How to Hire Movie Production Manager

Video Transcript

"Hi, Scott duPont, welcome back to Film Producing 102 on behalf of Expert Village. Our next topic is hiring a UPM also known as a Unit Production Manager, sometimes called a Line Producer. Now what this person or individual does, in the overall film producing process is he's going to help put together a very detailed budget that can sometimes get 25 to 35 pages long, and he's going to double and triple check all those items in the budget, whether it's your craft services or whether it's your camera rental, different equipment, film stock, tape stock and during the production, he's going to be tracking where you are at what point in the production so make sure you're on track with your budget. If you're really detailed and an extremely organized person, you can try to take this on yourself, on an ultra low budget film, if you're the producer. Another thing you can do is, if you don't have a lot of money, it's a low budget film, you can look through your local film book or look on websites like www.productionhub.com and find some production assistance that might want to get a UPM credit, cause that's the big deal in our industry is getting the next credit for a Producer, the next credit as a gaffer, the next credit as a cinematographer. There might be somebody out there that wants to get that credit as a Line Producer but a studio, on a $50 million dollar film, is not going to say "Oh John, why don't you be a Line Producer?" The way Line Producers are formed is they often will do a film, for very little money in order to get that credit and it's not something that they work on for a year, they might only come in as Line Producer for 8 or 10 weeks. That's what I would try to do is either, do it yourself, if you have the detail and ability or find someone that hasn't line produced a film yet and that you trust and will really stay on top of that cause it's a critical component to the overall success of your film; keeping on budget. On behalf of Expert Village, stay tuned. We've got a couple of exciting segments coming right up."