Post, reality and advertising

To coincide with my production hiatus I decided to give myself a blogging hiatus too. But the network have said our show MUST be delivered before the end of the year so I’m back to onlining the pilot, scheduling delivery and waiting with bated breath to see whether the series will be picked up.

It’s very recently been said to me that our industry is actually devolving and I’m inclined to agree. The show I’m working on at the moment, for example, is staffed at over 50% by very recent NYU graduates. Now I have absolutely nothing against graduates, it just doesn’t take a genius to follow the logic that without prior experience these kids won’t know what to do? They are extremely bright and well meaning but there is a marked difference between a post producer who has led an edit and someone whose experience is in a classroom or class projects without time constraints their financial implications.

A case in point, I popped in the other day for a scheduling meeting and in the edit there were 6 people sat around the director producing by committee. I’ve really never seen anything like it outside of a Network screening. I surely know the necessity of finessing a cut, particularly of a pilot but the idea of having 3 kids who have never worked on a show before saying things like, I think it looks weird, can we try it with another beat boggles the mind. Being the ardent professional that I am I pointed out their clock missed out a number, suggested they don’t accidentally cover someone’s face with a graphic and hot footed it out of there. I know when too many cooks spoil the broth.

In other news, there was finally some movement on our hip hop reality show. Unfortunately the direction was down the toilet as our talent proved to be entirely reluctant to cooperate with filming requests. Fortunately I have been approached about another and much better devised show that I see doing extremely well on Oxygen or Soapnet. The experience with the hip hop reality hell did serve one purpose though. I’ve become exceedingly better at shaping a show to be sold.

And finally, I have a serious problem with people who aren’t supporting their own industry. The other day I was at an industry event where we were discussing shows we are getting into these days (Breaking Bad, Damages, Heroes) when it became apparent that very few of these people were paying to view these shows, they were downloading them illegally from the net instead of using the multitude of legal options available; cable, on demand, hulu, Netflix, network websites.

One woman even said her husband refused to pay for cable since he could download everything they wanted for free. I pointed out that since they both worked in the industry wasn’t it in their best interest to pay $30 a month for something that contributes in the long term to their livelihoods?

If we can’t even be bothered to pay for television either with our money or our time then how to we expect the industry to survive, let alone thrive? Television costs money and it needs to come from somewhere if we expect to continue to watch the good quality programming we all enjoy. Sure there’s a lot of shit on there too but that’s another story. We’ve all experienced what the impact of smaller budgets has been. Imagine them shrinking further because advertisers don’t want to pay as much because of a shrinking audience, or move their entire operations into product placement.

Everything has consequences, even illegal downloads so please take a moment to think about the impact of your actions and whether saving that minute of your time of a hulu advert is really worth the cost to our industry and your career. Thank you – lecture over…. for now

Who’d be a Television Director?

 

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?

 

Post

 

I’ve recently started working on the post production of a couple of pilots for The History Channel. I was brought in as I often am, as a pinch hitter to see the shows through to delivery.                                               

Ironically this was actually a job I interviewed for over the summer but they went with a different PM and Supervising Producer. It really reinforces to me in stark clarity how people use titles to boost their wage bracket without actually having the skills required for the position.

In this particular show there is an obscene amount of footage shot without any consent and worse, in NYC tunnels, Police Officers and Customers Inspectors. I simply cannot get over how many so called producers have absolutely no idea about editorial compliance. The idea of shoot it now and worry about it later is clearly the motto of those who have no experience in post. (One email exchange between Coord and PM included – I’m sick of this post shit – as they tried to establish shooting formats with the network). What worries me is that the people who worked on these shows are people who I know, with experience in the same shows and companies as me. The mind boggles really how they manage to get so far with only half the skills they need to get their job done.

It is however a lovely challenge for me, which I’m definitely rising to. I’ve managed to cut the post deal of the century with the makers of 30 Rock no less (yes I went with them for the hope of a glimpse of Tina Fey). I’ve developed an excellent workable schedule, which sees us delivering the day before Thanksgiving; a full week before air date. I’ve got a team of APs and Interns clearing archive at the rate of knots and I believe they’re actually beginning to understand that just because something is in the script doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.

It’s nice to be working again, particularly after such a difficult six months. I can only hope it continues to go well, there are a lot of graphic elements, aspect rations and resolutions to be checked and verified before the week is out.