Last Wednesday, Ryan Harrington came to my class at NYU and spent an hour talking about documentaries he produced while working at A&E IndieFilms:
Murderball
Jesus Camp
My Kid Could Paint That
American Teen
Often producers are thought of by filmmakers as some necessary evil, that negatively impacts the "creative" work. I think, many successful documentary films are collaborations of at least two artists: a filmmaker and a producer.
A filmmaker is in love with the process of creating the film.
A producer is in love with the process of creating public interest in the film. A good producer is just as artistic as a filmmaker. He takes the subject of a film -- often, a filmmaker's very personal issue -- and creates an environment, in which the film becomes personal and interesting to tens of thousands or even millions of people. A filmmaker creates a film. A producer creates or finds demand for a film.
There is a myth that producers desire nothing but monetary profit. In fact, both a filmmaker and a producer are probably interested in some form of profit. I think, a good producer would feel happy if a film he worked on became very popular, even if it was a disaster financially.
A common misconception about quality of producer's work is that it's measured only by the profit from a film.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Serega, could you talk more about the class at NYU that you're taking? Is it part of a program, or just a class for fun, or what? What are your plans in film in general?
-mk
Good question, Maksim. Here's the class I'm taking at NYU.
The class touches on such aspects of developing a documentary film as pitching, post-production, funding, and distribution. It also gives opportunities to meet with film industry people and attend interesting doc film events. Also, I brief my teacher and classmates on development of VeloVideo project and receive feedback from them.
This class can be counted towards NYU's certificate in documentary production. A few students in my class are working on their certificates. I'm open to it, but have not yet committed.
As you know, I'm very interested in film. But I'm not yet sure if I'm interested in the film industry. This class and the project help me breach the informational gap and learn a little more about it.
Post a Comment