I’ve just got back from a documentary storytelling class that I’m taking at a local community media company and I’m sure you’re wondering what that has to do with production management, particularly in television.

After all doesn’t a production manager just fiddle with schedules and budgets? Well yes this is indeed true, I’ve often tried extremely hard to keep out of the creative side of the shows that I work on. When I first, first got interested in production in my teens I was dead set on directing. And of course in reality, when I came to get into production as a career I discovered that everyone else wanted to direct too. So in order to just make a living doing what I do, I relied on my strongest skills, organization and a good head for business.

And this served me pretty well. I got to work on all sorts of shows because I wasn’t responsible for their content, in fact I was responsible for everything but. As time went on I began to get secretly pleased I wasn’t directing some of the shows I worked on because the larger scale reality seemed to have too many people meddling in the creative, while on other docs I realized that there were real ethical compromises involved with drawing out the real story to make it ‘entertaining’.

But recently I started to get more involved with the creative side in documentary film making, which seems to me like such a different beast. I’ve been AP-ing and learning Final Cut, DV Production and Interview Techniques. All of which seemed so unrelated to the work I do in television. But suddenly with this class deconstructing documentary the link between what I’m learning and what I do for a living is becoming so clear. And more importantly I’m starting to see where it can take me.

While the others in my class are using what they learn to further their own independent documentary making I’m seeing how structures, story and technique can be applied to the show we’re making. It’s part expository and part verite as we follow people at work and the drama is creating by putting what they’re doing against the clock. Easy!

I’m hoping that with this class and by taking a more active interest in how the team are editing I could potentially love into Supervising Producer role, something not usually associated in my field as a natural progression. In my experience Supervising Producers who come from the Creative side are terrible when it comes to compliance and other jolly marvelous things that are boring but can bring down a company or production. Or alternatively they are from Production Management and have so little idea of the creative side that they stand back, way back, and risk letting the creative get tied up in knots costing a fortunate in the edit.

It’s a sad thing that so many people seem to learn their craft on the job or in film school. What about television production school where you learn what it means to actually do the job in real terms under time constraints, budget restrictions and to networks? Do they teach that out there and if not, why not? Just think of all the super people there’d be making television the old fashion way, fun and efficiently. Now that’s a nice thought isn’t it?

Tags: Hollywood, Film Industry, Filmmaking, Filmmaker, Movie Theatre

I’ve just got back from a documentary storytelling class that I’m taking at a local community media company and I’m sure you’re wondering what that has to do with production management, particularly in television.

After all doesn’t a production manager just fiddle with schedules and budgets? Well yes this is indeed true, I’ve often tried extremely hard to keep out of the creative side of the shows that I work on. When I first, first got interested in production in my teens I was dead set on directing. And of course in reality, when I came to get into production as a career I discovered that everyone else wanted to direct too. So in order to just make a living doing what I do, I relied on my strongest skills, organization and a good head for business.

And this served me pretty well. I got to work on all sorts of shows because I wasn’t responsible for their content, in fact I was responsible for everything but. As time went on I began to get secretly pleased I wasn’t directing some of the shows I worked on because the larger scale reality seemed to have too many people meddling in the creative, while on other docs I realized that there were real ethical compromises involved with drawing out the real story to make it ‘entertaining’.

But recently I started to get more involved with the creative side in documentary film making, which seems to me like such a different beast. I’ve been AP-ing and learning Final Cut, DV Production and Interview Techniques. All of which seemed so unrelated to the work I do in television. But suddenly with this class deconstructing documentary the link between what I’m learning and what I do for a living is becoming so clear. And more importantly I’m starting to see where it can take me.

While the others in my class are using what they learn to further their own independent documentary making I’m seeing how structures, story and technique can be applied to the show we’re making. It’s part expository and part verite as we follow people at work and the drama is creating by putting what they’re doing against the clock. Easy!

I’m hoping that with this class and by taking a more active interest in how the team are editing I could potentially love into Supervising Producer role, something not usually associated in my field as a natural progression. In my experience Supervising Producers who come from the Creative side are terrible when it comes to compliance and other jolly marvelous things that are boring but can bring down a company or production. Or alternatively they are from Production Management and have so little idea of the creative side that they stand back, way back, and risk letting the creative get tied up in knots costing a fortunate in the edit.

It’s a sad thing that so many people seem to learn their craft on the job or in film school. What about television production school where you learn what it means to actually do the job in real terms under time constraints, budget restrictions and to networks? Do they teach that out there and if not, why not? Just think of all the super people there’d be making television the old fashion way, fun and efficiently. Now that’s a nice thought isn’t it?

Tags: Television, Movie Theatre, Film, Actor, Movie