important a producer's relationship is with the director.

I found some of the content in the class easy enough to understand and beneficial to know for future reference. This included learning how to colour mark a script, fill in break down sheets and how to adapt a script to a shooting script.  But I found some elements such as dividing script pages into 8ths, drawing up legal forms and how to correctly draw up a budget more difficult to understand.

My personal contribution to the Producer preproduction paperwork was to provide the script break down and draw up the production schedule.  I also found the locations.

Upon breaking down the script, the initial production process for Castles in the Air was not on the surface a particularly complicated one.  This was due to the relative simplicity of the main script requirements i.e. a total of three characters and a maximum of two locations. However it did have its challenges.

Firstly, we had a potentially difficult mock up scene ahead of us in that we would need to make somewhere look like a convincing hospital waiting room on screen.  We figured attempting to shoot in an actual waiting room would be far too troublesome in terms of schedule arrangement as well as noise levels.  Secondly we would have to get our hands on a full set of surgical scrubs and we had a difficult prop to get hold of with the memorial bench plaque.

As with the Director module, our first term phase of the preproduction process as Producers did not go well.  Again almost all of our documentation was either insufficiently drawn up, not provided our had gone missing in transit to the clip breakage. 

Looking back to find out where we went wrong, some of the same issues arise such as bad communication as Producers and not seeing each others documentation until the submission date. Personally I also found it a more difficult module to understand on the whole than Director.

I thought I had understood the script breakdown process better than I did.  I still think I would have difficulty dividing a script into 8ths, and it did not help that each script I used as an example did not fit into exact 8ths.  This leads me to believe that it is more a case of a know-how through practice than an exact numerical summation.

I also found the legal paperwork and budgeting hard to comprehend.  I do not feel I have enough of an understanding of basic legal speak to be able to draft a proper release form from scratch and I would find it hard to draft up a budget without having actual occurring costs.

However on the plus side, I do feel I was good at getting things organised.  I was always on the lookout for locations and I found both of the locations we were going to use.  I was also the one who looked into prop and costume research.

In conclusion, I would definitely need to have a greater understanding of the full set of tasks of a producer in order to have done better in the first term assignment.  Although I am, and have always been, the type of person who learns far better by actually doing than by following instruction.  So I have hope that the continued first hand experience of working on our film throughout the second term will strengthen my understanding of the roles and tasks of a producer.