The Secret Jobs of the Producer: finding talent and cost negotiation

From outside the industry, many people would assume that the producer does not handle the ‘money stuff’ – surely there is an accounting department who deals with this? But of course, the reality is that producers are often heavily involved in the budget.

Although I’ve previously worked with budgets for various events I’ve been involved in, it wasn’t until my final year film that I got a chance to properly work with a budget for an animated project. It would be naïve of me to assume that this closely mimics budgets in the industry: the university pays for our studios, and our electricity bill, and none of the animators are paid because, well, we’re all students. We’re paid in grades, not money! But despite this, I was still able to experience budgeting for our external crew and our festival run.

Please note: no specific monetary amounts will be listed in this blog for the sake of privacy.

Admittedly, we worked a bit ‘backwards’ when recruiting. We wanted to run a marketing campaign for a few months ahead of launching our Kickstarter campaign, but also needed to find voice actors and a composer at the start of production, so I chose to invest my own money into the film initially to cover these costs. The plan was to then reimburse myself with the Kickstarter money. A risky tactic, but by allowing time for organic growth and ‘hype’ build for our Kickstarter, we were confident we could raise more.

After careful consideration of our reach and network, we decided to set a Kickstarter goal of £1,500. This, then, was the budget we worked with.

Our biggest challenge, and the focus of this blog, was finding a voice actor for our main character. We had successfully found actors for our other two characters, both of whom were happy to work free of charge, but despite hunting both locally and online I was drawing a blank. Fortunately by some miracle, on the sixth voice over talent site I trawled through, I came across Yulin Ng’s profile.

Yulin isn’t just a voice actress – she’s a dancer, teacher, radio presenter, and actress for film, television, and even musicals. Her values mentioned on her website aligned closely with the themes of our film, as did some of the roles she had previously played. In short, she was perfect.

But would she be willing to work on a student film, with all that she already had going on? Well, no harm in asking!

I reached out to Yulin and pitched the film to her, appealing to her interests and the principals she discusses in her biography on her website. To my delight, she responded – and she was interested.

Then came the matter of price.

All that experience comes with a cost. Her hourly rate was within our budget if the recording session only took one hour, but a second hour would push it to being unaffordable. I expressed this issue, and with there not being too many lines to record – around twenty, I believe – we were able to reach an agreement with a fixed fee, rather than a time-dependent one. But then came discussions of royalties: were we prepared to offer royalty on any of the film’s earnings? This threw up a new debate!  Could we afford to pay this? How would ‘earnings’ be defined? Would it even be possible practically to administer royalty payments further down the line if the film financially took flight? All this was new territory to us – exciting and stimulating, but it needed careful thought and consideration.

I’m pleased to report that we able to come to an arrangement with which both parties were happy. But I would certainly say, if such discussions arise, it’s worth taking time to research the issue thoroughly and clarify each party’s expectations. How does one define ‘earnings’, for example? Will these include any prize money? Without clearly defined terms, contracts can quickly become full of pitfalls. It was an excellent learning curve for us and I’m grateful for the experience it gave me.

With a monetary amount agreed, we arranged a call to discuss the project. The director and I pitched the film once again, and we were able to sign Yulin onto the project. Very exciting!

Our composer is the other crew member who had to be factored into our budget, although, as I already had connections with him he kindly volunteered to work on a flexible budget. He would begin composing on a good-faith basis, with payment being made at the end of the Kickstarter campaign and the amount increasing or decreasing dependent on how much money we raised. After a very successful Kickstarter campaign and some research on typical composer fees, we agreed on an amount with which both parties felt happy.

The remainder of our budget? Well, that will be spent on the film’s festival run!

Although quite different to budgeting within the industry, I appreciate the experience of working with a budget – even if it’s a small one. These small bits of experience will undoubtedly prove useful in the future, and allow me to feel more prepared to tackle my first ‘proper’ budgeting work.