There’s a simple definition of producing that mostly has to do with developing and financing a production, overseeing the shoot, protecting a vision. But scratch a little deeper, and producers will open up with more personal responses. Producing is about love, for example — loving the movie, above all, and continuing to love it over the years and decades of its existence. Producing is about support — being everyone’s advocate, from the director to the actor to the crew. Producing is about protecting a vision, yes, but also assuaging the fears of partners who worry that that vision is too […]

One of my favorite Filmmaker video interviews is one from 2012 where, spontaneously, This American Life creator Ira Glass goes on a rant about the job of film producer. As you can see and hear above, his jeremiad is both passionate and quite specific — Glass is not going off about a job he hasn’t done. No, anyone whose name sits — or deserves to sit — above-the-line on a call sheet will recognize the laundry list of tediums and indignities that comprise a substantial chunk of the glamorous job of the producer. But, as noted above, Glass gave this […]

He may only have three features under his belt, but producer Olivier Kaempfer is quickly establishing himself as an central figure in London’s independent film community. His first production, director Jules Bishop’s Borrowed Time, won Best of the Fest at Edinburgh in 2012, and his second, Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior, broke out at Sundance 2014 followed by a successful theatrical run and extensive critical praise. Now his third film, Spaceship, a family drama packaged as a trippy science-fiction story, has pushed Kaempfer and his company Parkville Pictures into new territory, both in terms of content and the production process. Written and directed by Alex Taylor, the […]

“If I had to make [Noah Baumbach’s 1995 pic] Kicking and Screaming today, I’d make it for $50,000, not $1 million,” said producer Jason Blum (The Purge, Insidious, Whiplash) at his SXSW keynote address on Sunday. In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times’ John Horn, Blum blended his own producer origin story with practical advice for filmmakers seeking to emulate his rise to top of Hollywood’s low-budget horror hierarchy. “Don’t wait for the industry to go forward,” he told the crowd, explaining that his own career was accelerated when he learned from a past error: passing on The Blair […]

Curious about the physical process of turning a short into a feature, Filmmaker magazine interviewed the producers of three separate films about their experiences. Each film was originally a short that previously premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is now a feature making its World Premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. Last year director Damien Chazelle’s short won the Jury Prize at Sundance. This year, his feature of the same name, Whiplash, is the festival’s Opening Night feature. Transformed from an intense 15-minute short into a 105-minute full-length film, Whiplash maintained the same producing team but had to […]

One of the great things about Independent Film Week is getting to meet so many other filmmakers who are sharing in the same experience working in independent film. On any given day of the conference you could be sitting next to a producer, director or distributor who might end up helping you on your next project (or maybe you’ll end up helping them!) You also end up hearing about a lot of great projects and films, which is exactly what happened one session this week when I found myself sitting next to Milo Daemgen, independent producer of various short & […]

She co-created the HBO series Dream On. She launched and executive produced the NBC shows Veronica’s Closet and Jesse. She created Five, a collaborative short film compilation that aired on Lifetime in 2011. And then there was that little series called Friends. A creative force in the world of television for more than 25 years, Marta Kauffman has spent her career bringing some of your favorite small-screen personalities into your living room. Now, in addition to tackling a handful of other projects, including a new pilot and a TV movie she’s set to write and direct, Kauffman is continuing to […]

The IFP’s Independent Film Week’s Filmmaker Conference kicked off today, beginning with a case study of Beasts of the Southern Wild and ending with a conversation, moderated by IFP Executive Director Joana Vicente, between producer and Killer Films head Christine Vachon and producer, screenwriter and Focus Features CEO James Schamus. Below are 12 tips from the latter event — advice aimed at producers and, in some cases, anybody else, from two veterans with deep, decades-long roots in the independent community. 1. Consider producing. Christine Vachon and James Schamus are producers, but they both remembered a time when they were not. […]

The following blog post originally appeared at the IFP’s site and is cross-posted with permission. — Editor. I’m very fortunate to be friends with many accomplished independent film producers–people whose films have screened at the best festivals, won significant awards, gotten picked up by major distributors, earned healthy gross receipts, and received accolades in the mainstream press. We hang out sometimes, one-on-one or in groups, to catch each other up on our projects, share recent experiences, exchange opinions on companies and people we’ve worked with, etc. But essentially, we get together for emotional support against an industry and an economy […]

A Filmmaker reader recently emailed me with a simple question. After going to film school, making some shorts and working conspicuously within his means, he’s now written a script purely from the imagination — not censoring himself by thinking of things like money and production requirements. The resulting project, I take it, is too big for his usual DIY methods. He asked, “What do I do now?” A tough question, not knowing the filmmaker very well and not having read the script. There are easier-said-than-done answers: “Find a producer! Get an agent!” But just sending out a bunch of PDFs, […]