MAJOR PROJECT: PRACTICAL PRODUCING

A lot of what I have had to do throughout the couple of months leading up to production has been on the practical side. I have had to take up the role of main producer with my two co-producers doing all they can to help whilst also working on their own projects. My producer Plamen has taken on the role as more of a story development assistant, even taking on a script editing role to help give me another set of eyes on the story. The other producer Lawrence has taken on a more practical producer role helping with casting for my voice characters. He has already got me in touch with the 'Quirky Kidz' acting agency.

My role has been to source props and costumes. However the most tasking part of this part has been the acquiring of a lorry for my character's to act in and around, essentially a main location in itself. The way I have gone about this is by trying to get my location set in stone and then trying to find lorry hire companies in and around this to make it convenient.

Working as a producer proved to be my biggest challenge of the project, as this is the role that I have found myself to be least suited to. Using the website ‘lynda.com’ I was able to come to an understanding of what my role as producer is. By the time I did this research I already found that I was undertaking the producer role, as the producer is involved from start to finish of the project well before and after the director has done their work. The roles of a producer include: 

• Starting the project
• Shepherding the script creation
• Getting funding  

Original budget for Backbone

• Managing pre-production, production and post-production

Call sheet for Day 1 on Backbone

• supervising marketing/distribution
• Ensuring the film is successful

This is how it is listed on lynda.com and I discovered throughout that these were and still are my roles as producer. Being producer was a role that didn’t suit me completely as an example of the difficulties I had with this role was my main actor pulling out a week before production. If I had done this role more effectively I would have had my cast confirmed well in advance having time to meet them and go over the important elements of the story. 

Although myself and my two co-producers are called as such this is not always the case. There is the producer, executive producer, associate producer and line producer all have varying different roles depending on the film they working on. In television the executive producer is generally the show-runner and therefore the highest on the credits list, however on a film it is different.

On my film Backbone I seem to be an all round producer encompassing all of these different types. For example the line producer generally works on aspects of the production like the budget, however as demonstrated above I have done that as well as develop the story, buy props, and cast the majority of the film.

Despite all the different aspects of this difficult job I have enjoyed my attempt at doing this, however it is not a role I will actively seek to do in the future.