I’ve produced or executive produced a half-dozen feature films and mentored hundreds of students in the production of their films. Over the years I’ve discovered some universal truths about the intangible aspects of producing movies, and in this blog I’d like to share with you a phenomena I’ve discovered that occurs during pre-production. It’s best described with an analogy involving magnets.
In the pre-production stage of making a film, a producer (sometime the same person who wrote the screenplay and will direct the movie) has to gather together all the key elements necessary to make the movie – cast, crew, locations, equipment, etc. With focused hard work, these crucial elements usually come together in a timely manner, but there is always one or two things that don’t. One stubborn location that refuses to be located, or one role for which you can’t find the right actor. As you fight to lock down these final elements, something may start to happen, the other pieces of your cinematic puzzle start to loosen and possibly unravel.

Way back in grade school, you learned in physics class about the polarity of magnets. There are two polarities, a north pole and south pole. Magnets are attracted to their opposite poles, but try and push two sides of a magnet together with the same polarity and it can’t be done. If you’re really strong or the magnet is especially small, you might be able to hold them together for a few moments, but as soon as you release the pressure, they separate. Their nature is to fly apart. This is true for the critical elements you are trying to bring together in making your film. I call this the “Pre-Production Polarity Principle.”

You have to understand that by their very nature, many of the elements you need to make your film do not want to be together. Their nature is to fly apart, and it is your job as THE PRODUCER to hold these “magnets” together, often by sheer force of will. For example, your cinematographer gets an offer for a bette praying gig, your lead actress goes into rehab, the city decides it wants to tear up the street in front of the house which is your primary location – these are all results of this principle. The best you can do as a Producer is to accept this principle as a fact of filmmaking and have a strategy for dealing with it. You will know when to let a magnet fly away and when to hold onto it even tighter. You must metaphorically “hold the production together” until the day production starts. Once the camera starts rolling, things usually quiet down. Polarities reverse themselves, your magnets lose their resistance to each other and the production begins to hold together by itself. Production has it’s own energy that takes over at this point. Whew! This is not to say the Producer’s job is over and you can hang out all day in the actors dressing room eating craft services and schmoozing. There are always fires that need to be put out and new magnets to find to replace the ones that fly away.