What Does a Line Producer Do? An Emmy Winner Explains

Documentary First, Episode 98 · with Sandy Gordon, Emmy-winning producer · 31 minutes · January 21, 2021

Listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all apps · Watch: YouTube · Read: Full transcript

What does a line producer do on a film or documentary?

The name says it: a line producer is responsible for the line items of the budget, meaning everything that costs money, from crew and equipment to locations, props and wardrobe. Emmy-winning producer Sandy Gordon explains that managing the budget also means managing the time and the plan for the whole shoot, because every delay costs money.

In Episode 98 of Documentary First, host Josh Lindsay, Christian Taylor and Jason Rugg talk with Sandy, a consulting producer on The Girl Who Wore Freedom, for the second week in a row. She starts with stories from the locations department on The Hudsucker Proxy, including night shoots on LaSalle Street and an elevator ride with Paul Newman. Christian admits her film never had a line producer, and tells first-time filmmakers not to skip this role.

Sandy explains why you can’t ballpark a budget, how one rethink of a thermometer commercial saved about $20,000, why a line producer should be hired early and paid, and what to look for when you hire one. She talks about planning healthy craft services and breaks for the crew, and how COVID and streaming are changing production. Jason adds how changes cost time in animation.

In this episode, you’ll learn

  • What a line producer does, from blockbusters to small indie shoots and commercials
  • Why you can’t ballpark a film budget until you know exactly what you’re shooting
  • How one rethink of a thermometer commercial saved about $20,000
  • How grouping scenes by location saves money on set
  • Why a line producer should be brought on at the start, and paid
  • What qualities to look for when you hire a line producer
  • Why Sandy plans healthy craft services, water and breaks for the crew
  • How COVID and streaming are changing film and TV production

Questions and answers

What does a line producer do?

A line producer manages a production’s budget line by line: crew, equipment, locations, props, wardrobe and anything else that costs money. According to producer Sandy Gordon, that also means managing time and the shooting plan, because any time you fall behind it costs money. On big films, each department manages its own piece of the budget; on smaller shoots, the line producer often handles all of it.

When should you hire a line producer?

At the very beginning. Sandy Gordon says a line producer should map the plan from pre-production through post, because you can’t price a film until you know exactly what you’re shooting. Don’t expect the work as a favor. If money is tight, she suggests paying a line producer to build the budget and plan up front, then bringing them back once the money is raised.

How can a line producer save money on a shoot?

By finding a cheaper way to show the same thing. On a thermometer commercial, Sandy Gordon suggested filming a bathtub filling while a baby is heard in the background, and a doll under a blanket for the bedtime shot, which she estimates saved about $20,000. Line producers also group scenes by location and choose locations close together, so trucks and lights don’t have to move.

What qualities make a good line producer?

Sandy Gordon describes a good line producer as very Type A, organized and attentive to details, while still seeing the bigger picture. The job takes the personality to be assertive and tell people no, even telling Meryl Streep to put her mask on. For a documentary, she says, look for someone who has worked on interview-style shoots and who thinks early about what the editor will need, because you can’t fix everything in post.

How did COVID change film and TV production?

Sandy Gordon expects some changes to last, such as big TV shows and feature films no longer allowing visitors on set. Producer friends of hers dislike the masks, separating and individually wrapped food, but are making do. She also sees audiences splitting across more channels and streaming sites, which she believes will make it even harder for a film or show to find an audience.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Meet Producer Sandy Gordon and The Hudsucker Proxy
  • 4:08 What Does a Line Producer Do?
  • 7:40 Why You Can't Ballpark a Budget
  • 10:53 Scheduling Tricks That Save Money
  • 14:02 What to Look for in a Line Producer
  • 17:44 Feeding and Caring for Your Crew
  • 23:12 How COVID and Streaming Change Production

About the guest

Sandy Gordon is an Emmy-winning producer and a consulting producer on The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Most of her feature film work was in locations, including Rudy and The Hudsucker Proxy, and she worked as a production assistant and production coordinator on Return to Me. Her television work includes Party of Five. She has also worked at a post facility and with animators and graphic designers, and when the episode was recorded she was working for DePaul University in the Chicago area. As Sandra Gordon, she wrote Action! Establishing Your Career in Film and Television Production and Great Jobs for Film Majors, which is no longer in print.

About Documentary First

For people who make documentaries and people who love them. Discover how documentaries actually get made, paid for and seen with filmmaker Christian Taylor. Plus DocuView Deja View, where every guest recommends a documentary worth watching. One week, a long-form conversation about a guest's journey, projects and lessons; the next, The Deep Dive, Christian's short solo reflection on one idea from that conversation. Guests have included Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy. Christian directed the award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Nearly 300 conversations. Listen Notes top 5% worldwide. 4.8 on Apple Podcasts. New episodes every week. Follow the show · About the podcast · Support the show on Patreon

Resources mentioned

Full transcript

Meet Producer Sandy Gordon and The Hudsucker Proxy

Josh Lindsay: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at a first-time filmmaker’s journey. I’m your host, Josh Lindsay, from The Movie Proposal Podcast, and with us as always is our favorite first-time filmmaker, Christian Taylor.

Christian Taylor: Hey there, Josh. Good to see you.

Josh: Thank you. And also with us is our trusty, dusty research extraordinaire, button-pushing guy. I couldn’t do it without him. Am I being sarcastic? You’ll never know. Jason Rugg.

Jason Rugg: Hey there. Hello.

Josh: And back with us for a second time, two weeks in a row, is the consulting producer, Emmy Award-winning Sandy Gordon. Welcome back, Sandy.

Sandy Gordon: Thanks so much. Glad to be back.

Josh: So last week, I want to do a quick film update, but just quickly I want to remind people that Sandy is working on The Girl Who Wore Freedom as a consulting producer. She has a background working in films such as Rudy, The Hudsucker Proxy, television series such as Party of Five. She’s published books on filmmaking, and right now she’s in the Chicagoland area working for DePaul University, which I do have a question about, so I’d like to ask about that. Film update, though, real quick. Christian, last week mentioned five new film festivals.

Christian: I said yes, come on over.

Josh: And I’m assuming today we have an update on distribution.

Christian: Yes. Um, no, I’m not ready to give you that quite yet.

Josh: Come on. It’s only been like a year.

Jason: End of season cliffhanger that you’re waiting for.

Christian: Didn’t you see on the sheet, Josh? I said don’t ask me about distribution.

Josh: Okay.

Christian: No, I don’t, don’t remind me. No, when this comes out, we are on the doorstep of the Chandler Film Festival in Chandler, Arizona. So people need to go get their tickets. They’re $15, and they will be able to watch the film for a whole week and even tell their friends about it. So that’s the film update for this week. Let’s dive back in. We only have about 27 minutes before Sandy has to go, so let’s dive right in. You said you had a question about where she’s working now.

Josh: Well, yes, that’ll be my second question.

Christian: Okay.

Josh: Christian said we could ask whatever we wanted to.

Christian: Yeah.

Josh: So, okay, Sandy, you gave us a great backstory to Rudy. I’d love to hear a great backstory to The Hudsucker Proxy.

Sandy: Yeah. Well, so my job on The Hudsucker Proxy was working in the locations department. Also, most of my feature film work was locations, except for one David Duchovny movie that I am blanking on the name of, that was shot here. Sorry.

Christian: Oh, Return to Me.

Sandy: Thank you so much. Minnie Driver, Bonnie Hunt. And on that one I was a production assistant and production coordinator, which is a whole other job to talk about. But anyhoo, Hudsucker Proxy shot in Chicago for a month. Most of it was shot in a studio somewhere else, but all of the exteriors of, like, the stock exchange-looking buildings and stuff was LaSalle Street downtown. It was all night shoots. So the parts that I was involved with were all the street-related, outside nighttime stuff for that building.

And we did an indoor scene in the ballroom of a hotel, the Blackstone Hotel on Balbo and Michigan. And I rode in the elevator with Paul Newman, thank you very much. And then right after that elevator ride, the elevator broke down. So I just missed being locked in an elevator with Paul Newman by about five minutes. But, um, what’s your question?

Christian: All right, well, we should be talking more Girl Who Wore Freedom-related stuff, so let’s move on, shall we?

What Does a Line Producer Do?

Christian: We wanted to learn more about what it means to be a top-notch line producer. Again, it’s got the word producer; it can mean a thousand different things. What does it mean to be a line producer in the world of live-action film shoots?

Sandy: Yeah. So line producer, I mean, just the name of it alone is the line producing, meaning the budget line items. So you’re mostly concerned with the budget. But when you’re talking about the budget, you’re talking about so many different facets of the production. So it’s the crew, it’s the equipment, it’s the locations, it’s the props, it’s the wardrobing. Literally anything that costs money is coming out of that budget.

And so as the line producer, what you do might vary if it’s a big feature film or a big blockbuster movie versus a smaller indie film, or if it’s a corporate video, or if it’s a small local commercial. There are different levels to what that budget is going to entail. So if you are on a big blockbuster movie, you might have other people helping you. You’re not in it fully alone managing each of those line items; each department is managing their own budget within the big budget. There are many times in my world where I have a smaller situation, and so I’m managing all of it myself.

But so basically, yeah, when you’re managing the budget, you’re kind of also managing the time and the whole plan for the entire shoot. So on a big film, you probably have people helping you, like an assistant director who’s helping to plan out the timing and keeping people on track during the day. But when you don’t have the budget for your assistant director, then you as the producer will be the person on set watching the timing, keeping it moving, because any time you’re behind, it’s going to cost you money in the end. So it’s really kind of managing the plan. What is our plan to get this done most efficiently, and not just for the money, but just efficiently for your schedule?

Christian: And I just want to say, this was another area where, remember, we always say this podcast is how not to do a documentary. Well, we never had a line producer. I was working with a couple of other producers from the beginning to try to set up our budget and work within it, but this has been a really tough area for us, because we did not have anybody with expertise to help from the beginning. And a line producer should be brought on in the very beginning. And I did know this, I’ve always known this, but you have to have a special type of person, and they are not easy to find, and they cost a lot of money, because it is a lot of time.

They’re coming in in the beginning, they’re helping you fix the budgets, and they’re running those. And not only are they managing the time, the money, helping to manage the schedule, sometimes they’re even writing the checks, and they are the ones that are depositing money, and they’re a key, key player. And I would say, if you’re a first-time filmmaker listening to this, do not skip this part. Find a good line producer early on, because they will help you in the end, and they will go all the way. I could still use a line producer now. We’re still having trouble raising money, we still have tons of bills to pay, and there’s no end in sight.

Why You Can't Ballpark a Budget

Sandy: So yeah, I would say that with the line producer, to your point, it takes a lot of work, because you’re starting from the very beginning of the plan to map out your entire movement forward. So you’re talking about your pre-production, through the production, through the post-production. There might be someone who oversees the editing in the end, a production supervisor or a post producer, depending on the situation. But you’re the one who is figuring out what is this going to cost, and you can’t really determine that until you know what it is you’re shooting.

You can’t ballpark it, which everyone wants you to do, but it’s really dangerous to ballpark, because any little piece of information that’s missing from the puzzle could make your budget go completely haywire. Someone can say to me, “I want to shoot a three-minute film. How much is it going to cost?” And I say, “Well, it depends. What are you trying to do?” “Well, I’m just going to tell a story.” And at the end of the day, when they finally get to what the story is, it’s like, “Well, it’s on a yacht, it’s in the middle of the ocean, and a helicopter comes down and it drops money over the boat. The end.”

It’s like, well, okay, now if you had told me that, I would have planned completely differently than my scenario of two people in a park sitting on a bench. It’s one thing to cover your day at the park with a couple of actors and controlling the crowd, versus I need to rent a yacht, I need to get a permit for a helicopter, I have to pay the helicopter. So your budgets can be at completely different extremes. And as a producer, I’m there to help the creative people to say, maybe there’s a better way to accomplish what you’re trying to show.

Like, do you need to have a gun in the actual scene, or can you infer that there’s a gun? You hear the click, so you know someone has cocked the gun, but you don’t have to actually see it, right? Like, I just know it’s there. They’ve got their hand in their pocket, I can see something there. And I did a shoot for a commercial, and they wanted to have babies, because it’s a thermometer, and they want to show how the thermometer works on a baby.

Well, to have a baby, you have to really plan around the crying baby versus a happy baby, and what’s their sleep schedule, and then you’re trying to fit that in around the other stuff you’re trying to shoot. And now you wanted to have the baby in the bathtub, but you also want to have the baby eating cereal, and there are laws about how long you can have a working baby on camera. So you have all these things you have to think about. So my suggestion was, how about you show the bathtub being filled? You hear a baby in the background, but you show the bathtub. You show the mom prepping the meal. You might even show her spooning the food, but you’re not showing it come into the baby’s mouth.

And then when you’re showing them in bed at night, you just have a doll covered by a blanket. No one will know. Look, I just saved you like $20,000, because we didn’t have to plan for having multiple babies all over the place.

Scheduling Tricks That Save Money

Sandy: So that’s part of your job as the line producer, is to say: take the script, figure out what has to happen, and the most efficient way to film it. Take all the park scenes and have them all be in a row, and you shoot them all back to back, rather than shooting in the order that you see it in the film. Maybe you find locations that are close to each other, so now you don’t have to move your trucks and reset your lighting or reset all your staging. The extras can stay where they are, but you now just shift to this scene that’s one block away, versus having to come back to this block three weeks from now and re-permit the street and do all of this.

So you’re working with the locations people, you’re working with each department head on what their needs are, and you’re trying to fulfill everybody’s needs and keeping it within the budget and the time frame. So you bring that line producer on super early, so that they can map out that plan with you. You know what that budget is, know what that plan is, and then when you execute it, you know what your costs are going to be, and you’ve got probably a little padding in there for when something inevitably goes wrong.

But to bring on a line producer and ask them to do you a favor is really tough, because as much as I want to help, and I would absolutely help with the film if it’s my friend and I want to help them with their success, I can’t make a living if I’m working for a year for free. So you really are going to have to pay something to a line producer, even if you just pay them in the beginning to map it out, have the plan in place. Then maybe you take a break for a while, till you really have raised all the money that you need, and then you come back to hiring them again. That might be something you could do.

Christian: Yeah, and in the documentary world, that’s a little bit more possible, or even in Jason’s world, in animation. It’s a lot more controlled than the narrative film or a series. But even in the narrative film, or even in the documentary films, line producers are hugely important in helping you make decisions. Because as a producer, you want lobster dinner, and you can’t get lobster dinner often. And so your line producer is going to have to ask you questions like, let’s think outside the box: can we get imitation lobster for your lobster dinner? Are you willing to compromise there? Because if you don’t compromise there, then you can’t have this really delicious baked potato that you also want. Make your choice.

And that is really helpful, I mean, in simple things like with actors. Actors cost all different amounts of money depending on so many things. Sometimes they will negotiate their rates, sometimes they won’t. A line producer is there to help you find the right person for your budget. So they’re just really key in helping you make those decisions, and they definitely deserve to be paid, because it’s not something that you can do halfway. You really need to be able to have somebody focused on it.

What to Look for in a Line Producer

Christian: Which brings me to a question: what kind of person should you be looking for as a line producer? What are the qualities that they need to do their job well?

Sandy: Well, we’re obviously all different people in how we handle our job, but I would say most of us who do line producing... You know, I come from a unique background, right? I have a really diverse background. So I’ve worked at a post facility for several years, and I’ve worked with animators and graphic designers. I’ve also worked on feature films and swept up the confetti on The Hudsucker Proxy that we used as snow on the south street. There are things that I have seen in my career, because I’ve moved around a lot, that other line producers really haven’t had, that same experience that I have, and vice versa. They may have had experiences I haven’t.

But speaking for myself, it’s a person who’s very Type A, who is very organized and pays attention to details, and who also kind of sees the bigger picture. And the reason I bring up my background is that when I personally do producing for projects, I can’t help but think about the editor and what the editor needs, because I have been so many times on the back end working with an editor who doesn’t have everything they need, because nobody thought of it early on in their production. That’s like the biggest problem with every film ever shot, is that people don’t think enough about the editor. Especially with independent films, people just get into their shoot and then they worry about the edit later, and it’s just a disaster. You can’t fix everything in post.

So for me, it’s finding out the background of the person and kind of knowing where they’re coming from. If you’re doing a documentary, you want someone who’s worked in interview style before, who knows what you need to accomplish when you’re interviewing somebody in their living room. It’s different than if you’re going to shoot with a cinematographer that’s always worked on big features. They wouldn’t really know how to mic somebody in their living room and to handle that and their camera. But a lot of people who work on documentaries, they kind of multitask. They do their own lighting, they might mic it themselves. You get nimble, and you’re kind of a one-man band sometimes.

So a line producer who’s got a lot of resources to pull from, or who knows the area, or kind of can wheel and deal for you when you’re looking for equipment and renting for stretches of time. Anyone can do those things, but having the personality to be assertive and to be able to tell people no, and especially in the world of COVID, to be able to say to someone, “Put your mask on.” Like, you have to be able to say to Meryl Streep, “Sorry, but we’re not shooting if you don’t have your mask on.” You can’t be shy. You have to be able to tell people, like, this is what we need to do, and to keep them on task, and also to be managing all of those details and juggling a lot of plates.

Feeding and Caring for Your Crew

Christian: Yeah, I mean, the one thing that I’ve been so impressed with about Sandy is she is very short in stature but huge in personality. So I don’t know, how tall are you exactly?

Sandy: Five feet.

Christian: Yes. But she’s very confident in what she knows, and in who she is, and in doing her job well, that she can tell a Meryl Streep to put on her mask, gently and kindly but firmly. One of the things that I love about her is that she herself is gluten-free and really is conscious about people of different, whatever it may be, diets, races, religions. And so she’s very conscious of their holidays, their diet. And as a line producer, if you’re conscientious and you’re thinking about that there may be people on here who have different allergies and they can’t eat these foods, we can’t just order from McDonald’s. We have to think through what we’re going to feed these people, and the most economical way to do that.

There are going to be people on the set who may be kosher, or maybe they want to celebrate a Jewish holiday. We need to plan around that, or ask them. And those are all things that Sandy has dealt with before, and I’ve learned that from her. One of the other things that she always says is take care of your cameraman and your sound guy and all of the people that are most crucial, doing the hardest work on the principal stuff, or even the editor, because they work so hard and are so zoned in, they don’t think about their own health. They don’t think about that they need to drink water, they don’t think about that they need to sit down or take a break. And so a line producer’s job can also be, hey, we need to budget in time for rest for those people.

Sandy: And one thing that I think I’m a little bit more unique in, in my style, and I know there are more people kind of coming around to being more eco-friendly on set: I’m a total eco nerd. And so early on, I was trying to find ways to not be as wasteful, because we’re in a really wasteful industry. And so I experimented with water bottles for each person. Instead of bringing in Evian bottles, I gave everyone their own reusable bottle and wrote their name on it, as like a gift that they could take away. I myself learned some things through that. A camera guy can’t carry this thing around everywhere they go when they’re carrying all the gear, so I’ve come up with other workarounds for that.

But to that same point, I really think about, I try to plan everything. I’m like a little bit overkill. I don’t think most people do this. I plan every little minute of the day in my head, and I try to map out, like, is that enough time where that person can take a break for five minutes? Can I give some padding in there? And I think about just sort of the flow of the team, and is everyone going to be able to manage at this pace and with these restrictions that are being put on them, for whatever reason. So I think about their food, I think about the day of the week.

Christian: Yeah, bathroom breaks.

Sandy: Like, I think about that stuff. I had another thought on that that’s escaping me, but I think that I try to be conscientious about everyone as humans, and not just, like, at my beck and call to finish a task, but like, really, what can we do to be good humans? Oh, and my other point was, I talk to the craft service people who provide the snacks and the nourishment during the day, and I try, even though I’m a chocoholic, I am trying to have less and less junk food on any of my sets, because that’s what people gravitate towards. They’ll eat M&M’s all day, but it’s not actually helping your body, and you’re not going to be actually, at the end of the day, having as much stamina as if you were eating carrots and apples versus Snickers bars all day. Although there’s peanuts in there.

But so I really try to think about it. I won’t ever let anyone serve turkey as a lunch meal, because then you’re tired an hour later from eating turkey. So I try to really think about: should we be serving a heavy pasta meal, or is there another thing we can do that will give people the energy to do their jobs for this long stretch of time? Probably you don’t have to think that thoroughly, but that’s kind of how I handle my shoots.

Christian: You’re like a mom.

Sandy: I am like a mom. I’m a short Jewish mother. And it’s funny, there was one time where I brought matzah to the set, because I’m Jewish and it was Passover. So I just thought, I’m probably the only one who cares, and I don’t even really care, but I’m just going to put this out there. And it was funny, because by the end of the day, I had three people ask me what brand of matzah it was. They were, like, addicted to it, and they were eating it the whole time, and they were eating all my matzah. So I was like, well, now I don’t have any to eat.

And I’ve had people thank me on several shoots for not having the junk food, because they know that they gravitate towards it. But when you have no other option and you’re hungry, you’re going to eat the carrot sticks. So now it’s just a matter of figuring out how to not be unsanitary with how you share vegetables on a plate. And I don’t want to have individually wrapped things either, because that’s bad for the environment, so I’m sort of trying to figure out how you handle that. But I think most people will thank you in the end if you have healthier foods to snack on. Moral of the story.

How COVID and Streaming Change Production

Josh: So as we’re getting to the end here, you mentioned telling Meryl Streep to wear a mask. What do you see as the future of filmmaking in terms of how COVID has changed things? Do you think it’s going to be changed forever? What’s your feeling right now?

Sandy: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking there’ll be things that change forever, for sure. Definitely big productions like TV shows and big feature films, they will never really have visitors on the set anymore. They’ll use this as an excuse to not let studio heads show up with their children to, like, go tour the Spider-Man set, because nobody wanted that anyway. So now it gives them an excuse to shut that down. But talking to some of my friends who are producing on these shows that are in town, nobody wants any of this. They hate it all. Nobody wants to have to deal with masks and separating, and even individually wrapped foods. It’s just terrible. So they’re making do with it.

But I think in the end, and it kind of speaks to what you were talking about on your previous podcast with Hunter, the industry is shifting, right? If you look back at the start of television, there were three stations, and then there was a fourth station, and then there was HBO, and then there were cable channels, and now there are streaming sites. Like, what’s the next iteration of that? And I think it’s just getting more and more segmented, where different demographics, like, who watches Bravo versus who watches the Smithsonian Channel, different types of people. And now there’s a channel or a network or a streaming site for different groups of people.

And I think it’s going to get even more fragmented, because now you’ll have either platforms where people can upload their own documentary and hope to catch an audience there, or there’ll be platforms for platforms. I don’t know how it’s going to continue to segment, but I think it’s just going to be even harder to find an audience. It’ll be like, ratings used to be 20 million people watched that episode of that TV show, and now you’re lucky if you’ve got two million people watching your TV show. I think you’re going to be lucky if you have one million people watching a TV show, and there’ll just be more content to choose from.

Christian: Yeah, and I think we’ve talked a little bit about this before, and we’ll talk about it more again. The gross national pro, or the GDP, gross domestic product, in people’s pockets is plummeting, and people want free content. So everything’s like a race to the bottom, and the free is going to be out there for everyone, and they will have to hope to leverage that into some sort of paid feature as you dive in. But one of the pain points is there’s just too many things out there to choose from, and how do you solve that problem?

Sandy: Yeah, I wish we could talk for another hour about it.

Christian: Yeah, we didn’t get to talk to Jason at all about any of his questions.

Jason: Oh, it’s fine. You walked through a lot of the pieces of it that I really wanted to learn about, so I think it’s just really fascinating. Like, I heard a story not too long ago about a TV show where they had an evil twin sister show up, and they had this whole plan for how she was going to be dressed and everything like that. And then someone showed up and said, “Hey, you have us changing her hair, and that’ll take half a day, so we can’t do that.” “How can we make her evil?” And so they said, “Okay, we’ll make her evil by putting glasses on.” And so now I know who was the one who said, “Hey, we can’t do that.”

Sandy: Right.

Jason: Right, I know what that role is.

Sandy: Right. How can we find a better way to do that? For sure, that’s exactly what happens. You have to pick apart every scene to figure out, is this the right thing?

Christian: And don’t think that does apply to animation, Jason, because once you get into something, there’s all sorts of costs involved in that as well, and series are even more complicated.

Jason: Well, and with animation you have this added bonus of, any time you make a change to something, it’s not a simple fix. People go, “Oh, can you just make that tail wag on the dog?” It’s like, well, that actually takes like 16 hours, and then you have to send it off to another computer where it has to render overnight. So what you need to do is to really map out in the beginning, and you have to set those expectations. Like, if you’re going to have a change, really know that you want to make that change, and let’s take all the changes at once and be done, because it’s going to take us three weeks to get you that change.

Or we’ll show it to you at a certain stage, so that you know, it’s like, this is sort of where we’re going, is that the right direction that you wanted? Because I’m not going to do all this work and have you go, “Oh no, I meant to wag it the other way.” So it’s kind of knowing your timeline, and in the very beginning saying, on these dates we’re going to have a check-in, and so you have to be available and be ready to make your notes then, because there’s no going back. That’s a whole other world of producing.

Christian: Yes. I always say that I learned to be a producer because I was a mom of four boys. You have to manage time, money, schedules, expectations, and you have to be really good at saying the word no.

Sandy: Yes. Right.

Christian: I’m not very good at that.

Josh: It’s very hard to say no to Christian Taylor, by the way.

Sandy: That’s true for anybody, though, so it’s not just you. I think that’s how we’re all on this podcast. It’s amazing that I didn’t go to France. I just really couldn’t get there.

Christian: Only because you had health issues. Otherwise, I think I could have gotten you on the plane.

Sandy: Trip to France. Although I don’t speak French, it would have been like the most difficult producing experience, because I wouldn’t know how to talk to anybody. [Laughter]

Josh: Well, Sandy, we appreciate you being on the podcast two in a row.

Sandy: Thank you.

Josh: And we definitely want to have you back. Learned quite a bit. Can people get your books places?

Sandy: Yeah. So, well, Great Jobs for Film Majors is no longer in print. It was really for high schools. But Action! Establishing Your Career in Film and Television Production is on Amazon, for like two bucks. You can also go to the library; it should be in your local library, you can ask for it there. There’s a caveat: it’s a rather old book. It’s like early internet, so a lot of the advice that I give is how to do things with, like, pen and paper, and some of the film office contact information has changed. But the stories about what a grip does and how casting works and all of those things are completely relevant and fun. There’s, like, fun behind-the-scenes stories from a lot of different crew people of what they had to do, like a grip on Rudy holding a stand in a lightning storm, wondering if he was going to die. That kind of stuff. So it’s a fun read, and you can find it at the library.

Josh: So awesome. All right, well, thanks again. And to our listener audience, thank you for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell and you can be the one to tell it.

Christian: Yes, you can.

Josh: Bye, everybody.

Back to blog