Victoria University is running the second round of its successful short course claimed to be the first EP course in Australia, with upcoming sessions in Sydney and Melbourne. The first group graduated last year with a Professional Certificate in Executive Screen Production.
Just under a thousand dollars gets you six full days, spread over a month, with two full weekends, to skill up emerging Executive Producers.
The idea started with Pamela Wilson-Endrina. “I had been working in the States in the film and TV industry for about ten years”, she explained. Prior to returning, she and her husband had been running the Highland Hills Lending Group, one of the around eight hundred lenders that folded in the Global Financial Collapse.
“When we came back to Australia we noticed a difference between the skillsets of producers here and in the US. There was not a good understanding of financing and legal practice, and most of the emphasis was on development.”
As David Court, who runs the Centre for Screen Business at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, said, “Having been an EP, I can tell you there is nothing more dispiriting than the producer who has no idea about money and who really doesn’t get it. They don’t even know what they are promising.”
“To be an effective producer, you’ve got to be credible across the table. Even if its not your first language, you’ve got to be able to pick your way through it.”
Pamela Wilson-Endrina became the Research Co-ordinator in the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre, which is part of the Faculty of Business Law at Victoria University, and explored the possibility of a niche course for executive producers with Geoff Brown, the CEO of the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia. “We asked for guidance in setting up the course,” she explained. “SPAA is not endorsing the course but assisted in creating the outline and format.”
“We couldn’t find anything like this, even in the United States. There are plenty of courses for producers, but not Executive Producers.”
My impression of a good EP centres on legal and financial ability – these are the people who stitch together the deals, who understand the hardcore market opportunities, the sources and expectations of financiers, and the flow of rights and percentages.
“Here we have a conundrum,” Patricia replied. “The term EP is extremely fluid, and means several different things, both in Hollywood and here. It is different in television and film, and is changing with the creation of Screen Australia.”
She argues that the old AFC and FFC occupied some of the Executive Producer space, but that is now devolving back to the producer, after the creation of the offset. “They are not skilled to do it,” she claimed. “That’s why there is a need for reskilling and why the role is more fluid.”
The cluster of skills around the EP is becoming clumsier – she cited US EPs whose role has spread downstream from the money end to production, and to development as well. In other words, they are becoming traditional creative producers. She suspects that the financial realities of the Australian industry ensures that EP skills must be part of a general package, rather than entrusted to specialists. We just can’t afford them on most productions.
“In the traditional role”, she said, “the EP is the representative of the investors and is usually a lawyer. If you look at studios, its the EP who is put in to monitor what a production company is doing.”
“But the people who are producing now have to get the investors involved. They are both the EPs and the creative producers. It is a really interesting situation.”
Ironically, the Centre for Screen Business is training producers, but effectively offering a course for Executive Producers. In David Court’s words, “Our approach is a little different. We really take people int0o the way money works. It is really a tailored MBA finance course, to demystify finance. Most people approach finance with fear and trepidation – they don’t know much about it, they don’t understand the language, they don’t know what is expected – and that is what we aim to demystify.”
To Wilson-Endrina, there is a problem with the professional identity of producers. “The term producer is the most ill-defined and misunderstood term in the whole of production,” she said. “What we are trying to do is say – there needs to be best practice. Just as we do for lawyers and doctors. There is a check list by which they advise clients – and the same should go for producers.”
“Do we need formal qualifications for producers, like for lawyers?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. “Producing has always been fluid in some ways. But it needs to be an established skillset, and how people acquire them should be established in some way.”
David Court replied to the question with one of his own. “Aren’t we bifurcating? There are people working on big projects, dealing with a hundred million dollars. Here you have to be very sophisticated financially, and need a very high standard of negotiation and understanding.”
“On the other hand, you will have small groups working in new media who need to be creatively savvy, but even they need capital, and have to understand how to engage with it. They also need to know the language, what is at stake, and what is in the mind of the person holding the purse strings.”
The fourteen students for the Victoria University course came from two distinctly different backgrounds. They could be emerging producers who have been involved in filmmaking for a few years, or they came from marketing, accountancy and the law. All bar one were in their thirties or early forties – “at an age where they have enough life experience to seriously consider producing, and turn their minds to a large project,” according to Wilson-Endrina.
They were required to develop a business plan for a project, and pitch it to a group of industry experts. The quality, she claimed, was pretty high, even though students were moving from a creative to a business case.
“We were emphasising audience and genre and the commerciality of the screen industry”, she said. “That you are in this to make money, and that’s what the students wanted to hear – they were desperate for this information.”
This course is a work in progress. It will be run in Sydney in November, via the Victoria University establishment there. “We are very interested in broadening the course offerings, to Perth and other parts of Australia. Victoria University has campuses in China, where the industry is booming, and we could potentially assist the co-production market there.”
How the course fits into the industry training landscape remains to be seen. One typical student is Scott McKennie, currently part of his family company in geographic information systems, who graduated from the JMC Academy in digital television production. He has worked on a variety of short films, and was enchanted by the insights into financing and pitching. He said, “I haven’t done a university course that is this intense, or so educational.”
He is at the start of his journey as a producer – but he can now function in that indy indy space with a much savvier sense of both finance and audience.
Both the Centre for Screen Business, and in a smaller way, the Victoria University short course, are facets of the same evolution. Quietly, with no formal structure or traditional professional identity, producers are changing their spots.
After all, as David pointed out, there are now more than seventy graduates of the AFTRS course.
