L6: The mysteries of a production company

 To learn and understand what a production company is and does.

 To learn and understand the personnel within a production company.

What is a production company?

 Production companies are a group of creative people who produce, market and
distribute films, digital ads and television programmes.
 They seek finance and investment during the course of their work and will often
commission parts of the process, such as script witing, to outside specialists.
 They usually operate under the umbrella of a major studio like the BBC, ITV or
channel 4, either as a sister company, subsidiary or division, production companies
are responsible for getting movies made.
 Production companies usually produce two types of projects:
 Content they develop themselves using their own creative team.
 Content they’re hired to physically produce without any creative involvement in the
development process.

Who do you find in a production company?

Head of development:

 They assist in the search for material and in honing that material that the company
has optioned.
 This honing can start with source material and end with a script, or it can be
tweaking an existing screenplay.

Head of production/production manager:

 The head of production is usually and experienced hands-on producer who oversees
the making of the film once it’s been greenlit and pre-production has begun.
 They organize the general business, finance and employment issues on film and
television productions.
 They manage the budget and gear rentals.
 As with many jobs on a film set, each production can be vastly different from the
last, so the reasonability’s of the PM may change accordingly.

Script readers:

 The script reader’s job is to read and evaluate a script’s potential of becoming a
successful production.
 This means that the story has to be interesting, the characters well defined and
appealing to audiences and the themes have to match or at least be coherent with
the current trends in the industry.
 The script reader is the middleman between the screenwriter and the head of
development.
  They decide which scripts have the potential to make it.

Script reader report:

 Script readers are required to write a report, which serves both as a summary and as
an assessment for the script. It includes:
 Logline
 Premise
 Synopsis
 Tone and Genre
 Comments
 Summary
 Verdict

The difference between a production company and a studio:

- A film studio is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that

owns its private studio facility or facilities intended to be used to make films, which
is often managed by the production company.
- Film studios either have their own production companies that develop and package
projects, or they sign term deals with major production companies that are actually
headed by film producers and their own development staff.
- Production companies bring projects to the major studios for financing and
distribution deals. And then they use studio production locations, departments and
services for the production and post-production of said projects.

Task – Set up a producer LinkedIn account.

Research the different types of production companies that exist.

Find out what they do.
Find 3 real world examples of each of the production company types.