For this impuls, I was listening to another episode of the Team Deakins Podcast, a collection of casual conversations between Roger and James Deakins with people from the industry. In this specific one, Steve Nicolaides, a producer (e.g. When Harry met Sally) talks about how he balances budget and what he thinks are the most important qualities of producers.
Nicolaides accidentally became a producer early in his life when his father dragged him to the Filmways Studios where he worked to get some experience at just 11 years. After climbing the ladder in L.A. he became a production manager.
The talk was very interesting and I could name a lot of different parts of this over one hour long conversation. However, there was one part in particular that stood out to me. When asked what the most important qualities are for people who want to be production managers or producers Steve answered that you 1) have to be able to work long hours and 2) have to always find the joy in life. Especially the second part stuck my and I was thinking: What does the joy in life have to do with producing? Well, Nicolaides went on to say that producers and production managers have the ability to lead this super important team where during a production everyone will have at least one bad day. If you have the power to bring the good spirits back, the work will be better and more productive.
The second interesting point for me was the budget part. Steve described how he is always the one stamping and reviewing the budgets for films. He also talked about the steps to budgeting in this field. According to Nicolaides, you have to first do a rough production schedule before you can then estimate a budget which will be approved (or not) by the production company. Meanwhile, they search for a director with whom the budget is talked about again before starting the actual work. What was so striking for me is the fact that a lot of work goes into a budget even before the film has a director. I mean, I knew that the budget was a big deal but it never occured to me that it might be more important than who will be doing the movie in most cases.
The conversation between Steve Nicolaides and the Deakins Team went on and touched on other topics such as a producer’s role in post-production. As they talked about it very thoroughly, adding all the details would make this blog post explode. Therefore, and because VFX and Animation will not be part of my Master’s project, I will have to skip this part. However, if anyone is interested in that topic, feel free to visit the podcast website as mentioned below.
