THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA
SIX PRODUCERS SHARE THE CREATIVE ART AND INEXACT SCIENCE OF PRODUCTION BUDGETING
P. 40
“ECONOMIC TRANSFUSION”— HOW NEW INCENTIVES HAVE RE-KICKSTARTED FILMING IN NEW YORK CITY AND STATE
P. 48
“I think the mission statement for me is: ‘Is this story pushing us toward our better angels? Is this story pushing us toward the kind of people we want to be that can survive on this planet for the long term?’”
12 OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS
OUTSTANDING DIRECTING TIM BURTON
TIM BURTON’s sensibilities and style are all over this irresistibly sardonic whodunit.”
“ TIM BURTON IS AN EXPERT in immersive worldbuilding.”
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2023
“WE SHOULD JUST TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT THE SUN AND START MAKING MOVIES ABOUT THAT BEAUTIFUL THING OVER THERE.”
20 JONATHAN WANG
The Oscar and PGA winner isn’t resting on his laurels. He’s determined to redefine how stories are told and movies are made.
40 MAKING THE NUMBERS WORK
Six producers share their secrets of the creative art and inexact science of budgeting.
48 NEW YORK PLAYS ITSELF AGAIN
New incentives have brought a resurgence of production to the Empire State.
Belonging
The legacy of one-and-done Freaks and Geeks endures decades after it launched multiple careers, in front of and behind the camera.
PRESIDENTS
Stephanie Allain
Donald De Line
VICE PRESIDENTS, MOTION PICTURES
Lauren Shuler Donner Chuck Roven
VICE PRESIDENTS, TELEVISION
Mike Farah Melvin Mar
TREASURER
Yolanda Cochran
VICE PRESIDENT, EASTERN REGION STEERING GROUP
Donna Gigliotti
RECORDING SECRETARIES
Kristie Krieger Mike Jackson
PRESIDENTS EMERITI
Gail Berman Lucy Fisher
DIRECTORS
Bianca Ahmadi
Fred Berger
Hillary Corbin Huang
Melanie Cunningham
Jennifer Fox
Beth Fraikorn
Lynn Kestin Sessler
Samie Kim Falvey
Rachel Klein
James Lopez
Mark Maxey
Lori McCreary
Jacob Mullen
Jonathan Murray
Mark Roybal
Jillian Stein
Angela Victor
Nina Yang Bongiovi
ASSOCIATE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Michelle Byrd
CEO
Susan Sprung
PARTNER & BRAND PUBLISHER
Emily S. Baker
EDITOR
Steve Chagollan
CREATIVE DIRECTOR COPY EDITOR
Ajay Peckham Bob Howells
PHOTOGRAPHER
Kremer Johnson Photography
ADVERTISING
Ken Rose
818-312-6880 | KenRose@mac.com
MANAGING PARTNERS
Charles C. Koones Todd Klawin
Vol. XIX No. 4
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Produced By is published by the Producers Guild of America. 150 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 980 Los Angeles, CA 90064 310-358-9020 Tel. 310-358-9520 Fax producersguild.org
A self-described low-tech guy stretches new muscles by helping create immersive realities, and is enchanted anew by Disney’s animation legacy.
Written By Steve ChagollanJMiles Dale, the producer best known for his work with Guillermo del Toro on such features as Nightmare Alley (2021) and PGA and Oscar Best Picture winner The Shape of Water (2017), admits he’s low-tech—even though he’s the creative team leader behind the deeply technical Disney Animation Immersive Experience.
“I make movies and TV shows for theaters and people at home,” he says. But when he saw the immersive Carne y Arena installation from the Mexican-born director Alejandro González Iñárritu, which used VR headsets to approximate the treacherous experience of undocumented migrants crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S., it amounted to a game changer. “I had done some headset stuff before, but that’s the thing that got me into a very emotional place,” he recalls.
Fast-forward a couple years: A friend had introduced Dale to Corey Ross, president of Lighthouse Immersive, which had staged the wildly popular Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience exhibit.
“He had done Van Gogh and he was in the process of doing Frida Kahlo,” recalls Dale. “But he felt it was time to expand beyond the fine arts and was looking to do something more narrative.” Dale mentioned Disney, since it now owned the two del Toro theatrical releases he had produced for Fox. “I guess he had already tried to make some inroads there and hadn’t been able to.”
So Dale did what producers do: He broke the logjam, reaching out to Alice Taylor, VP of Disney’s StudioLAB, which drives technical innovation in support of the creative process. Taylor helped open further doors for him up the food chain. The timing turned out to be perfect, since post
on Nightmare Alley had just been completed, and shooting on Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, an anthology series for Netflix, was now behind him. (Del Toro and Dale’s next feature is Frankenstein, which is now in prep for a January 2024 start.) But more importantly, 2023 represented the 100th anniversary of Disney.
“They had been thinking about doing something to honor the animators—everything that had come since Steamboat Willy,” says Dale. “They realized Lighthouse Immersive was an industry leader. And yep, they’d like to do it, which was amazing to me because Disney doesn’t take partners lightly. It’s a very high creative bar in terms of the magic they create.”
Dale was tapped as creative producer of the resulting 53-minute show, the Disney Animation Immersive Experience, which incorporates scenes from 45 animated features, 14 memorable songs, sketches by Disney’s most acclaimed artists and drawing tables for the kids. The exhibit launched
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
Bill Hader, Executive Producer; Alec Berg, Executive Producer; Aida Rodgers, Executive Producer; Liz Sarnoff, Executive Producer; Duffy Boudreau, Co-Executive Producer; Julie Camino, Produced by
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Ryan Condal, Executive Producer; Miguel Sapochnik, Executive Producer; George R.R. Martin, Executive Producer; Ron Schmidt, Executive Producer;
Jocelyn Diaz, Executive Producer; Sara Hess, Executive Producer; Vince Gerardis, Executive Producer; Greg Yaitanes, Co-Executive Producer; David Hancock, Co-Executive Producer; Karen Wacker, Producer; Richard Sharkey, Consulting Producer
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Craig Mazin, Executive Producer; Neil Druckmann, Executive Producer; Carolyn Strauss, Executive Producer; Rose Lam, Executive Producer; Asad Qizilbash, Executive Producer; Carter Swan, Executive Producer; Evan Wells, Executive Producer; Jacqueline Lesko, Co-Executive Producer; Greg Spence, Producer; Cecil O’Connor, Produced by
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Jesse Armstrong, Executive Producer; Adam McKay, Executive Producer; Will Ferrell, Executive Producer; Frank Rich, Executive Producer; Kevin Messick, Executive Producer; Mark Mylod, Executive Producer; Jane Tranter, Executive Producer; Tony Roche, Executive Producer; Scott Ferguson, Executive Producer; Jon Brown, Executive Producer; Lucy Prebble, Executive Producer; Will Tracy, Executive Producer; Dara Schnapper, Co-Executive Producer; Georgia Pritchett, Co-Executive Producer; Ted Cohen, Co-Executive Producer; Susan Soon He Stanton, Supervising Producer; Gabrielle Mahon, Produced by; Francesca Gardiner, Consulting Producer
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Mike White, Executive Producer; David Bernad, Executive Producer; Mark Kamine, Executive Producer; Heather Persons, Producer; John M. Valerio, Producer
OUTSTANDING SCRIPTED VARIETY SERIES
Robin Thede, Executive Producer; Issa Rae, Executive Producer; Tony Hernandez, Executive Producer; Brooke Posch, Executive Producer; David Becky, Executive Producer; Jonathan Berry, Executive Producer; Chloé Hilliard, Co-Executive Producer; Linda Morel, Co-Executive Producer; Monique Moses, Co-Executive Producer; Bridget Stokes, Co-Executive Producer; Corin Wells, Producer; Montrel McKay, Producer; John Skidmore, Producer
OUTSTANDING SCRIPTED VARIETY SERIES
John Oliver, Executive Producer; Tim Carvell, Executive Producer; Liz Stanton, Executive Producer; Jeremy Tchaban, Co-Executive Producer; Catherine Owens, Supervising Producer; Whit Conway, Producer; Kaye Foley, Producer; Laura L. Griffin, Producer; Christopher McDaniel, Producer; Kate Mullaney, Producer; Matt Passet, Producer; Megan Peck Shub, Producer; Wynn Van Dusen, Producer; Marian Wang, Producer; Charles Wilson, Producer; Nicole Franza, Line Producer
OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY OR NONFICTION SERIES
Maria Zuckerman, Executive Producer; Ryan Heller, Executive Producer; Joe Lewis, Executive Producer; Chris Smith, Executive Producer; Nancy Abraham, Executive Producer; Lisa Heller, Executive Producer; Bentley Weiner, Executive Producer
OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY OR NONFICTION SPECIAL
Ben Selkow, Produced by; James Adolphus, Produced by; Lena Waithe, Produced by; Rishi Rajani, Produced by; Debra Martin Chase, Produced by; Andrew C. Coles, Produced by; Laura Gardner, Produced by
OUTSTANDING VARIETY SPECIAL (PRE-RECORDED)
Lizzo, Executive Producer; Kevin Beisler, Executive Producer; Ian Stewart, Executive Producer; Leah Harper-Lane, Executive Producer; Hamish Hamilton, Executive Producer; Justin Grider, Line Producer; Alana Balden, Producer
at Toronto’s Lighthouse ArtSpace in December and has since opened in 13 venues in North America. It branched out to Tokyo in April, and more overseas locations will follow. (An LA launch has been delayed due to the continually evolving nature of the production.)
“Much of what I really loved about it was the communal experience,” says Dale. “I like people going to theaters, and I’m a bit sad when people just watch movies at home right now. Especially coming out of the pandemic, I thought, ‘What an awesome thing this could be.’ Also because it was so multigenerational. You know, my mother loves Snow White and Pinocchio. And I like The Jungle Book and 101 Dalmatians, and my kids like The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. And their kids, when they have them, will like Encanto...”
Those who’ve seen the traveling Van Gogh show know that it’s a living, breathing, interactive, 360-degree experience that allows the viewer to roam freely while being inundated by sights and sounds, but without goggles. Dale wanted to push it further, incorporating the five senses and triggering more interactive features by using things like wristbands with sensors.
“We wanted the floors to be interactive,” he says. “When you walked along the floor, if it was during Tinker Bell, you would create a trail of your own pixie dust. When you walk along the floor during Moana, the water would spread and you would create a wake. Or during Fantasia 2000, the lava that you were stepping on would move.”
Dale and his Lighthouse partners were given full access to the archives housed at the Disney Animation Research Library in Glendale, a holy grail for animation enthusiasts akin to a treasure trove in an Indiana Jones movie.
Not being a techie, Dale had to become a quick study on such tools as lidar (light detection and ranging) and projection mapping. “By nature I ask a lot of questions,” he says, “and here I had asked more than normal. I first asked those guys to give me the crash course for dummies: How does it work? What’s an MBox Pro server?”
The experimental multimedia company Cocolab, based in Mexico City, served as creative partners. “They did a lot of the technical stuff,” says Dale. “They are experts in projection mapping and how to take that from brain to 60 projectors. They have created an immersive King Tut show
for Lighthouse. I’d seen it, and it was quite impressive.”
Because no two venues are the same—an old munitions factory in Cleveland, a gym facility in Denver—a major challenge was retrofitting the show to adapt to the given space. And, as Dale puts it, to have walls and floors feel like one, and the corners of the room look seamless.
“It’s just really the discovery process for me,” he says, “and stretching new muscles in a new medium that’s exciting. Because new mediums don’t come along that often.
“Walt Disney would love this show because he was always at the forefront of whatever innovation was available to him,” he adds. “I think he would have been tickled by this kind of new medium and the way it can bring people together to share that Disney magic.”
Compared to all the technical wizardry on this project that has enveloped Dale’s life over the past year, his day-today needs as a producer are relatively simple. In his words:
Well, my assistant, Ashley Cowie, for sure. She keeps me on schedule, and is more technical than I. And as boring as it sounds, the keys for me are my laptop, my phone, my headset and my notebook. Plus various apps, of course.
My new fun headset is called OpenRun Pro by Shokz. It’s great because it isn’t in my ears; it goes right onto the side of my head. It’s really opened things up for me because you can do two things at once. You’re aware of your surroundings. And they’re voice-controlled. I can say, “Turn it up, turn it down, turn it off.” If you’re really wanting to dig in deep with music and stuff, you can put them in your ears. But I just love the flexibility of these things. Now I don’t use anything else.
There’s some software I use to watch dailies that makes my life easier now. It’s QTAKE. I can be anywhere and watch dailies, so it gives me a little freedom. For example, (I was exec producer on) Sex/ Life, which ran for two seasons on Netflix. I wasn’t around much because the showrunner had a great handle on it. I was also busy (as co-showrunner) on Cabinet of Curiosities. Being an anthology series, it was phenomenally difficult and time-consuming, so I was able to watch (Sex/Life) dailies on QTAKE, and that made life easier.
I still take notes in a book. I’m decidedly old-school, as I see my friends and my colleagues and even my wife scribble in their iPads.
A lot of unnecessary travel has been eliminated for me via Zoom. It’s amazing how before COVID, nobody had even heard the word “Zoom.” Then all of a sudden, it became an indispensable part of your life. Now my day is linked up with Zooms, which is such an incredible time-saver for me.
Typical basic things like WhatsApp and Telegram increase my productivity. My brother turned me on to Telegram. It’s a little nimbler than texting in certain cases, and it lets people know what you picked up. But I can’t migrate every week to something new. You’ve got people who are on text; you’ve got people who are on WhatsApp; you’ve got people who are on Telegram. Can we all just pick one? Play rock, paper, scissors for the winner?
I’m heavily caffeinated. The office machine that keeps me going at work is a Lavazza. I was introduced to it at the Italian Canadian Film Festival. As soon as I saw how versatile it was I knew I had to get one immediately. Total winner, and perks me up when I need it!
I definitely use that little Apple thing that keeps you from losing things. It’s called an AirTag. Sometimes I’m in a hurry, so it’s gone from “find my laptop” or “find my iPhone” to “find my golf clubs,” and “find my knapsack,” which I left in a rental car. It had everything in it. ¢
The head of Footprint Features is a producer, writer, director and actor. His latest juggling act, Re-Election, just finished principal photography in Louisiana.
Adam Saunders caught the acting bug early, performing in professional plays from the age of 7. In junior high, he was part of a group that used theater to enlighten students about issues like alcoholism, divorce and AIDS—a mantra of social consciousness that he maintains in his work to this day.
After earning his MFA in acting from
the Yale School of Drama, Saunders endeavored to create roles for himself as a screenwriter. When that proved too isolating, he turned to producing.
As Saunders puts it, the task required “ nearly a decade of learning business models, working with investors, attending film markets and raising financing.” The effort paid off with such producing credits
as About Alex (2014), Shimmer Lake (2017) and When We First Met for Netflix, and the more recent Darby and the Dead (2022) for Hulu—the latter three under his Footprint Features banner.
When he added directing to the equation, Saunders says he “finally felt at peace.” His first feature wearing these multiple hats, Dotty
“A GREAT, SHARPLY WRITTEN, PERFECTLY EXECUTED COMEDY.”
“AS CLEVER, CHARMING AND FUNNYAS ANYTHING ON TELEVISION.”
“TV PERFECTION. IT HAS UPPED ITS GAME FOR ITS SECOND SEASON.”
& Soul (2022), premiered at the San Diego International Film Festival. His latest multihyphenate effort, Re-Election, just finished principal photography in Louisiana.
“I feel very fortunate to have found my purpose,” he says, “now all I want to do is use the time I have on this planet to stay in my truth, tell these stories to the best of my ability and hopefully connect and inspire some people along the way.”
Here’s how Saunders describes a typical workday:
I wake up every morning and write for three hours. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., I write. My phone is on “do not disturb.” I don’t check emails or receive text messages. Of course, “writing” entails far more than just writing. It’s researching, outlining, writing treatments, watching
comparable films, etc. It generally takes me about three months of research from initial idea—which begins with loglines that I pitch to friends to make sure it seems sellable—before I start putting pen to paper on the first draft, which takes me about a month to write. I’ll then work with my amazing creative producing partner, Mac Hendrickson, and spend another month or so rewriting. Then I’ll host a reading with actors and invite writers I trust to give me detailed, honest notes. The second draft takes another month to complete before I host a second reading. I’ll also usually organize a comedy roundtable to which I invite a bunch of comics to pitch jokes line by line. About a year after I had the initial idea, I’ll have a script that I’m ready to take out.
From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., I’II go into
directing mode. If I’m in prep on something imminent, this means working with my DP on shot lists, Zooming/rehearsing with actors, talking with my designers, watching more comp films new and old—I’ve found that watching old classics can be even more informative than watching the most recent and/or trending comps—and just generally fine-tuning in my mind what the movie wants to be.
A lot of these plans don’t survive the first day on set, but it’s important for me to be very clear about what I want to do. Then if I decide to pivot from that plan, it’s coming from a place of preparation. I really value this prep time and have found that I work best with other collaborators like my DP Jay Visit or music supervisor Jonathan McHugh, who also value the prep time and are
willing to get in the trenches with me and do the work long before we are actually shooting.
Early afternoons are often spent working as a producer. This can mean phone calls or meetings with investors, revising pitch decks, delivering pitches, working with my wonderful longtime lawyer Lisa Callif on contracts, working with my producers on budgets, working with my AD on schedules, hiring/Zooming with crew members, etc. It can also mean casting sessions with our fabulous casting directors at Betty Mae (Casting) if we are in that part of the prep process.
Later afternoons are generally when I try to connect with industry folks— agents and managers specifically.
This often has to do with making actor offers, learning who is new on the radar that I need to meet, etc. If we have wrapped or are not in immediate production, this can also mean connecting with literary agents about new scripts or getting back to those who have already submitted material. It can mean connecting with studios or producing partners on other projects we have in development. I also like to connect with our sales agents during this window if we are actively selling something at a market or getting ready to showcase something to buyers, which can take the form of packages or sizzles in addition to completed films.
When I’m not on location or on set, I cook dinner for my family every night. I really enjoy these couple
hours because cooking is a nice stress reliever, and spending time with my family is a nice reset from my day. We’ll eat, play games, do bath time, etc., and then my kids (who are 3 and 5) will go to bed. Afterward, my wife and I will often watch old movies. I try to choose films by inspiring directors like Elia Kazan or Mike Nichols, to name two of my favorites, and let their work wash over me. Often notions I will encounter in these classic films will inspire me with ideas in my next day’s work. It can’t be total homework though, because my wife will get bored. We try to find entertaining movies we can both enjoy that also may carry morsels of inspiration.
Before I go to sleep, I try to spend some time reading biographies of folks I’m interested in. The subjects are not always people in the entertainment industry, but of course they can be. I recently finished Frank Capra’s autobiography and was blown away by how relevant his perspective was despite the fact that he started in silent movies and was working in a 1930s studio system basically unrecognizable today. Then if I’m not in production I’II be asleep by 11 p.m. and start it all up again the next day.
On weekends, I still do the three-hour writing sessions in the mornings, but in the afternoons I’ll incorporate more of my acting work. In addition to my personal prep work on a role, this often includes meeting with my incredible acting coach, Gregory Berger-Sobeck. If I’m actively prepping for a role, I’ll do that once a week for six to eight months in advance of shooting.
Of course, every day is different in this business, and the unique nature of each project and role creates its own set of demands. I’m so grateful for this life and want to be as efficient as I can to maximize every moment.
Produced By trains the spotlight on some of the Guild’s newest members, and offers a glimpse at what makes them tick.
JULIAN PAUL STEIN
TV producer Julian Paul Stein works in physical production. His coproducer credits include David E. Kelley’s Big Sky (2020) and National Geographic’s Barkskins (2020), an environmental epic based on a novel by Pulitzer winner Annie Proulx.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT THE PRODUCER’S ROLE?
I’ve been doing studio projects lately, and I always love it when a crew member refers to the budget as if it were my money.
WHAT’S ON YOUR PRODUCING BUCKET LIST?
The next classic sports movie or a fantasy epic series, where we build every element of the world from scratch.
Founder of Fôlsheart Productions, Alicia Buckner is a producer whose aim is to work on impact films. Her recent credits include Colored White (2023) as producer, and Man Up: The Double Standard (2022) as executive producer.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT THE PRODUCER’S ROLE?
Is that it’s easy or gets easier the more you do it. We as producers become more skilled at the process but there are always crazy things happening, and most often at the most inconvenient time possible. As producers, we have to adjust and adapt swiftly in order to serve the story and make it work.
WHAT’S ON YOUR PRODUCING BUCKET LIST?
To produce an epic samurai feature film in Asia; to produce films that bring people together through compassion and empathy; to produce a feature film that blends the lives of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino—to name a few high up on the list.
“ONE OF THE BEST TV SHOWS OF THE YEAR.”
to filmmaking aims to push us “toward our better angels” and redefine how movies are made.
Written by Steve Chagollan
Photographed by Kremer Johnson
ack in early spring of 2023, when Everything Everywhere All at Once was well into its Sherman’s march through the awards season— having swept top honors from all the major guilds and heading to the Oscars as the clear frontrunner—Hollywood was experiencing an Easy Rider moment. Here was this scrappy, wacky indie film that was rocking the establishment and turning notions of narrative and audience engagement on their ears.
The film, which has grossed $141 million worldwide on a $14.3 million budget, was called “an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy” by The New York Times, and was credited for bringing arthouse enthusiasts back into theaters.
Through it all, the producer Jonathan Wang, who had been working with Everything Everywhere’s directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert—known collectively as “Daniels”—for more than 10 years, was mixing with some of the industry’s biggest names. Here was this ingratiating, articulate, youthful presence who brought rock-star charisma to a discipline not necessarily known for flouting convention and questioning the status quo.
Countless panels and red-carpet events dating back to Everything Everywhere’s unveiling in March, 2022 at SXSW—where it won the Audience Award—had expanded Wang’s exposure beyond his indie niche.
“To be quite honest, I felt a little out of sorts as a producer,” says Wang (pronounced “Wong”), who entered the profession as a musician and tour manager. “I didn’t feel as if I was accepted in that community. I always felt like this weird outsider. But through the nomination cycle, and going to all these awards events with Kristie (Macosko Krieger), with Gail (Berman), with Jerry Bruckheimer, Jon Landau—that’s when I felt really
accepted and at home, independent of my background. It was for the work and who I am, and it felt really good.”
Although having won a Best Picture Oscar might suggest he’s already reached the mountaintop—he admits such a milestone can be “an inspiration killer,” as in “you either have big shoes to fill or you’ve made it”—Wang is just getting started.
“I’m 38, and I feel so young,” he says. “But the thing that will never stop me from waking up is wanting to tell better stories, or rethink what a worthy story is. Or the beauty of life, the beauty of people, the beauty of this planet—the fragility of this planet. To be able to run toward that, out of the sacredness of this place and these people and this world and this chance we have to live. That is the motivator.”
If there are shades of existentialism in Wang’s thought process, it’s not an affectation. He majored in philosophy at a private Christian university in Southern California. His favorite novel is Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a book that delves deeply into theological questions of faith and reason, and our role in the universe.
These are big, meaning-of-life themes, the kind of issues Wang and Daniels tackle in their feature collaborations Swiss Army Man (2016) and Everything Everywhere (2022), which ponder the questions: Who are we? Why do we exist? Who might we be if we took the path less taken and followed our hearts? What is our responsibility to ourselves and to mankind?
That these questions are cloaked in movies that are aggressively peculiar, if not utterly outrageous, is the unique beauty of their appeal. Swiss Army Man is largely a two-hander involving a man (Paul Dano) stranded on an island with a flatulent corpse (Daniel Radcliffe), with whom he creates an imaginary bond. Everything Everywhere is a multiverse, cluster bomb mashup. It features a largely Asian cast led by Michelle Yeoh and boasts shades
THE THING THAT WILL NEVER STOP ME FROM WAKING UP IS WANTING TO TELL BETTER STORIES, OR RETHINK WHAT A WORTHY STORY IS. OR THE BEAUTY OF LIFE, THE BEAUTY OF PEOPLE, THE BEAUTY OF THIS PLANET—THE FRAGILITY OF THIS PLANET. TO BE ABLE TO RUN TOWARD THAT, OUT OF THE SACREDNESS OF THIS PLACE AND THESE PEOPLE AND THIS WORLD AND THIS CHANCE WE HAVE TO LIVE. THAT IS THE MOTIVATOR.”
CELEBRATING 20 YEARS
Photo Credit: ABC/Jeff LipskyAlex Baskin is a production manager at Sony Pictures Animation. He most recently served as the associate production manager for editorial on Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania (2022) and for story on The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021).
WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED ABOUT PRODUCING?
You can’t control how a film will be received, no matter how hard everyone works and how good the creative can be. What you can control is the experience of folks who work on it and the memories made, (and to) come in at or under budget with a happy crew trying their hardest to execute together—that’s in your hands.
WHAT’S ON YOUR PRODUCING BUCKET LIST?
Just keep making stuff that people watch.
of martial arts flicks, sci-fi, the films of Kar-Wai Wong, and slapstick action—all dealing with love, acceptance, ethnic identity and the generation gap.
Wang says The Brothers Karamazov made him want to make Swiss Army Man because the thesis of that film is that “shame keeps us from love. The character of Hank (Dano) was ashamed of himself, so he had to create Manny (Radcliffe) in order to experience the love that he wanted for himself. That is an eternal truth that we all experience.”
That film amounted to a crash course in feature filmmaking for both writer-directors and their producer, if not an indication that they were meant for each other.
“The biggest thing I had to learn up to the point of making Everything Everywhere was how to harmonize with (Daniels’) creative flow,” says Wang. “They have a strong energy that has this centrifugal motion to it, and I have to be this moon that’s orbiting around their orbit. As long as I’m bolstering the things that are good, and encouraging and laughing at the things that are great, I trust they’re going to be able to figure it out. I never feel I need to cut them off at the knees.”
In just the past year, Wang has become a model ambassador
for alternative cinema, extolling the virtues of original storytelling versus preexisting IPs. “I think we’re all familiar with this Joseph Campbell reductive thinking of the hero’s journey,” he says. “That’s good storytelling. But I think what it does is focus the lens on the individual, and what an individual cares about, regardless of the impact on others.
“I think the mission statement for me is: ‘Is this story pushing us toward our better angels? Is this story pushing us toward the kind of people we want to be that can survive on this planet for the long term?’
“It’s like (Plato’s) allegory of the cave: We’ve been looking at the shadows for so long; we should just turn around and look at the sun and start making movies about that beautiful thing over there rather than this thing over here.”
It’s taken more than a decade for Wang to achieve this seeming overnight success, but it hasn’t gone to his head. During a remote interview with Produced By, he handles Zoom glitches himself with no complaint. At a photo shoot in downtown LA, he’s fully present, focused on the task at hand— no phone distractions, no handlers hovering. He offers to help move props. He treats the photographers to lunch afterward, an unprecedented gesture for them.
Wang has a gift for reading the room. “He can wear a lot of hats and he can speak a lot of different languages, depending on the person he’s talking to, in a way that feels genuine,” says Kwan. Or, as Scheinert puts it: “He can feel the vibe better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Wang’s working-class upbringing sheds some light on his methods and tastes. His Taiwan-born father was Buddhist when he met Wang’s mother, a Midwesterner with Western European roots. He became an evangelical Christian when they married. “A lot of immigrant parents convert to Christianity as a way to assimilate,” says Wang, “and for its strong value systems. Christianity in our country is like part and parcel of being American.”
His parents moved from Dallas, Texas, where Wang was born, to San Diego, California, when he was 4. They ended up owning a bakery, which consumed a lot of their time. “I was a latchkey kid,” says Wang. “I had a key to the house when I was in first grade. My brother and I took care of ourselves. We found our passions largely through the church. It was a way to have a caretaker. You go to summer camp, you’re a part of a youth group, you go to church on Sundays.
“So, a lot of my private pursuits came through the church, and also from being independent and chasing my own curiosities.”
Wang got into music in his teens, joining a praise band when he was 15. One influential pastor convinced him to play the guitar “in a way that was not just mechanistic, but to feel it and understand the rhythm and the soul of a song.”
When it came time to choose a path forward after high school, he was leaning toward either music, fine arts, culinary
Multi-platform line producer and production manager Jacob Rosenthal has produced feature films, television, documentaries, commercials and branded campaigns for Jurassic World, Disney, Madden, Marvel, The Fast and the Furious and Hasbro.
Before I went to film school, I would watch all the making-of docs on the DVD special features discs. My favorite part was listening to the producers talk about their process. I would get so excited at the idea of being someone who brings together a multitalented team of creative people to accomplish a unified vision. After that, I started producing any film projects friends had ideas for.
The thing that I would advocate for any producer to do is to write their own script, and hand it to a director. And then to feel what that feels like, to be on the receiving end of someone’s judgment. It will change the way you go about giving them notes.”
school or academia. “That was one of the only times my dad gave me parental advice,” recalls Wang. “He sat me down and said, ‘You can do anything you want; just don’t go into food, because it’s terrible.’ I listened to his advice, and then was like, ‘OK,
then I’d like to do music.’ They held up their end of the bargain and said, ‘We’ll support you.’”
College ended up being a kind of detour. His philosophy studies involved reading the classics. “I also took creative writing, and poetry, with some
great professors,” he says. “The greatest gift of all was Dostoevsky. Then I went to Russia to do a Russian lit course for a quarter. That was what made me go, ‘OK, I just need to start telling stories.’”
At the time, music felt like the best expression for that, and he ended
up leaving school before earning his degree. “The goal of college for me was just to become well-read and have the intellectual tools to think logically and critically,” he says. “It was not so much about getting a piece of paper.”
As a musician, Wang’s forte was metal and punk, and played in bands from his native San Diego such as Thieves and Liars, a Christian rock and metal band, and As I Lay Dying, with whom he toured but was not an official member. One would be hard-pressed to find an example of Wang’s music (“It was pre-Spotify, pre-MySpace,” he says), which adds to his enigmatic allure. It’s notable that Wang admires artists who’ve played no small roll in shaping their own mystique, like Nick Cave and Bob Dylan.
Wang would end up parlaying his music pursuits into stage and tour management, a role he played for Delta Spirit, another San Diego band, and Cold War Kids, whose members attended the same Christian alma mater. The gigs prepared him for the kind of artist-first support role he would later play as a producer for commercials, music videos and films, shielding the talent from complications that would invariably arise from town to town, venue to venue.
This Teflon approach to protecting the artist has carried over into his film career. “He insulates different departments from each other so there’s not a lot of drama that involves everybody,” says Scheinert. “That’s a side of him we rarely see. He has navigated the world of talent agencies on our behalf for years, has put out fires, and then shown back up with a smile on his face.”
Adds Kwan: “He’s good in particular with our situation. We’re a directing duo. We’re both aligned in a lot of ways, but we are also very different, and we have different approaches. It’s nice to have Jon who can play somewhere in the middle.”
Wang’s path to features was sparked by a light bulb moment in 2003 when he saw Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy
Like the films of Godard or Resnais (or even Daniels) —which can evoke bewilderment, even outrage, among the uninitiated before a lingering fascination sets in—so too did Park’s film with Wang. “I was offended by the movie,” Wang recalls. “I actually left (the theater) mad at the movie. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
Another film that shook his sensibilities was Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). “I was still living with my parents. I went home and my mom asked, ‘Are you OK?’ I said, ‘I don’t know; I feel kind of crazy.’ I went into my room and cried for a long time. I loved that movie because on a metaphysical level, (it suggested) you can make choices in your life that will strip you and pull you away from the thing that you love the most. I felt that so deeply.
“Then I thought, ‘Wow, I don’t think any art form can do that.’ That signaled a shift in me creatively, and it opened up a space.” It also marked a turning point in Wang’s Christian mindset, which he was already chafing against. “It broke that sensibility,” he says, and he felt that “you can still tell really beautiful, profound, moving, impactful stories without it being in a rigid box.”
Wang’s parents were not exactly cinema buffs, but they enjoyed classic movies. TCM was a mainstay in their household. Because Wang’s father’s favorite film was The Godfather, Wang approached a friend of a friend who worked at Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope’s Directors Bureau offices in LA, hoping to land an internship there.
“That was the single luckiest thing in my life—going from music and then getting this internship,” says Wang. “At the time, Mike Zakin was the executive there with Roman Coppola. We were
developing Mozart in the Jungle (2014–18) and Roman’s other feature film that he was developing (A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, 2012).”
Poring over books and short stories and thinking about how they would translate into film, Wang had a front-row seat in witnessing and absorbing the preproduction process and engaging in what he calls “utility artistic support.”
“Mike Zakin would go, ‘Can you help build out this pitch deck for Mozart in the Jungle?’ So I drew this picture of Mozart with punk hair and it said, “Sex, Drugs and Classical Music.” It was the cover of a pitch deck, and we’d build out these image suites.”
The American Zoetrope experience emboldened Wang to approach bands to produce their music videos, which led to some gigs with such production companies as Doomsday and then Prettybird, the latter with a roster of talented filmmakers that included Melina Matsoukas, Justin Chon and, at the time, the Daniels.
Daniel Scheinert describes their first encounter as the “perfect meet-cute.”
“He had been working at Prettybird, a company where we made commercials,” recalls Scheinert, “and had told them ‘I really want to work with those guys, Daniel and Daniel.’ He found out we were all going to be at the LA Film Festival that year. Our mutual friend Candice Dragonas (an exec producer at Prettybird) set it up. So we met each other at an after-party. We got along well and instantly made a stupid short film (shot on an iPhone) that we sent to Candice where Dan and I run at each other full force, and right when we collide, we explode into Jon, who’s half Chinese and half white.”
Adds Kwan: “The funny thing is, we already had a producer at the time that we’d been working with pretty closely, and it didn’t make sense for us to work with (Wang). But within a few months,
something came up and our producer got pulled away to a completely different life path. So we hit up Jon. We hired him for two music videos back-toback. They both ended up being some of the hardest videos we’ve ever made (Foster the People’s “Don’t Stop” and The Battles’ “My Machines,” featuring Gary Numan). He went through the wringer and came out the other side intact, with two videos we’re proud of still. We’ve been working with him ever since. This was back in 2011.”
But the video Wang produced that really got people’s attention, including Paul Dano, was DJ Snake’s and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” (2014), starring Kwan himself, who’s so pumped up on testosterone that his penis seems to have a destructive mind of its own (foreshadowing Radcliffe’s penis-ascompass in Swiss Army Knife). The video also features the actress Sunita Mani, who plays a role in Scheinert’s
solo directing effort, The Death of Dick Long (2019), which Wang also produced.
“Turn Down for What,” with its collapsing floors and frenetic, handheld aesthetic, gives “sit on my face” a whole new meaning, and has attracted more than a billion views on YouTube. Wang and Daniels also collaborated on videos for Passion Pit, Tenacious D, and the Shins, among others. Wang would also work with directors like Hiro Murai, known for his partnership with Donald Glover on Atlanta and an executive producer on The Bear. Music videos might not have the same exposure as they did in MTV’s 1980s heyday, but they continue to be the best platform to let the imagination run wild. And Wang appreciates the form for its anything-goes spirit and as a vehicle for putting creativity first. It also allowed Wang and Daniels to hone their skills as storytellers.
“I do think there’s something about
playing within a small, confined playground that leads to a longer creativity,” he says. “I don’t know who this quote is from, but it’s a quote I say often: ‘With concision comes profundity.’ I think that if you’re concise with your words you’re able to write poetry. The gaps in between the words lead to a certain emergent beauty that I think is that eternal thing that you can’t really speak to. In music videos you have a confined timeline—you have three to five minutes and a confined tone, whether it’s brooding or aggressive or sappy or sentimental. You then have to have visuals that either go in harmony with it, or in counterpoint, or some dissonance. I think those constraints lead to something really special.”
Needless to say, music plays a major role in Wang’s work with Daniels, and the producer has taken full advantage of the relationships he’s formed in that community.
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“I remember on Everything Everywhere, the first crew member I reached out to who wasn’t one of our built-in core team—like our DP Larkin Seiple and our production designer Jason Kisvarday—was (the band) Son Lux,” says Wang. “The Daniels are very synchronistic in that way, where they view the edit and the filmmaking through the lens of tone and score and music first. It’s all through that feeling. I’m the same way. If I hear it, and I can feel it, then I know how to film it.”
Given the barrage of styles, smash cuts, setting switches and alternative universes in Everything Everywhere, one would imagine that getting the proper coverage for all these elements might have been overwhelming for all involved. But Wang viewed the challenge with the attitude of an independent filmmaker needing to maximize resources.
“We knew our anchor universes had to be classic scene coverage,” says Wang. “We’re going to shoot our wides; we’re going to go in for close-ups, we’re doing cross coverage, etc. Then there’s a lot of stuff where the Daniels were just like, ‘Trust us. We don’t need that. We can just shoot in one direction. We’re going to get this one shot. That’s all we need in this universe.’
“If you look at the coverage, it’s actually really simple. That’s where Daniels and I like to think within a small model. We would rather find a location where 80% is good. There’s no way you can prioritize every single one of these universes and fully flesh them out and shoot all this stuff conventionally. So it was about prioritizing coverage and shooting for the edit, and knowing exactly what we needed. And not about overshooting out of fear.”
Wang is a big proponent of positive reinforcement, which seems like the most logical thing in the world in a business and an art form built
on collaboration. That is, until you realize how rare it is in Hollywood. For example, he’s a big advocate for a light touch in the notes department. One can only imagine how the first draft of Everything Everywhere read to the few who had seen it.
“When I got that first draft, it was 270 pages,” recalls Wang. “It was way too long, and there were scenes in there that I knew they just wrote to be funny for the sake of being funny but weren’t going to be good for the movie.
“The last thing I wanted to do was say, ‘This will never fly. We’ve gotta shorten this thing.’ They know that, so it’s really me giving them the positive feedback of, ‘This scene really worked for me. I want more of this.’ Give them another smart set of eyes to give them some guardrails.”
This open-mindedness and generosity of spirit stems from Wang placing himself in the writer-director’s shoes. “I would advocate for any producer to write their own script and hand it to a director. Feel what that feels like to be on the receiving end of someone’s judgment. It will change the way you go about giving them notes. You’ll have to consider their emotions. You’ll have to consider the work that went into it and where it’s at in the process.”
This attitude was not lost on Daniels. “He does a lot of positive reinforcement notes,” says Scheinert. “He knows that we’re pretty hard on ourselves, so it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s working? Great, we can hold onto that.’”
Adds Kwan: “To Jon’s credit, he started writing his own screenplays during the pandemic because he’s a very creative person. After he came out of that process—he’s still in it, actually—he came to us and said, ‘Guys, I’m so sorry. I feel like I would give you completely different notes. Now that I’m writing, I see how vulnerable and how hard it is.’ It’s fun to have a relationship with someone who can grow in that way.”
The one film Wang produced that not a lot of people have seen is The Death of Dick Long (2019), a solo directing effort from Scheinert. A friend of Schein -
The Daniels are very synchronistic in that way, where they view the edit and the filmmaking through the lens of tone and score and music first. It’s all through that feeling. I’m the same way. If I hear it, and I can feel it, then I know how to film it.”
Wang on location for Everything Everywhere, which was made for $14.3 million and ended up grossing $141 million worldwide, A24’s top moneymaker to date.
ert’s from college in Alabama, Billy Chew, wrote the film. Like Scheinert’s other feature collaborations with Kwan, Dick Long , which sounds like a porn name, is more linear—leaner, meaner and Coenesque. Wang calls it “this weird, noir farce of a little thriller romp.” They shot it in Alabama for $1 million dollars.
The film was made for A24, the art-house darling behind such films as Moonlight (2016) and Midsommar (2019), with whom the filmmakers have enjoyed a longstanding relationship.
“After we made Swiss Army Man, I pitched it to A24 and said, ‘View this as the pilot for a TV show where it’s Coenesque hijinks in the South. There’s a newspaper called the AdvertiserGleam (based in Guntersville, Alabama) and we were going to make this show called Gleam. It was going to be about these odd headlines that you read, like a man whose farm exploded due to a
leaky gas line that sent a pig flying. We thought, ‘Why don’t we just pitch this first episode as a movie and do it as a proof of concept?’ A24 loved the script and suggested we make it as a movie and not as a pilot.”
Like Swiss Army Man, the film toys with perceptions of masculinity and intimacy between seemingly heterosexual males. (Scheinert has stated that he and Kwan are not “aggro manly men.”) Despite the almost unspeakable aspect of the film’s premise, it’s a rather tender tale about sensitive souls, even ones who sport mullets, own guns and play crappy, garage-band rock.
More importantly, Dick Long established a pattern of sustainable filmmaking that Kwan continues to champion.
“The greatest thing about it was that it was a way for us to experiment with the process of filmmaking,” says Wang. “There’s no difference to us between
content and the way we make it. It was a testament to sustainable, local filmmaking. Daniel Scheinert’s partner, Stef (Stefanie Lynch), is credited as the sustainability and community outreach producer. She’s the one who piloted this whole thing and helped us think about finding local partners for the coffee and the craft (service) and the food—really pouring back into the community and schools. And trying to partner with farmers to have a closed-loop system with our food so we could feed the pigs. That was all developed there.”
Wang practices what he preaches. He drives an electric car and bikes to work from his house in LA’s Highland Park to new offices in nearby Eagle Rock, which he shares with Daniels, with visits from frequent collaborators: DP Larkin Seiple and production designer Jason Kisvarday, who hail back to their music vid days. Scheinert credits Wang with helping to preserve
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a community of artists they’ve worked with repeatedly.
“I lived in Highland Park first and I don’t like to commute, so I just bullied them both into buying houses and living near me,” says Scheinert. “We just got an office space in Eagle Rock, which is like a five- or sevenminute bike ride from where we live. We’re trying to do LA in a completely different way. I don’t know if it was intentional at first, but it’s become more intentional as we are getting older and realizing how important it is to have a good life. We’re not just driving everywhere all the time and getting exhausted by traffic.”
This creative community model and commitment to green filmmaking are among the ways Wang would like Hollywood’s movers and shakers to think differently, even if change comes at a greater price.
“The toughest part of my job is to think about how to do what we do without first causing harm,” he says. “I think our industry is very wasteful. It’s very egotistical and very greedy. We have a tendency to virtue-signal, to say, ‘Look how great we are.’ But in reality, we have a lot of catching up to do.
“It’ll take a little more resources and time to think about how we can repurpose sets. It’s going to cost us a little more money and time to integrate green crew members. But what if we say, ‘OK, the default is to have a vegan meal and one meat option? What if we don’t have 30 trucks on standby just in case we need 10 different lights? What if we don’t have the luxury trailer? What if we don’t have a perfect location, but a sufficiently good location to help dictate the coverage and actually be more creative?
“We can keep burning fossil fuels and wasting as much as we want forever and it’s someone else’s problem down the road. Just externalize all those harms to someone else. But I think we’re all increasingly waking up to the fact that no, you can’t have your
cake and eat it too.
“That limiting factor is a beautiful box, because from that comes ingenuity. From that comes creativity.”
In August of 2022, Wang and Daniels signed an exclusive, five-year deal with Universal. “They hear what we want to do,” says Wang. “They are able to empower us to do what we want creatively while also putting their money where their mouth is procedurally. They have green initiatives, they have diversity inclusion—they were actually doing (the work) long before we came along.
“Now we’re in good company with Christopher Nolan and Jordan Peele. We’re seeing the kind of thing that (Universal does)—supporting artist-first storytellers versus IP-first franchises.
I think that is so fascinating and wonderful at this scale.”
The deal doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve lost any love for A24. Wang and Daniels have TV projects lined up with A24 Television, the company behind Beef. “We’re doing three TV shows with A24 right now. Nothing but love for them.”
One of these projects is titled Mason, which, like Dick Long, is a play on names. The logline on IMDB Pro reads: “Nathan, who is often misunderstood as ‘Mason,’ is looking for connection in a noisy world.” But production has been halted indefinitely due to the ongoing strike by writers and actors.
“We already have a pilot written,” says Wang, “However, we went pencils down and are waiting on the studios to make a fair deal before we polish and get ready to go.” ¢
Written By Hugh Hart
illustrated by ajay peckham
ince the dawn of Hollywood, movies have gone over budget. Some money-gobbling projects like The Wizard of Oz and Titanic overcame astronomical expenditures to become timeless classics. Others wreaked havoc. Cleopatra (1963) cost so much that 20th Century Fox covered its losses by selling its 260-acre backlot to the developers of present-day Century City. Heaven’s Gate (1980) arguably hastened the demise of 1970s-era auteur cinema by hemorrhaging production money on behalf of the film’s perfectionist director, Michael Cimino.
But most savvy movie producers now understand how to craft budgets that balance financiers’ constraints with filmmakers’ artistic ambitions, even if there’s the occasional “approved overage,” often involving an A-list actor with a fat quote. “The hardest part of our job is that we’re fortune tellers,” says one producer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Whether it’s a studio or private financiers footing the bill, it’s the producer’s job to make an agreed-upon number work. “The budget is a box,” says this producer. “Whether the box is $10
A handful of movie producers talk priorities and break down expenditures in determining how they get the most bang for their buck.
million or $110 million, that’s what you have to play with.”
On deconstructing a typical midlevel budget ($50 million) on a film with big talent but minimal VFX: “Maybe 40% will be abovethe-line; somewhere between 30 and 40% is below the line, 10 to 15% is post, and everything else falls into the ‘other’ or contingency category, “ this producer observes. “But each budget is specific to the project. It’s not a science.”
Produced By asked a number of producers to talk about above-the-line, below-the-line and postproduction challenges on blockbusters, midrange features and low-budget films.
Producer Jeremy Latcham (Spiderman: Homecoming, The Avengers), teamed with executive producer Denis L. Stewart (Iron Man 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) on Paramount Pictures’ recent release Dungeons & Dragons. Starring Chris Pine, the adaption of the role-playing game reportedly cost $150 million, a figure the producer would neither confirm nor deny.
“There’s a barrier of entry if you’re making a big tentpole movie,” Latcham explains.
“The studio says, ‘This is the ballpark we want to be in,’ and then it becomes incumbent upon Denis and myself and the writer-directors (Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley) to say: ‘What is the most story we can tell for that amount of money?’”
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was shot mostly in Northern Ireland, which offers significant tax incentives.
The producers we spoke to prioritize pricing for their movies’ set pieces. “There’s a bit of a formula for how many action sequences we’re going to have and what the shot cost will be from a visual effects standpoint,” Latcham says. “If we have a sequence with a dragon in it, we know that’s going to have a much higher shot cost than a stunt fight in an alleyway, so you try to pepper in big visual effects spectacle sequences with a couple of sequences that are more set-based with stunts. You want to juggle the plates so you’re not too heavy on dragon sequences, because those are going to be the most expensive.”
Locations always play a major role shaping budgets, Stewart adds, and with Dungeons & Dragons, “You have to build a world, so you figure out the most economical way to achieve that.” Goldstein and Daley shot most of the movie in Northern Ireland which, like the the rest of the U.K., offers significant tax incentives. Beyond the rebate, Stewart says: “By shooting in Belfast, we got lucky with our timing because we were able to use facilities and stages and crew from Game of Thrones, since HBO had just stopped production.”
As filming progressed, Dungeons producers used pie charts to visualize expenditures, says Stewart. “It gives you a snapshot of where your resources are going. You can do a
“ The hardest part of our job is that we ’ re fortune tellers. ”
pie chart on the visual effects cost, on the length of a sequence, on the shooting days, on everything. You might look at those slices of the pie and go, ‘Wait a minute, this three-and-a-half-minute sequence is inordinately cheap—or expensive. Then you can drill back in there and make sure it’s being conceived and budgeted properly.”
Construction costs accounted for a significant spend, but producers coaxed efficiencies from the production design department. As Latcham notes, “If you’re going to build an expensive set that costs, let’s say, $500,000 or $700,000, you’d better use it more than once. Denis worked in very smart ways with our production designer, Ray Chan, to explain that if we can make one set into three different sets, then it becomes a lot more economical to build. ‘Forge office, Kira bedroom, medal ceremony’ is a lot easier to sell than ‘forge office.’”
Goldstein and Daley shot Dungeons & Dragons in 72 days. Once physical production wrapped, postproduction edits and VFX demanded considerable attention.
“Especially on these kinds of films, visual effects budget takes up more of the (pie) chart,” Latchman says. “I’ve been on Marvel films where the visual effects department was the biggest line item.” During principal photography, Stewart tracked expenses “on a granular level,” Latcham says.
Film and TV producer Saga Elmohtaseb started her career at E! Entertainment, LATV and Fox Studios. She most recently produced PBS/KCET’s 10 Days in Watts (2023), an immersive docuseries about the meaning of a community garden, and served as line producer on the Emmy-nominated documentary, LA Foodways (2019).
WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED ABOUT PRODUCING?
From my parents: Money doesn’t make a person, and one hand does not applaud itself.
“The main thing is to take the money that you save along the way and sock it away so that you have it in post,” Latcham adds. “Denis did a great job of squirreling away our savings as we went so we could fix our problems later. We did not want to go back to studio and ask for more. You want to complete the movie and make it great. If everyone’s happy and they want to make it even better, that’s fantastic.”
Like most rom-coms, The Perfect Find from Netflix kept VFX costs to a minimum, relying on the chemistry between star-producer Gabrielle Union and newcomer Keith Powers to drive the story. The cost bump for this 24-day shoot, filmed in New York and New Jersey, originated instead from director Numa Perrier’s mood-setting music cues. “The needle drops were a situation where we initially had a number, and then
Numa turned in her director’s cut with the music she chose,” says Perfect Find producer Glendon Palmer. “People loved it, but all of a sudden, our numbers went way up. How can we keep this music? We actually had a savings in the production and we applied that to the music.” Palmer explains that Perrier was an unusually efficient director and that the movie’s line producer, the late Matthew Myers, excelled at extracting value from tight budgets.
Perfect Find producers also carved out savings by securing the Newark Museum of Art for several different interiors dressed by production designer Sally Bower and her team. “The look of Darcy’s apartment, Jenna’s apartment, the gala, the pink suite—Sally’s job was to encompass all of that within the budget, and the museum basically became our stage,” Palmer says. “We could leave our trucks there, come and go as we pleased, shoot, go home. The museum was a definite time-saver and allowed us to come in under a number that made Netflix happy.”
COVID threw a monkey wrench into virtually all film production in 2021 and 2022. Funny or Die and Roku’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, the fauxbiopic comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe as the accordion-playing music prankster, was no exception. “The pandemic was problematic because it added to the budget and our number from Roku was an all-in number,” says producer Whitney Hodack. “It wasn’t like, ‘Yes, you get your budget and then you get your COVID money on top.’ Fortunately, we didn’t have any shutdowns, everybody stayed safe, and our COVID team did a beautiful job, but shooting this movie during COVID was nerve-racking.”
Hodack finessed the budget to accommodate pandemic-related line items. Describing her negotiatons with cinematography, costume design and production design department heads, she recalls, “It’s like, ‘Your department budget is not going to be what you want it to be. I know that and you know that. Your head count is not going to be what you want it to be. I know that and you know that. But oh my gosh, we have Daniel Radcliffe coming to play with us. Al (Yankovic) will be on set every day!’ It’s a good vibe. But these are the parameters, and you have to let them know what they’re walking into.”
Matthew Groesch cut his teeth in development and production at Lionsgate after starting his career at the talent management company Underground Films. He recently served as executive producer on One of Us Is Lying (2021–22), a teen drama based on the New York Times bestselling novel by Karen M. McManus.
Some early advice I got was instilling the importance of prep, and I was told how once a production gets going, it’s like a train moving at full speed. There’s only so much you can change at that point, and your job then is to make sure it doesn’t come off the rails.
Radcliffe’s star power helped attract talent but also created scheduling challenges. Hodack says, “We had a finite amount of time with Daniel before he went on to his next project. Then he wouldn’t be available for a year and a half or two years. We had to be very strategic about how we scheduled his time because he worked 14 of the 18 shoot days. We tried to front-load his time in case there was a shutdown.”
Weird filmmakers originally intended to shoot in Georgia for the tax credits, Hodack says. “But as we got more into the script, there was a lot of interest from our director, Eric Appel, and from Al, to get celebrity cameos into the production. That’s hard to do if you’re in an area where celebrities don’t live.
“We’d contemplated a smaller budget for Atlanta but when Roku came on, we got a little bit of love and more flexibility
(with the budget) so we decided to move the shoot to L.A.”
From the get-go, Hodack had clear budget priorities in mind. “We knew we needed to hold a good chunk of the budget for the music because if we don’t have the songs, we don’t have a movie. So that’s the first thing we considered: Get those clearances out of the way.”
Music supervisor Suzanne Coffman negotiated the music rights. “Since we’re doing these clearances far ahead of time, we might be asking for 20 seconds of ‘My Sharona,’ for example. But in the final cut, it might be a little bit less or a little bit more. If we went a few seconds over, we were honest about it. Some (rights holders) were fine; others we gave a little more money. But people in this business love Al, so we were able to navigate what might be potentially problematic in a
way that felt pretty comfortable.”
Costume designer Wendy Benbrook and her team got into the shoestring budget spirit by sourcing many of the characters’ vintage outfits from L.A. thrift stores. Still, unanticipated expenses popped up during postproduction.
“Concert scenes are hard to do on a tight budget because you want to show their scope and scale,” Hodack says. “As we got into post, we realized we could amplify a (crowd) scene if we had a little bit more VFX money. We priced it out and told Roku, ‘We think this would add value, but you tell us.’ They would either approve it or deny it. You want to provide context for why you think the effect would be useful. You can’t just go spending the money.”
Bottom line, when it comes to bottom lines, Hodack says: “You don’t go rogue.” ¢
“ We priced it out and told Roku ‘ We think this would add value, but you tell us. ’ They would either approve it or deny it. You want to provide context for why you think the effect would be useful. You can ’ t just go spending the money. ”
By Anthony Kaufman
The HBO limited series White House Plumbers was originally set to begin production at New York City’s Silvercup Studios. But that was before the pandemic. Instead, the production relocated upstate to the Hudson Valley in 2021. The move proved fortuitous.
“Every day, we were going farther north, looking for period homes and trying to feel ‘safer’ outside of the city,” recalls series director and executive producer David Mandel, known for shows such as Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld. Set in the early 1970s and chronicling President Nixon’s Watergate fiasco, Plumbers featured a range of locations that, surprisingly, could all be found in Upstate New York, from a D.C. Senate hearing room to Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. “We needed a beach,” he says, “and an area on the Hudson River worked well for us.”
Adds Mandel: “I don’t think we could have pieced that show together as easily with real-world locations somewhere else. More importantly for White House Plumbers’ period wardrobe and production design, we took advantage of New York City tailors and secondhand shops, because if you need something, you’re not in the middle of nowhere—you’re in f**king New York.”
That unique New York mix—home to high-profile talent, skilled crews, one-of-a-kind resources, and the most iconic metropolitan skyline in the world—has historically made the Empire State one of the world’s busiest film and TV production centers. Production spend in the state has continued to grow, from $4.87 billion in 2019 to $5.99 billion in 2022. Some of the biggest productions include such acclaimed series as Succession, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Severance, along with crime stalwarts FBI, Blue Bloods, and of course, New York City’s longrunning Law & Order franchise.
Boosted tax incentives have reinvigorated production in New York—City and State—where talent, labor, and resources have always been rich.
Even so, for the last couple years, New York was falling short as a location destination.
After New Jersey instituted an aggressive tax incentive program in 2021, it was not uncommon for filmmakers to cheat Newark for New York.
To combat runaway productions next door, New York recently passed its own expanded tax incentive program, which increased the annual allocation from $420 million to $700 million and extended it from 2029, when it was originally scheduled to sunset, to 2034. It also increased the base credit from 25% to 30%, allowed for above-the-line qualifying expenses, a 5% bump for TV series that relocate to New York, and a 10% credit bump for most Upstate counties, amounting to a generous 40% tax credit.
The new tweaks, which went into effect in April 2023, respond to several key points for producers and studios. “We knew we needed to make some changes to be competitive and respond to the needs of productions,” says Hope Knight, president, CEO and commissioner at Empire State Development, the economic development agency that oversees the credit program. For instance, the extension gives producers a firm sense of stability and certainty, according to Knight, especially given the long lead time needed for multiseason series. And for the first time, the above-the-line credit, capped at $500,000 for individual
salaries, fulfills a crucial missing piece that now matches other U.S. state programs.
“If New York didn’t react to what New Jersey was doing, claiming above-the-line and pulling cast and crew from the city, it was going to kill New York,” says Jake Fuller, head of production at Jax Media, the longstanding New Yorkbased producers of such shows as Broad City, Russian Doll and Search Party. “I am heartened by the incentive, and feel that people are more bullish now about shooting in New York,” he continues. “It’s now enough that producers with projects set in New York will actually think about shooting them in New York, where at other times in the past, it was immediately written off.”
The new legislation also addresses one of the most significant complaints more recently heard from producers: Delays in paying out the tax credit. “It was the biggest problem,” says Peter Saraf, New York-based producer of Little Miss Sunshine and The Farewell. “What should take one to two years extended to four to five years, and that gets expensive. If you’re holding millions of dollars, the value of that money gets chipped away.”
But the new law allows productions to take the credit within the year of its allocation instead of having to wait a year.
“We received a lot of feedback that people were not able to access credits in a timely manner,” admits Knight,
attributing delays to a COVID backlog, as well. “Today we’re processing them in more a timely basis,” she adds, “and eligibility in the allocation year is going to provide for much faster access to the incentive.”
The 10% increase for Upstate productions—for shows that have 50% of their principal photography in the region—also makes it more attractive to shoot across the state. “With the 10% lift-up, it’s really helpful,” says Tyson Bidner, executive producer of A24’s The Whale, which shot at Umbra soundstages in Newburgh, New York. “They have solid crews, they have the infrastructure and locations, and the added 10% takes the hit off hotel costs.” Plus, adds Bidner, “It’s really pleasant to be outside of the city.”
According to Hudson Valley Film Commissioner Laurent Rejto, the new program is already having an impact, with four independent productions shooting in the area this summer. “And I’m talking to 10 indies. Some are coming in from places like New Mexico, which wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for the tax credits.”
“YOU HAVE DECADES OF INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU JUST DON’T HAVE IN OTHER MARKETS. THERE IS AN INSTITUTIONALIZED WORKFORCE THAT IS EXTREMELY VERSATILE AND HAS A LEVEL OF EXPERTISE THAT IS UNIQUE TO NEW YORK.”
— KWAME AMOAKU, NEW YORK CITY’S DEPUTY FILM COMMISSIONERSex and The City, the quintessential NYC romcom, boosted business for a host of restaurants during production. PHOTO BY HBO
Rejto also points to investment in film financing and infrastructure, plus the arrival of new soundstages, as adding to an already active scene. In addition to Umbra, there’s Mary Stuart Masterson’s Upriver Studios, which housed MAX’s Pretty Little Liars, and Kingston Studios, home to Hulu’s Monsterland. And New Jersey’s Cobalt Stages recently launched a virtual studio hub in Woodstock, New York.
Last year, Great Point Studios opened Westchester County’s giant Lionsgate Studio Yonkers, an ever-expanding, 1 million-squarefoot complex set to operate nine 20,000-square-foot stages, more than any other facility in the Northeast. The City of Yonkers even trademarked the name “Hollywood on the Hudson.” In nearby Hastings-on-Hudson, Atlanta-based Electric Owl Studios is planning an eco-friendly 18-acre production facility for 2025.
Over at Erie County’s Buffalo FilmWorks, the studio just launched one of the largest soundstages in the world—a 77,832 square-foot behemoth that makes “peoples’ eyes light up,” says Jennifer O’Neill, founding partner and CFO. “There are some very large productions scouting with us,” she says. “And now that we have the new tax incentive, it allows us to be competitive with New Jersey and Ohio.”
Adding to the diverse array of new and widening statewide options, the New York metropolitan area is also burgeoning. Beyond studio mainstays such as Steiner Studios and Broadway Stages, as well as longstanding operations Silvercup Studios and Kaufman-Astoria Studios, Netflix set up permanent shop two years ago with its own six-stage, 170,000-square-foot lot in Bushwick, Brooklyn—a new complex that Panorama Brooklyn Studios just opened near the Brooklyn Bridge—and Robert De Niro is behind the construction of a new $600 million complex called Wildflower Studios in Astoria, Queens.
“There’s no problem here with stages,” says Doug Steiner, chairman of Steiner Studios, who is “ecstatic” about the passage of the new credit program and has high hopes for a “big rebound in the industry as companies try to distinguish themselves in the market,” he says. While many insiders note an overall dip in series production that started last year, Steiner says episodic continues to be a bright spot. “Series is a better business for New York,” he explains, “because it’s more hours of screen time.”
Tommy O’Donnell, president of Teamsters Local 817, is also upbeat about series production. “I think the tax credit is going to make New York the go-to place for episodic programming,” he says. “Because they can last anywhere from three to 10 months, with a chance for reccurring, it’s good for the stages and the crews.”
O’Donnell and others acknowledge that big blockbuster studio films will inevitably go overseas to chase cheaper costs and rival incentives, but talent also prefers episodic shows, which allow them to work where they live.
Courtney Kolloff is a senior visual effects producer in charge of VFX for multiple TV shows and features at Ingenuity Studios, including the feature Joy Ride (2023), and the series Abbott Elementary (2022) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2021).
AT WHAT POINT IN YOUR LIFE DID YOU DISCOVER WHAT A PRODUCER BRINGS TO THE TABLE?
There are so many types of producers with so many different tasks. It is not a cut-and-dried job. Producers can bring so much to the table to enhance a project. Also, producers usually know how to stay budget-friendly but make sure there is no sacrifice to the creative.
WHO OR WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO PRODUCING?
I always wanted to work in entertainment, but I didn’t know which career path was for me when I was young. People only think of actors/ actresses and directors, but what about the organization behind all the movies and TV shows? Once I knew I loved to project-manage, I just fell into my role, and being a producer made sense.
Bidner recalls working as a producer/UPM on The Americans, which was largely shot in Brooklyn, even though the story was set in Washington, D.C. He says New York as a main location is often the starting point for many production discussions. “A lot of the talent is here in New York, or is from here or has a connection to New York. They want to find a way to make it work in New York because they don’t want to be away from their families or their homes,” he says. “If it’s scripted in New York, and they’re from New York, then it’s truly beneficial to make it work here.”
New York also prides itself on a deep and experienced crew base. “You have decades of institutional knowledge that you just don’t have in other markets,” says Kwame Amoaku, New York City’s deputy film commissioner. “There is an institutionalized workforce that is extremely versatile and has a level of expertise that is unique to New York.”
Amoaku also points to workforce development programs such as Reel Works and Made in NY, which is helping to “replenish the ranks,”
he says, with also a nod to diversity and inclusion. The Mayor’s Office of Film and Television just released a report indicating that 1,100 New Yorkers have enrolled in the program, 94% of whom are people of color, with 78% of graduates continuing to work in the industry more than two years after graduation.
New York is also a major creative and industry center for documentary filmmaking, including significant and award-winning nonfiction companies, from Alex Gibney’s prolific Jigsaw Productions to Liz Garbus and Dan Cogan’s Story Syndicate.
“The reasons we’re here is that our creative community is very much based in New York,” says Mala Chapple, chief operating officer of Story Syndicate, producers of HBO’s recent series The Last Call and Netflix’s hit doc-buster Harry & Meghan. She points specifically to corporate backers such as HBO and Netflix having offices in the city, along with a base of nonfiction filmmakers and a “hub of experts and people that we’re interested in profiling,” she says. When true crime is the subject du jour for nonfiction, there are few places that are richer with material.
New York City itself—densely packed with more than 8 million people—has always presented its own unique set of rewards, as well as challenges for filmmakers. Historically, producers have claimed that permitting and parking in the city can be difficult, for example. But last year, the New York mayor’s office announced its first-ever Film and Television Production Industry Council— cochaired by the DGA’s Neil Dudich and producer April Taylor—to address some of the problems, many lingering from precautions taken during the worst days of the pandemic.
For many producers, the hassles of shooting in a one-of-a-kind place like New York are worth it—and now, especially, with the new tax incentives, can financially make sense again. For Jax Media’s Fuller, shooting in New York will always be a unique and distinct experience, unlike anywhere else in the world. “As a producer in this city, you’re forced to react to it rather than it react to you,” he says. “In other places, you’re allowed to curate and create a bubble, but not in New York: You have to contend with the city, fortunately or unfortunately, and I think that adds a special sauce to what you’re doing.” ¢
■ Access to exclusive programs such as PGA Mentoring and webinars featuring the most experienced producers in the entertainment industry
■ Admission to special PGA pre-release screenings and Q&A events (in person, predominantly in LA and NY, and accessible to all when virtual)
■ Voting privileges in the prestigious Producers Guild Awards, and access to physical and digital screeners during awards season
■ Exclusive discounts on industry services and events
■ Grow your network and find creative collaborators with the PGA’s Member Directory, accessible only to PGA Members.
■ Full access to PGA website, including events, calendar, social networking tools, and extensive members-only video library
■ Automatic receipt of Job Bulletins that match your skill and background through Hire PGA, a concierge service for employers
■ Free access to many PGA events and discounts on programs, such as the Produced By conferences
■ Complimentary subscription to Produced By
It might be the most beloved one-and-done sitcom ever produced, even if many of its biggest admirers didn’t discover it until 10, even 20, years after its abrupt cancellation by NBC. But as a launchpad for talent in front of and behind the camera, Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000) commands its own pedestal—a kind of University of Hollywood for some of today’s most sought-after names.
The 18-episode series, which treated brainy teens and deadbeat slackers with equal compassion as social outcasts, offered the first significant roles for several notable greenhorns—James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogan and Jason Segel among them. Watch closely and you’ll see future stars Lizzy Caplan and Ben Foster in guest appearances.
“We looked for special people and adapted the scripts to them,” the show’s writer-director-producer Judd Apatow told an interviewer in 2016 about creator Paul Feig’s initial two scripted episodes, which were combined to make a strong pilot and tailored to suit the individual actors’ strengths.
Apatow, whose production company supplied the engine, and Mike White, the eventual mastermind behind The White Lotus, pitched in as writers, with Apatow wearing several hats. Their alchemy was giving talented players meaty roles to chew on, while nimbly spreading the wealth to more than a half dozen characters—with a tone that ranged from broad to startlingly dramatic.
Apatow knew the show was doomed from the start, since the programming chief who greenlit the pilot was replaced by an executive who was not a fan. The lack of support was reflected in a weak time slot, poor marketing and an erratic schedule. “There was no rhythm to create a relationship with the audience,” he said.
Sensing the proverbial clock ticking, the creative team shot the final three episodes out of sequence, so they’d have some semblance of closure when the axe came down. “When you think your show is going to get cancelled at any second, you use all of your good ideas,” said Apatow. “Nothing gets saved for seasons two and three.”
Those three episodes would end up being unveiled at the Museum of Television and Radio before airing on broadcast television (Fox Family inherited the show in 2000), a testament to the show’s already growing stature.
Apatow’s subsequent rise as a producer-writer-director is well documented, as are the careers of Feig and White. Many of the Freaks and Geeks cast members, too, would excel in multiple disciplines, moving in and out of Apatow’s orbit
“From the moment I got the script from Paul Feig and opened it up and it said Freaks and Geeks, I knew right there this was going to be the best thing ever,” recalled Apatow. “It was everything I thought about: I felt like a geek; I hung out with freaks. I understood what Paul was attempting to do.”
