Getting Started As A Producer - Next Steps

[francheezie]

Hey everyone,

Looking for some advice from the more experienced producers here... I've been creating web content and also acting for the past several years, had some success writing/acting/producing in a webisode series for Sony Pictures. I'm now looking to take the producing aspect to a higher level. Anyone have some advice to get me rolling? Maybe a book to check out, or a good website to do research on?

I'm really looking to start creating TV Pilots and maybe a feature script. Maybe I should get a job at a studio... maybe a producers assistant. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I live in Los Angeles so I'm close to many opportunities.

Thanks! - Ben

 

[grinner]

Hi, Ben.
It would do you well to get experience as a staff producer for a while. It does not pay much but it's the best way to learn the ropes. As you said, you are in the land of opportunity. Cold-call, go to an interview and take what is offered. Years under your belt and content on your reel is what you are lookin' for.
Good luck, man.

 

[orangesaybananas]

As someone who is looking for a producer (I'm not in LA, sorry)... Do all the dirty work that I don't want to, so I can be creative and focus on the creative aspects of the project. Despite being a "producer" which sounds all high class, it's really a subservient position a lot of times. You serve your clients. You serve your directors. That way they want to work HARD for you. You need people with a good work ethic who respect you. Treating them nicely works wonders. Creative people are like that.

As a producer, your job is to pull together the crew, locations, insurance, and deal with all the financial aspects. I would be looking to find a producer, possibly on an independent project, that I might take on just simply to "see who's out there" not because there's money involved. A lot of times, producers started their work as a PA in the production department, then moved onto being a production coordinator. Eventually they start working the scene and get hooked up with people who are already working as director's and DPs and represent them and get them work.

As soon as you start hooking up your friends with work, you gain credibility as a producer. You've got to help market their services to advertising agencies and then you'll be first in line to produce for them. That's what producers do. They take on all the long boring irritating legwork that doesn't appeal to creative folks, and use it to their advantage to make a fine, fine living making gobs and gobs of money!

Hope this helps you in some way.