Producing – Week One

So, after the long and painful neglect of my beloved Performance Journal, I return once again with profound reflections so decoratively communicated I expect there won’t be a single soul, myself included, who has the slightest clue what on earth I’m on about! Hopefully not. I’ll try to keep it frank.

So I’m Producer on one of our three end-of-year films, namely Broken Bubbles written and directed by Murdo Macleod. Producing, like this Journal, is something I’ve been mentally avoiding, not because I don’t want to do it but rather because I have crowded my mind, my time, my life, with so many other things it has been impossible to do any of them justice, and extremely hard to enjoy any of them also. Gaelic, driving, singing, projects, writing, moving… to name a few, and then I remember that somewhere under that lot there’s a fantastic film and television course I’m supposed to be studying on. Yes, I have severely over-committed myself this term. I’ve been foolish, I’ve made a mistake, I’ll learn from it… I hope. The fact remains: I love being busy, but too much of anything is harmful.

Pre-production on Broken Bubbles is going well. Thankfully we have quite a bit longer to prepare than the other two which takes the pressure off somewhat. I’m grafting away quite cheerfully and learning a lot as I go. It seems to me that producing, more than directing or any of the more ‘creative’ roles, is learnt on the job. It’s about just going for it, encountering problems, solving them, learning from them, and pushing on. The storyteller within me finds this very appealing as this is of course the foundation of any character-led story. For me the two most important roles of the Producer are to keep a constant flow of clear communication to everyone involved in the production and to be always looking ahead and being well prepared; or as Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the world’s most successful film producers, said: “Expect the worst, hope for the best!”