PreProduction Unit- Researching the art of being a Producer.

In my pursuit of learning as much as possible as I can about the art of being a film producer, I have been checking out some interviews online with film producers that have worked with major companies, on mainstream movies. One in particular I felt was especially useful in summing up exactly what a producer's job is, was this interview with Tim Bevan. In it, Tim states that the producer's job is to essentially provide the tools needed for the film's director to do their job; "Ultimately, films are a director’s medium. They have control. It is my job or Eric (Fellner’s) to create the right environment for them to do the best job they can."

This is particularly important to consider when it comes to re-evaluating my own importance as a producer, When working as a team, it is sometimes easy to rely on others, which sometimes leads to slacking- expecting other members to make up the workload. When it comes to my job as a producer however, I have to be spot on with what I do, and always at work to provide the assets necessary for all the other members of the team to do their own respective jobs- otherwise nothing gets done.

I also found this interview with Philippa Boyens, the co-producer of such films as The Hobbit and District 9. In it, she is asked about what kind of challenges she faced as a producer for The Hobbit as opposed to when she acted as a producer for The Lord of The Rings, and whether or not The Hobbit was a more challenging film to produce for. The issues of the producer's job in adapting the writer's screenplay, and how hard the job is are also brought up.

Something I learned from this interview with Phillipa is once again- how important the producer's job is, and how they play a major role in convincing actors to become contributors for the project, as well as having to keep improving and delivering new assets with each film that is made. The importance of working closely with the Director is also stressed- something that I will take into careful consideration during the production of Inoculum.

Pre-Production Unit- Investigating Drama Screenwriters, and the importance of a great quality script.

One major problem I have come across during the scripting process, is that some of my more dramatic moments do not come across as realistic. I have characters delivering monologues which express their emotions, but don't really "tell" the viewer anything new. This creates the impression that my characters are overly dramatic, sometimes to the point that their dialogue becomes quite cheesy and unbelievable.
In response to this grievance, I decided that it would be worth my time investigating some of the more successful drama films of all time, and see how the screenwriters of those films tackled the more delicate scenarios with their characters.
Some questions I wanted to answer through doing this was;

• How dramatic should characters be when conveying emotion?
• What kind of language should characters use during such situations?

I hoped from this I would learn to make my characters less "cheesy" when speaking in a dramatic way, and also make them more believable as characters.

I decided to begin my investigation by performing a Google search for "the most successful drama films of all time", and one of the first results was "The Shawshank Redemption." I felt that this would be a fantastic starting point for me to find some screenwriters that I could take some form of inspiration from.
I found that the screenwriter for Shawshank redemption was Frank Darabont, a Hungarian screenplay writer, and with this knowledge, I decided to scour youtube to try and find out if there were any interviews which would give me a deeper insight into his mindset when writing a screenplay, and more importantly, if I could find any information about how to script realistic character dialogue.

I came across this interview, which although doesn't really contain the kind of information I was looking for, it does contain some very useful information on the importance of having a good quality script in order to entice contributors into wanting to take part in the film project.

In the interview, Morgan Freeman explains that he didn't even know which character he was being considered for in the Shawshank Redemption, but because the script was such great quality, he didn't care, and wanted to just be involved in some way.
This is something I feel I should take on board during my process of acting as a producer. I think one thing I should take away from this small investigation is that I should ensure my script is great quality before I begin to look for contributors to my film.
I have learnt that sometimes it is the quality of the script that is the deal-breaker for cast applicants as to whether or not they will ultimately want to be involved. Therefore it would probably be best for me in the future to make sure that I have completed the final draft of the script before beginning to search for cast members.