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The Production Manager - You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…

July 16, 2009

When I first found out I was going to be ‘The Production Manager’ I was sat in a hotel room devising daily schedules for the Rachel Zoe Project’s Fashion week shoot wondering to myself how on earth I was going to find the time for these weekly postings amid the 6 days weeks and 18 hour days.

Thanks to the economy and stubbornness on the part of the US TV industry to actual give a hard working all rounder a chance, this has not been a problem I’ve actually had to deal with. Aside from a few pesky weeks on an abysmal MTV reality show that I hope won’t see the light of day, work has been very, very sparing this year, leaving me lots of time to pass on pearls of wisdom.

It’s hard not to feel a little like an imposter writing as The Production Manager while I’m not really managing any productions officially. I am as I’ve mentioned previously working on some development for a reality show, advising small outfits on budgets and pre production and working on a few bits and pieces of my own but I’m not balls to the wall busy, which is a definite pre requisite for Production Managing.

What I am doing with my spare time is learning as much as I can about the creative side, developing, producing, writing so when I find a good production to work on I’m able to offer a lot more than creative number crunching. Every other person I meet is a videographer who writes, shoots and edits their own stuff on their little identi-kit Macintosh computers, loading them on youtube and becoming local legends. I have to admit, it’s making me feel a little inadequate.

The one thing I do have over those people is a relationship with the networks, an understanding of what goes into making a series or a one of special aired to an audience of millions (and occasionally to audiences of 5000, I’m sorry to report) and the knowledge of how to do it right.

I’m trying to put this knowledge to good use and have recently begun working on a film making workshop for kids in the local area. This week we worked out how to break down their movie trailer into segments so we could think about what scenes we could film and then we had the children storyboard their opening shot, we taught them about establishing shots and close ups. I’d like to tell you it’s rewarding but mainly the kids are bored when they’re not being creative – how very ironic. But it’s nice to know that they are at least aware that there is a planning process involved with film making.

Now, if I only we could teach this to the film schoolers and other creative folk my life would be so much easier.