The journey so far

(as a young independent film producer)

After an extremely busy month of wonderful festivals and finally being able to share finished projects with the world, I wanted to take a moment to reflect once more on what I’ve learned so far. Maybe this is more for my benefit than anyone reading but either way, it is my attempt once more to answer the question - ‘what does a producer do exactly?’ - it will be an incomplete, unique and at the same time universal answer that I hope I will continue to elaborate on for many years to come.

There is a version of this job that involves premieres, budget meetings, and the quiet authority of someone who makes things happen from behind the scenes. It is not entirely fiction. But it is, I can tell you, a significant edit of the truth. This post isn’t going to be groundbreaking for many of you who are filmmakers and it isn’t meant to put you off the job, nor encourage you to do it either. It’s just meant to be a truthful perspective on my individual situation that may or may not crossover into the collective experience of other independent film producers right now.

By the way, I am only now feeling comfortable enough to call myself an independent film producer. But I think that is only because I now understand what that actually means and I realised that it is exactly what I’ve been slogging away at for the past 3 years. I didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur and maybe that was naive. But I’ve come to understand that that is precisely what I am. (An entrepreneur) (Ok and naive too)

The reality of the role

The producer’s job defies easy description because it defies consistency. No two days, no two films, no two challenges are quite the same. What remains constant is the responsibility - the understanding that the film exists because you are making it exist, and that if you stop, it stops.

My day-to-day is built from emails, calls, negotiations, and the particular discipline of keeping a project moving forward when every external force seems designed to slow it down. It is, at its core, the work of a founder: someone who holds the vision, manages the resources, builds the team, and absorbs the risk - often with little of the recognition afforded to other creative roles.

This is not a complaint. It is simply an accurate description of something the industry is not always honest about.

What making Think of England taught me

Producing Think of England clarified something I suspect every filmmaker learns eventually, though rarely before it costs them something: nobody will care about your film the way you do. Not your crew, not your collaborators, not your most committed supporter. The film is yours in a way it simply isn’t anyone else’s, and that asymmetry is something you have to make peace with early.

There were moments in production where the weight of the project - the creative ambition, the logistical complexity, the sheer will required to keep it on track - rested almost entirely on our shoulders as producers. In those moments, I had to resist the temptation to read other people’s investment against our own. It isn’t a fair comparison. A founder of any company will tell you the same: the people around you can be exceptional, dedicated, and genuinely talented, and still the film will mean something different to you than it does to them. That is not a flaw in them. It is simply the nature of what you’ve taken on.

Understanding that changed how I operated. It replaced frustration with clarity. It sharpened my focus on the things only I could control, and it helped me identify the smaller number of people I could truly rely on, and lean on them accordingly.

What I have found is that the most effective counterweight to this feeling of responsibility is the director-producer relationship itself. When that partnership is built on genuine mutual respect - when your director understands not just what you do, but what it costs - you have an advocate in rooms where your absence might otherwise go unnoticed. The most enduring creative partnerships in this industry are not accidents. They are the result of people who recognise that they need each other, and who invest in that relationship accordingly. I would encourage any aspiring producer to treat that partnership as a foundational decision, not an afterthought.

On not knowing everything

Naivety, I have come to believe, is a genuine professional asset in this industry. Not as a permanent state, but as a starting position. The film world has no shortage of experienced voices explaining precisely how things should be done or why something cannot be done. But what we sometimes need are people willing to ask why.

Entering this work without the full weight of accumulated industry cynicism meant I approached problems without a predetermined ceiling on what was possible. Some of that early optimism has been tempered by experience, as it should be. But I am protective of the instinct that drove it.

What aspiring producers should know

A few things off the top of my head.

The first concerns budget. There is a widespread assumption among emerging producers that ‘“significant” funding is a prerequisite for getting started. It is not. What Think of England demonstrated to me is that the right people, approached with the right questions, can achieve things that a conventional budget assessment would suggest are out of reach. The harder question is whether the project has quality, and whether the team has the ability to deliver it. That judgement, developed over time, is the real currency of this profession.

The second concerns the director-producer relationship, which aspiring producers consistently undervalue. It is tempting to focus on the script, the finance, the logistics and to treat the working relationship with your director as something that will develop naturally. In my experience, that is a risk not worth taking. You need to know, before you commit to a project, whether this is someone who will stand beside you when it becomes difficult. That question deserves as much attention as any other element of development.

The third is simply this: get used to NO. Every producer hears it. The NO that arrives after months of groundwork. The NO that comes just as momentum felt like it was building. The NO that makes you question, privately, whether you have misjudged the whole endeavour. I will not pretend those moments are easy. They are not and I certainly did not always handle them well.

But what I can say is that a NO is not a conclusion. It is one person’s assessment, on one day, about one version of one conversation. It is not a verdict on the work, or on you. If the project is strong and you believe in it, the yes will come. Your job, in the meantime, is to remain standing.

How to share the knowledge

As feature films can be particularly daunting for a first time producer, I have been thinking about ways I can share my experience in a useful way of what it is like to make a feature film in the industry as it is right now as a young producer. Without the gatekeeping and with transparency. I am taking part in a webinar on Thursday 9th April at 4pm UK time to discuss what it’s like to make that leap from a short film to feature and what I’ve learned in the process. I’ll link it here in case anyone is interested. I’d love to know if there are any specific questions that I should be answering.

What does it actually take to move from making short films to producing your first feature?