Introduction

This chapter presents the producer as chief in the process of multiple project development and production. It covers the producer’s leadership role in establishing the production company’s brand presence with global entertainment trade and audiences; maneuvering the balancing act between business, artistic, and personal objectives; managing library projects; and advancing team vitality and allegiance.

For each of these important operations to have their proper impact, we need context. We need contact with the touchstone as to why this matters and to be liberally operating with the optimal secret-sauce of success in our sometimes crushingly-demanding industry.

Even if you have seen it, please take 18 minutes for a refresher of JJ Abrams 2007 TED address at https://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box. Yes, if you can, do it now.

For our production company to be successful, to matter to audiences, we need projects that entertain, emotionally stir, and breathe new life into their audiences. Abrams suggests the story’s mystery, combined with the audience’s imagination, will always be more entertainment-powerful than the realistic appearance of VFX. He demonstrates how elements that truly emotionally wind us up are what capture our commitment to experience the project, but that it is often the heart, humanity, and real purposes of life that may provoke audiences to speak/FB/Tweet to others, “You’ve gotta see this picture!” This may come from scenes audiences rarely if ever speak about to others, but that deeply move them.

Regardless the home-territory, screen upon which a project is designed to premier, its length or budget, for a producer’s projects to succeed, the producer’s soul must be teaming with, must be developing/producing/delivering by every means to audiences, content that thrills them. If so, then everything in this chapter becomes exciting, fulfilling, and a successful labor we are grateful every day to be doing.

It’s our content that drives performance excellence and galvanizes our relationships with our audiences, our teams, and our distribution, finance, and other partners.

Multiple Project Management

As demonstrated in the previous chapter, shepherding a single project through the complete cycle—from discovery, internal greenlighting, and development through financing, production, and distribution—is a wonderfully complex process. When producers plan multiple projects, their activity projection reveals the hyper-challenge of simultaneously managing a project in postproduction, starting principal photography on another, moving yet another project through predevelopment evaluation, and reviewing new stories.

The single project activity and cash flow planning that is reviewed in Chapter 14 must be done for each project proposed in the producer’s multiple project development plan. Each project’s planning, management, and resource-needs must be considered separately, as well as the beneficial amortization of time, team, and expenses that the projects share with one another.

The capacity to manage multiple projects is directly related to how well the producer understands the entire development/production/distribution process. It also depends on the planning and work ethic of the individual. Similarly, producers must sustain the individual creative and business integrity of each project, while they focus on the creative and business balance among all of them.

Seasoned producers adhere to the most successful processes of multiple project development and production, by thoroughly planning for the needs and timing of each project and focusing on the projects as a group. They do this in such a fashion that each project actually benefits the others creatively, financially, and perhaps most especially in their galvanizing effect upon global strategic partner relationships.

Time and Budget Economies

Investors are not the only parties pressing the producer to be engaged in multiple projects. Most of the producer’s primary relationships—such as licensees, agents, bankers, and sales teams—are more dedicated, supportive, and reliant when the producer has several projects in process.

Banks and Completion Guarantors

Some projects will develop and produce in a smoother fashion and achieve higher income performance than others. Bankers and insurers tend to have a greater sense of balance and stability with those producer clients who are driving multiple projects. Further, a slate of projects allows the producer to offer offsetting guarantees among these projects to banks and bonding companies. Such cross-collateralized relationships must be entered into within the bounds of the agreements set forth with the profit participants associated with each project. This often establishes a substantially deeper deal stability and relationship confidence with insurers and banks that is unique to multiple-project producers.

Sales Events

Producers or their representatives usually present their projects to the six or seven major territory distributors and at international territory sales markets such as AFM, EFM (Berlin), and Cannes. Similar to each project’s core-territory distributor relationship, having multiple projects strengthens international territory relationships. Additionally, multiple projects allow the producer to amortize the significant expenses of attending these markets over several projects.

Establishing the Production Company Brand Presence

Production companies, especially new ones, must establish and then advance the respect of their company’s global brand presence with the trade—yet most producers do not push their professional or production company brand with audiences. As emphasized throughout this book, establishing strategic relationships with core-territory distributors, international distributors, banks, completion guarantors, attorneys, agents, and a broad array of other major industry participants is mandatory. The stronger these relationships, the greater the operating benefits. For key close relationships, this is best developed through consistent, confidential communiqués outside the press, some that are later jointly confirmed in the press.

The producer and company trade reputation are almost entirely established and sustained by the performance of the producer’s projects in the global marketplace. In fact, the trade brand’s respect for a production company is chiefly a mirror of the global audience’s respect for the producer’s projects.

Who we are always speaks louder than who we say we are. Likewise, a production company is substantially known by its projects rather than its mission statement. Understanding this, producers deciding to produce some projects that are outside the scope of their company’s branded mission often set up another production entity or division for those projects.

Because each project’s audience campaign is necessarily intense and appropriately focused on that project, typically little of the audience campaign emphasis is given to the producer or production company. Further, it is almost unheard of for production companies to launch a campaign exclusively on the production company or producer, or even a campaign where they are the dominant focus. Exceptions to this are producers who receive personal branding as part of their promotion of their projects, and those few who become celebrity producers by their projects’ acclaim.

Especially with recent direct-connect-ability possible between producers/production entities and their audiences, there may be highly beneficial project branding benefits associated with a production company’s name becoming an icon with its audiences.

There are lessons to be learned by other global consumer brands and the way in which they are marketed. Google, Nike, Microsoft, and many other brands have specific product campaigns, as well as primarily brand campaigns that, in turn, drive consumer response to their individual products. If the new product release (which every non-franchise motion

picture is) is driven by a brand name that has consumer confidence, the new product’s reception and success are substantially more predictable.

For their target consumers, new products from Apple, BMW, and McDonald’s each have their targets interest largely pre-sold. Their target consumers are all substantially motivated to buy because of their brand trust. This is especially valuable in entertainment—and reveled in, by the few who have carefully applied their genius marketing muscle to their own brands.

From a target audience perspective, HBO, Disney, its Pixar unit, Nickelodeon and all of the leading ten video game behemoths, are currently the premiere studio/production companies with a brand reputation for delivering a specific kind of project in which their target audiences are on stand-by to consume.

The U.S. studios have a general reputation for delivering high-quality entertainment, but not necessarily delivering a certain style of entertainment. Associated with their style, U.S. studios are not known for skewing to any particular target audiences.

Projects by Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, and George Lucas have a consumer-brand presence. They owe this position primarily to audience satisfaction with their prior projects, but also because of their respective companies’ continual and highly effective promotion. But what of Imagine, Bad Robot, and Lakeshore? These companies have strong brands within the trade, but they are largely without brand definition to audiences. By comparison, DreamWorks has a strong cachet with audiences, as well as the trade, as branding DreamWorks with audiences has been part of the DreamWorks’ partners’ objective from their beginning.

Production companies who create a strong audience brand presence deliver a powerful marketing advantage to their projects. This important marketing edge can render their projects easier to sell and, consequently, more valuable to global distributors/licensees.

Participant Media is one of the few production companies whose projects are consistent with its mission and are building the company’s brand within the industry and could be doing so with its target audiences. Their stated mission is “Participant believes that a good story well told can truly make a difference in how one sees the world. Whether it is a feature film, documentary or other form of media, Participant exists to tell compelling, entertaining stories that also create awareness of the real issues that shape our lives.” And their projects live up to that mission: Deepwater Horizon, Fair Game, The Hundred Foot Journey, The Help, Bridge of Spies, Denial and many more. Participant’s very name points to one of their objectives being to move audiences to do something to improve world conditions.

Production companies committed to becoming audience icons will refocus their companies’ motion logos, include new brand marketing language in their distribution agreements, and increase their company brand strength in their projects’ advertising and promotion campaigns, assuring their highest impact branding to the trade, audiences, or both.

Sustaining Business, Artistic, and Personal Objective Balance

As independent producers review their responsibilities and, more pointedly, as they perform them, it becomes inescapably apparent that unless managed well, a producer’s life can easily be consumed entirely with entertainment business activities.

Producing well is an exceptional accomplishment and immensely satisfying. But for most of us, it is vitally important to participate in the lives of our family and friends. We need to advance our understanding of new technologies, to participate in and be nourished by the arts, to read great literature (not just screenplays), and to keep and occasionally review a personal journal. Additionally, we can balance ourselves by caring for those less able than us and perhaps even by planting and caring for a garden.

Work is the lubricant of life. When we cease to be productive, we tend to lose our purpose and place. But it should not consume us. We must plan for the seasonings in our lives, or our lives will be bland, lacking full symmetry and fulfillment. Family, contemplation, study, the arts—these are the desserts of life. Without them, we will wake up one day and find ourselves separated from our central motivators.

In the words of historian Will Durant’s The Pleasures of Philosophy, “To seize the value and perspective of passing things, we want to know that the little things are little and the big things big, before it is too late. We want to see things now as they will seem forever, in the light of eternity.” To strike balance in our lives between the big and small (albeit important) things is not as impossible as it might seem. It is largely a matter of perspective, planning, and performance.

The most effective and productive leaders we know in the entertainment industry have written their short-and long-term life objectives, which they frequently revise. Doing so allows them to temper their passionate, classically well-planned filmmaking commitments. They use their written objectives to develop a detailed written plan in which they add specific appointments for their daily, weekly, monthly, and annual schedules. Yes, they actually schedule personal time with family, along with times for service, reading, study, and even (perhaps especially) play.

The power of scheduling these activities provides for balance in their lives and even gives them occasion to respond, “I’m sorry, I am booked then, but we can get together….” By keeping as faithful to their schedules as possible, these people prosper in their family relationships, thrive as teachers and learners, and experience the truly good things of life, each of which keeps them happier, more productive, and, by their admission, more creative.

In the main, producers love their work and immerse themselves in it. This is essential to achieve their finest projects. But if this is done to the exclusion of other rich aspects of life, they may become personally weak, eventually even in their productions.

Managing Library Projects

As reviewed in earlier chapters, projects have unique premiers in each of their distribution arenas. Then they become library projects, continuing their audience and earnings’ life in streaming to all screens and global television syndication.

A wonderful phenomenon of this industry is continual audience evolution. Some television syndicators constructively measure audience evolution in seven-year cycles. Whatever the year of the project’s television premiere, in seven years, newborns will be seven years old and part of a potential new kids’ audience for that project. Seven-year-olds then, have become 14 and are a new youth audience; 14-year-olds have become 21 and thus a new young-adult audience. By the time 21-year-olds become 28 and are beginning to start families, they view entertainment from a substantially new lifestyle and target-audience perspective.

Because of audience evolution, projects should be reanalyzed by their target audiences at least every 7 years. Some projects will warrant a more aggressive re-release strategy than others. A project’s reanalysis assists producers in an accurate valuation for new audience promotion to re-enliven television syndication, VOD, and related licensees.

Other projects may justify re-release strategies that include re-release through various distribution arenas, creating new advertising and public relations campaigns, negotiating campaign tie-ins with other consumer brands, and novelization re-release and even producing a new project or series. Deserving projects in the producer’s library should be kept fresh and valuable to prior audiences, and marketed to new target audiences.

Advancing Team Vitality and Allegiance

The producers who analyze and direct from the perspective that the process they are engaged in is a whole and living entity best serve the production and development company team. The team is responsive to everything that affects it, thereby increasing or decreasing in its health, vitality, and productivity. Producers who understand this regularly evaluate and revitalize the team.

Much like a fruit tree, healthy teams produce appealing, good fruit, in the form of pictures and related products. And like that fruit, both products and people leave the company in their seasons, and this is a healthy sign of productivity. Some team members progress beyond the capacity of the production team; others may not be able to sustain the team’s performance integrity. For either of these reasons, it is best for them to go.

Also, just as trees become burdened with unproductive growth that needs to be trimmed, so production teams may have members who are more weight than fuel. Though this process is most often uncomfortable, pruning provides for the best growth, both for these individuals and the team. Between these two extremes exists the necessity of caring for the team. This can be sufficiently accomplished only when team members are individually and regularly reviewed (twice per year is optimal).

Producers strengthen their team members when they seek for opportunities to help expand their experience, education, and responsibilities. This can be done effectively by providing team members with both the means (such as expenses for classes in screenwriting, VFX, and international languages) and motivation (promotion, prizes, perks, bonuses, or pay increases) for successful achievements. Providing team members with the means and the motivation results in a team that is continually expanding its performance capacities and deepening team commitment and solidarity.

Sustaining business, artistic, and personal objective balance applies to all members of the team, not just the producer. Producers can provide a broad range of benefits to their teams, which, in return, can create the greatest success attainable. These benefits begin with each team member understanding and performing in harmony with the company’s mission statement, and they encompass spouse and family travel accommodations and office environment perks, including exercise rooms, nursery care, a well-stocked kitchen, and a library.

Chapter Postscript

Always remember that each project provides the production company’s power, enlivening everyone and everything else. Dream expansively, plan comprehensively, work valiantly, and live completely.