ZDONK

The first annual “Produced By” Conference brought together many Producers, both large and small, to the Sony lot to discuss amongst other things, the Producing profession, how to finance and distribute your indy films and, most popularly, hilarious and entertaining stories on being a Producer in the film industry. 

Some of my favorite panels were Jim Cameron on the future of 3-D, a profile of Larry and Mark Gordon that resulted in a hilarious Q&A session, a panel discussion with Executives from Pixar about their development process, a speech by Marshall Herskowitz (head of the PGA) on “producing for film, television and the internet”, a session with Clint Eastwood and his producing partner, Rob Lorenz, on the “Malpaso Way” and, the last session I attended, a profile of Marvel Studios with their President, Kevin Feige.

It was hard to determine what the PGA’s goals were for this conference. Was it to recruit more PGA members thereby adding advocates to their very admirable task of honoring the “Produced By” credit in film? To provide an event where aspiring producers could network and gain insight from those who have succeeded in the profession before? Or was it simply to bring together many of the great minds mentioned above and allow people to pay a reasonable sum to hear them speak? I feel they accomplished the first and third of these goals with flying colors but can’t say Zack or I were able to do too much networking. Not that it wasn’t possible to start a fulfilling conversation (we had several), but it’s just too difficult to pinpoint individuals with an actual professional crossover with you when “producer” is such a broad term.

Here are some of the PGA members talking about their vision for the conference:

All in all, it was great to hear so many brilliant minds discuss the profession and to watch the PGA attract enthused “producers” from around the world to their cause of respecting the “Produced By” credit and taking it away from, as Clint Eastwood hilariously put it, “brother-in-laws, lawyers, stylists…”.

The PGA also gave us an ad in the program…we kept it simple