Cinema Cemetery
What Does a Producer Do?
Disclaimer:
The following is my own opinion and not the opinion of any studios I have worked for in the past or will work for in the future. All specific information comes courtesy of publicly accessible articles, please see the bibliography for more information.
The credits at the end of a movie can be pretty confusing to read sometimes. Most people know what a Director, Actor, or Cinematographer does; but what’s the role of a Line Producer or Executive Producer? There seem to be many flavors of the Producer role and, when attempting to read the credits to determine who did exactly what, the many strange sounding titles only muddy the water to the casual observer.
First I’ll go over what my understanding of each credit’s role actually is and then we’ll match this knowledge up to a film to figure out who played what role.
The Producer
A Producer “...shepherds the production from start to finish. In a typical arrangement, the producer develops an idea or script with a writer and secures the necessary rights. (1)”
“Of course, it’s not as easy as just reading a book, thinking ‘that’d make a good film,’... A producer must initiate and enter into negotiations with whoever’s responsible for the source material, with the ultimate aim being to acquire the rights on their terms. (2)”
“Once the film rights have been bought, the monetary fun doesn’t stop there. Producers are the ones who pitch the movie to studios (or their employer) in the hopes of securing financing…(2)”
“(They) often hire the director, supervise casting, and assemble a crew. (1)”
“Depending on the scale of the project, the producer may wish to get involved with hand-selecting any or all members of team, sometimes, however, that is left in the care of the director. (2)”
“Additionally, the producer oversees the budget and then coordinates the postproduction work—everything from editing, to commissioning music, to encouraging the film's stars to plug the movie on talk shows. (1)”
“While producers generally have the final say on anything they decide to get involved in, more often than not a good producer will hire professionals that can do their respective jobs without supervision so that they can focus on the bigger picture. (2)”
“Co-Producers are two or more functioning producers who perform jointly or cumulatively all of the producer functions as a team or group. (3)”
So, some movies will have one Producer who is very skilled/experienced and they’ll wear all the hats. Other times there will be multiple Producers who share the load, sometimes I’ve seen them credited as Co-Producers, other times they just list them all as Producers. I would speculate that having a credit as Producer might be more impressive on your resume than Co-Producer, but once again that’s only a guess.
The Executive Producer
“An executive producer often owns the rights to a book or story idea or secures at least 25 percent of the film's budget. Executive producers rarely have creative or technical involvement and are often caught up with several projects at once. (1)”
“In television, an Executive Producer may also be the Creator/Writer of a series. (3)”
Often though, the Executive Producer is either someone who knows how to fund-raise super well or is one of the people the Producer was able to convince to invest a large chunk in the project. Usually, in my experience, those listed with this title are investors only.
Line Producer
“The line producer is on the set at all times to supervise the budget but has little or no creative input. (1)”
The Producer has so much on their plate, that they can’t be everywhere at once to make sure that their budgets are being adhered to. That’s where Line Producers come in particularly handy.
Associate Producer
Officially,
“An Associate Producer performs one or more producer functions delegated to him/her by a producer. (3)”
In actuality though,
“ ‘Associate producer’ is a largely honorary title. Sometimes it's a form of recompense for exceptional performance on-set. A script doctor who saves a bad screenplay, for example, might be granted an associate-producer credit. The title is also frequently an inexpensive way for a producer to pay back a favor or reward an assistant or colleague who had little to do with the film. As David Mamet wrote in State and Main, an associate producer credit is ‘what you give to your secretary instead of a raise.’ (1)”
In Practice
Now that we have working definitions for the most common Producing credits, let’s check out a recent movie to see how that knowledge helps us interpret something in the real world. For this example, I chose Baby Driver pretty much at random.
Here’s the list of related credits according to IMDB:
Tim Bevan ... producer (produced by)
Eric Fellner ... producer (produced by)
Nira Park ... producer (produced by)
James Biddle ... executive producer
Liza Chasin ... executive producer
Adam Merims ... executive producer
Rachael Prior ... executive producer
Edgar Wright ... executive producer
Michelle Wright … executive producer
Leo Thompson … associate producer
There are a couple Line Producers listed under VFX, which means they are in charge of keeping their studios shots on budget in accordance with the Producers of the entire production. Having no line producers listed anywhere else tells us that this was a smaller production, as the producers would have had the time and ability to be on set and manage all that they needed to; this is further helped by there being so many co-producers, so it never got to the point of needing line producers while shooting.
Now I’ll play a little speculation game based on looking into each of these people’s IMDB profiles.
The three co-producers listed here are Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Nira Park.
Jumping into their IMDB profiles, all three have a long history of producing; lots of titles to their names. It’s entirely reasonable to assume that these three handled almost all major production tasks between the three of them.
Listed as Executive Producers are the following names:
James Biddle, Liza Chasin, Adam Merims, Rachael Prior, Edgar Wright, and Michelle Wright.
Liza Chasin and Adam Merims have a TON of Executive Producer credits and several Producing credits. They’re either rock stars at raising money or someone with a considerable amount of available funds to invest in films, which would have done so on Baby Driver.
James Biddle started out as a Line Producer, did a little bit of producing, and is lately Executive Producing. With a track record like that, I’m guessing he’s good at finding investors rather than investing in this film himself...but that’s just speculation.
Rachael Prior has a lot of credits as head of development, particularly on projects Edgar Wright (the movie’s director) is attached to. I imagine she personally invested in this film due to her history of working alongside the director.
Michelle Wright, relation to Edgar Wright unknown, has a list of credits longer than my arm as the executive in charge of production. Their experience is huge in that regard, yet their production credits are several favor-nods as Associate Producer and this executive producer credit. This leads me to believe that they may be a primary source of funding for Baby Driver.
Edgar Wright also wrote and directed baby driver, it is logical to me that he would invest in his own film. It’s also the mark of a filmmaker who really believes in what they are doing.
Rounding out the list is Leo Thompson as Associate Producer. Their other credits include several personal assistant to Edgar Wright credits and a couple roles as production assistants. Since three out of the four movies in their credits are directly related to Edgar Wright, it is entirely reasonable to surmise that this Associate Producer credit is a favor related to their close working relationship.
So there you go,
Armed now with a basic understanding of what the various Producing credits translate to in terms of real world work done and the ability to stalk people on IMDB, you too can speculate wildly on what went into the bones of getting a movie made. At the very least, a portion of the credits in any given movie just became slightly more interesting!
This has been Cinema Cemetery, digging six feet deeper into film and culture!
-Josh Evans
Bibliography: