Way back in February I attended a producing course run by producer Richard Holmes. It was a one day course run by London Screenwriters Festival. I took a whole load notes and thought I’d share my thoughts about it here.
There was a lot of great information, and Richard was very honest about his work as well as telling us one or two things that shouldn’t leave the room (so I won’t be telling you about those!)
Some of the stuff, with myself having been a few years, I already knew, but it was the personal experience and anecdotes that really helped and filled in the gaps of knowledge.
It was great to hear about his success stories out of the 11 or so films that he’s been able to produce, 3 or 4 of them made a profit, and there was some variety in his work too.
He also told us about his experience with investors, and how if you do a presentation to just four people, then those four will know others who inevitably will have money to invest.
That to me is the trickiest bit – the finding of investors. I’ve personally been close to working with people who could potentially find investors, and now looking back I’m glad I didn’t, because nothing was ready, which would have been. Major problem if someone asked to read a script!
Now I’m in a much better position and know exactly what my next steps are. I sort of new in coming to the course I don’t really want to be a producer, but I’m still fascinated by the idea of it. I think because I, like some other filmmakers, became a producer by ‘default’ on a few of my shorts. But as much as I’m interested in it and have my own production company (so in a sense would be at least a ‘co producer’ on anything I do) it’s always great to work with a team, and work with someone else to take most of the producing work on. Not to mention the budgets!
Overall though Richards course was really useful in clarifying things, especially expectations when it comes to being a producer.
