Brief Summary
This video provides an overview of the role of a producer in theater, detailing their responsibilities from the initial stages of fundraising and assembling the creative team to managing legal and financial aspects, marketing, and ticket sales. It also covers the importance of networking, internships, and relevant courses for aspiring producers, as well as the key qualities needed to succeed in this demanding role.
- Producers manage all elements of a show, from fundraising to marketing.
- Legal and financial management are key responsibilities.
- Networking and internships are crucial for aspiring producers.
- Calmness and problem-solving skills are essential for success.
A producer's role begins at the very start of a show's development and continues until its completion. They are responsible for bringing together all the elements needed to put on a production, including raising money and assembling the creative team, which includes the director, writer, actors, and designers. The producer serves as the main point of contact for everyone involved.
Producers manage all aspects of a show, including legal, contractual, and financial elements. This requires strong numerical skills for budgeting and contract negotiation with agents representing actors and the creative team. They also handle licensing for plays, including adaptations of films, and negotiate with theaters for rent, managing all external aspects of the production.
Securing funding is crucial, but managing a show once it's running is equally important, particularly selling tickets. Producers work with marketing and press agencies to identify the target market and determine the best sales strategies. While traditional advertising methods like print press, television, and radio are still used, online marketing campaigns and social networking are increasingly important for generating word of mouth.
As a producer, you collaborate with everyone involved in the production. In the early stages, the focus is on the creative team, including the writer and director. During the show's run, marketing people and investors become key contacts, with regular updates required to keep investors informed about their money. Constant communication and negotiation with agents for the creative team and actors are also essential.
The speaker's journey to producing began with acting and taking short-term office jobs for casting directors and agents, which provided insight into how different roles fit together in production. A job in a producer's office in the West End revealed the central and exciting nature of the role. Aspiring producers should offer their services for free as interns to gain experience, make contacts, and learn the industry.
To start a career in producing, offering free services as an intern is essential for meeting people and making contacts. Internships can lead to paid positions. Short producing courses, like the "Sold to New Producers" course, provide a background in budgeting, contracts, and investor relations. Tenacity and the ability to remain calm under pressure are crucial for solving problems and bringing a project to fruition.
Summarize any YouTube video in seconds
Get summaries like this one for any video, in your language, with the free Summ app.
Transcript
Full transcript of “Advice for young, aspiring theatre producers”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 As a producer, you start at the very beginning and you go through till the very end when the show is on. Uh, and you bring together all the different elements that make up um, putting on a show. We raise money to put on productions. We bring together the director, the writer, the actors, all the creative elements, the designer um, and we um, we raise the money to actually put the show on. The producer is really the main the focal point for everybody. So that you manage as a producer, you manage all the other uh, elements of the show. So the legal um and the contractual and the financial management of the show comes out of the producers's office. Um so you have to be really good with figures. You have to be able to do budgets. You have to be able to do contracts and deal with agents or the actors agents and the creative team agents. The writer um normally if he's dead, uh he'll have an estate. You'll
0:46 have to deal with getting a license to do um a play. Um or the adaptation rights if it's a film that you're trying to make into a play. um and basically dealing with every single legal aspect of putting a show on and negotiating with a theater. If you're an independent producer, you have to um put shows on in theaters um and you have to uh negotiate a good deal for rent um and um uh deal with all of the external aspects of doing a show. It's probably the most important thing about getting the money is dealing with a show when it is up and running because you have to be able to sell tickets and you without you deal with marketing people. um specialist agencies for marketing and press and you have to decide with them what the target market is for the show and how you're going to actually sell um the work to
1:32 the right people. And in the old days it used to be much more traditional methods of advertising um in the press. But nowadays with obviously with amazing technology we have um marketing campaigns are often online and viral through Facebook um social networking sites and that way you can get really fantastic word of mouth out to um to people to come and see a show and obviously because a lot of theatergoers are over the age of actually wanting to be computer literate or I'm sure people want to be computer literate but can't always be. So you have to advertise to them through the more traditional um press, print press like um uh the newspapers and obviously television and radio. That's a really tough question about how who we work with most because as a producer you work with everybody so much as you are the sort of focal point
2:17 of um putting bringing a show together and I would say that in the early stages of production it's normally the creative team and the writer and the director um and the people coming to develop the idea probably during the show would be the marketing people um your investors who you really have to keep um keep in touch with and let them know what's going on and what's happening with their money. Um, and um, agents, I guess you do have to deal with a lot of agents um, for all the different creative team and the actors and you have to get very good at um, uh, of negotiating with all these different people. Well, when I was first starting out, I actually was an actor um, and I was in the obviously long periods of unemployment that actors have to go through. Um I did a lot of um short-term work in offices um different production
3:02 offices and for casting directors and agents and I got a feel of what everybody did and how and that's really actually worked in my favor knowing how everybody fits together um in in terms of overall production. Um then I got a job in a producers's office in the West End and I realized that it was the most sort of uh exciting place to be really because you're there from the very beginning to the end of a project. Everything revolves around producers office and I realized that actually that was where I wanted to be working. So the first thing is if you if you want to do producing you have to go out and offer your services for free to people because uh and there are producing companies that will take interns um and work you know be prepared to work for a,000% late nights. um you meet a lot of people and you make fantastic contacts and you get to know who's who in the theater world.
3:49 Um and then you can move on at the end of your internship and potentially get a paid position. And then I was an assistant producer. Um and I learned a lot from working with producers. Um and I think if you have if you do go on a a course, there are these short um producing courses run in the West End. The sold to new producers course is a really great one because it gives you a great background in budgeting and contracts and the sort of legal side of things. It's very important and how to look after investors and how to source investors. And then the last thing I think that generally if you've got a great project you just have the tenacity to want to do it and to get it on. You'll find your own way um to do that and you just have to as a producer the most important thing is to be able to appear calm in every situation when everyone else is running around and things have gone wrong. You just have to
4:35 be able to be the one who says takes a step back from it and says, "Okay, let's let's work out what we can do to solve this
