Finding a Freelance Producer for Feature?

J

JonathanLB

Carbonite Member
Hey,

How do I go about finding a producer for a fully-financed feature? In other words, I'm the executive producer, I have the money, but I am a corporate video producer not a feature film producer and I need someone with real experience to work on this feature so I can be the writer-director and not have to deal with every single negotiating point and decision related to the film. I know I'll be heavily involved anyway but I want someone who can negotiate crew contracts, figure out how to budget this alongside me, etc.

I'm coming up with a list of questions I should ask prospective producers, so any guidance along those lines would be fantastic but I have one more important question...

How do I or how should I structure their pay / contract? If I have a budget of $150,000 not including marketing / festival costs (separate budget for that), then how do I pay them? Can I do some sort of flat pay that they receive (and should that be paid in sections like a bit upfront, a bit before production, a bit after.. or what?) plus a tiered percent of the sale price of the film? For instance, they could get a certain percent of what the film sells for to a distributor no matter what that is, like 5% of $100,000, but if it sells at more than $200,000 they get 5% of the first $200K plus 7.5% thereafter or something like that? How do you even arrange this?

I have seriously no experience with that and all of the indie production books I've read haven't covered how you'd actually structure that deal or pay a producer. If anyone here has done this, you would help me so much by ANY advice at all, even if it's just "the way I did it" kind of stories, because I'm sure there are many options.
 
You can start here for experienced Producers: http://www.producersguild.org/

Anything can be negotiated - either all pay with no points, more pay - smaller points, all points, etc. How many weeks is your entire production including post? Does your budget call for project based bids or weekly? etc.

Michael
 
Hey, oh ok, well hmm that would be definitely experienced producers! I think I don't want someone too experienced, because it'll just be another small indie project for them, no big deal. But I don't want someone so green they've only done a few student shorts and are totally overwhelmed by the scale of this, haha.

I am not sure of the total time it will take, and I doubt the post-production schedule will proceed in a Hollywood fashion. I mean, I have a media company to run, so it's not going to be like, "Alright! Production wrapped Friday, now we're doing post Monday!" No, more like I'm going to be busy for a few weeks doing corporate work that I pushed off until now and I can't put it off longer if I want to stay in business, lol. So it may be like me calling my editor, who is in Bakersfield, "Hey dude got four free days get your butt down here we need to make some progress." I don't really need the producer to oversee post all that much. I'm more worried about pre-production and production. Post is extremely important to save the budget for, duh, but he doesn't need to be there in the room with my editor and I, nor does he need to supervise the sound dude. It's more of a general oversight, I would think.

Actual production I am not sure, I mean I was thinking 15 days shooting, but we have to see what makes sense with the budget, what makes sense with the script, etc.
 
I would offer a flat fee with no points in a scenario like that. Depending on how much you actually want them to do - $10 - $12K?

Michael
 
Yeah that's probably a fair price, but I wonder if I can make that work in a $150,000 budget. It would be easier to do something like $5K and $5K later, in other words having some sort of points in the back end. But it's probably good in some senses not to give away those points if you can avoid it, so... I'm not sure. Grr, this is tough.
 
While points are easy to give away, it becomes a nightmare to manage should the film ever sell as you will need to track that in perpetuity of the film. I like to keep that to a minimum - the investor and me. My last film was a co-production so it was a split of 45/45/10. More than that becomes a pain to manage business wise, tax wise, and who does all that.

Before I started producing, I edited a lot of films of which I had "points" and have never seen a dime from any of them. This needs to made clear right up front with proper expectations that it may take years to see any money, and if you do, it may be very little. Especially if you start doling points out left and right.

Typically post is 20% of the budget - since you say you have post, you can use some of that money for above the line and in front of the lens - but make sure you can cover "deliverables". Many filmmakers lose it at that stage when it comes for foreign deliverables, etc.

Not knowing what genre or details on the film, it is hard to say where you will spend the most if not careful. But production is the biggest spend in the process. Schedule the hell out of that and stay on time. Even a simpe rewrite of a scene can save time on location/set if it makes sense overall.


Michael
 
Yeah for sure, well it's a romantic comedy basically so there are no major funds for post. 20% of $150,000 so hmm $30,000 post. Yup that's way too much. We're talking about $50,000 cast, $100,000 production and post, etc. I would imagine it being about half of that $30K for post. Any songs included need to be free, from indie bands I already know or have worked with, or bands I have not that would like exposure. Shouldn't be difficult in this city honestly. I bet I could pay a band a few hundred bucks to make a custom song even if I wanted. The composer needs some money clearly. Editor some. Post sound some. If you figured on paying each of those people $5,000 it would still only be $15,000. Given that my editor will be using my edit bay, and I have a very sophisticated editing bay and all parts of that process paid for (massive RAID backups, AJA KONA 3, editing programs, etc.), he won't be making a standard editing rate as if he owned his own gear. The post-sound guy is much more likely to rake me over the coals, haha, that's going to be the toughest part. Not worried about "deliverables" either, that basically just means having a separate music and effects track from the dialogue track so they can make foreign dubs if that's necessary. Final Cut doesn't exactly make that difficult, and I'd never have some muddled mess of crap in the same track. It should all be separated. We've done all this stuff before so it's just about the same as a short only ten times longer. That's why you do a short the right way, in my opinion, so that you really know what the process is like on a small scale.

There will be money left over anyway if it goes slightly over budget, not too worried. I really don't want that to happen but I am not in the position where I'd be putting stuff on a credit card to pay for necessary things that got overlooked or whatever. The goal is to keep it perfectly on budget, but reality is if it cost another $15,000 to get right I wouldn't sweat it.

You are totally right about the tax and accounting problem of giving away points. That part I hadn't really considered as carefully, and it is kind of a disaster. I'd prefer to pay the crew cash and not give away points in that fashion, I think it's a bit of a disaster. I understand that usually a producer's rep, though, or sales agent, will get a percent of the price they sell the film for to a distribution company, so there is that already. But how can you really trust a producer is going to do a great job if they have NO stake in the project? I'm uncomfortable with that idea as well. If you are going to get paid $10,000 whether this film gets sold or not, then who really cares if you forget this or that? Ok so you screwed up and didn't do some important thing in pre-production, oh well, this guy's film is messed up and you don't get recommended by him. Who cares? He'll be out of the business with this dud anyway! That's what I'd be thinking if I was a producer. I still think you want this person to have an involvement in the project that makes them care, and unless you already knew them before that's difficult.

I trust my actor and actress, and my DP, to care about my project because they are people I know and have worked with before. They really care about this project and have even helped me workshop it. They don't need to be motivated by money, they are motivated by passion. The money is a bonus. But the producer, if he's good, will be motivated by money in the first place anyway, and he won't know who I am, so it's hard to say if he'll be motivated by the subject matter that much or if it's just another job.
 
This is turning into a great thread.

Not to hijack or step away from the main purpose, but MichaelP, can you give a little detail about how giving away points can become a tax nightmare? A lot of people probably don't consider this and it would be great to see the truth laid out.
 
I think what you'd end up having perhaps Kevin is a situation where you have to distribute this money after expenses, and hiring an accountant to deal with that would be part of the expenses, then you just run into a yearly nightmare or even quarterly nightmare of having to distribute money to a bunch of different people on behalf of the film. I would think you'd want to limit the number of profit participants you had. I'd like to hear more from Michael though.
 
Well Jonathan pretty much touched on it - the accounting gets more complex as you deal with the revenue of the film over its entire life cycle. Is your company (LLC or other) taking that on, and the taxes that come with it, then pay out to other with points and managing all their tax records on that type of revenue? If you have SAG, what money pool does that get paid out of when revenue is generated? Distributors want to deal with the least amount of bookkeeping themselves and will not take on paying everyone you gave points to.

What I have done in the past is done a one time bonus cash payout relative to distribution deal in place. So perhaps you offer $10K for the job and an additional $5K if sold for $xx.xx.

Michael
 
MichaelP said:
Well Jonathan pretty much touched on it - the accounting gets more complex as you deal with the revenue of the film over its entire life cycle. Is your company (LLC or other) taking that on, and the taxes that come with it, then pay out to other with points and managing all their tax records on that type of revenue? If you have SAG, what money pool does that get paid out of when revenue is generated? Distributors want to deal with the least amount of bookkeeping themselves and will not take on paying everyone you gave points to.

What I have done in the past is done a one time bonus cash payout relative to distribution deal in place. So perhaps you offer $10K for the job and an additional $5K if sold for $xx.xx.

Michael
Click to expand...

Oh wow, that's a great idea Michael! I love that.

You could even have a tiered system there that is not based on a percentage, like if the film sells for $100,000 you get a $5,000 bonus, if it sells for $150,000 you get an $8,000 bonus, and if it sells for $200,000 or more you get an $11,500 bonus or something like that. At least then it's a one-time thing.

However it is, it should be kept to being paid to them and then you're done with it, rather than a lifetime percentage.
 
Correct - that way you can offer an added incentive without the overhead of managing it over the lifetime of the film.

Michael
 
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