What is a Producer?
Posted on December 5th, 2014 by Jenny FrankelIf you’re an international student wanting to pursue a career as a producer you’ve made a giant leap in the right direction by narrowing down the many jobs in film into one. But even within producing, there are many different types of producers. If you want to work with movies, then you’ll be a movie producer, but there are also record producers, news producers and television producers with many similar tasks, but enough variety that you will need to know the difference before you decide which path you want to pursue. If you’re trying to figure out what is a producer and what are the differences of each producer across various medias- here is some good insight:
Movie producer
Having a career as a producer in movies means taking the movie from the first idea to the final production. As a producer in this field, you are primarily responsible for funding, or finding funding for the production, selecting a script, hiring directors, writers, actors and other crew members, collaborating with and managing the crew members, budgeting and scheduling.
Record producer
Like movie producers, record producers also are in charge of budgeting, scheduling and creating ideas for a record or project. However, record producers deal with the music industry meaning musical artists and bands, rather than actors. Executive producers in the music industry deal more with budgeting, while music producers are more closely compared with movie directors, overseeing the creative development of a record and band.
News producer
News producers are in a completely different field than record or movie producers. They are more like journalists, gathering research for informational stories and arranging interviews. They often edit video together to fit with the narration of the news story. Instead of backgrounds in film studies, many news producers have degrees in journalism or communication.
Television producer
Television producers in today’s modern operations are almost like writers. Executive producers in television are “showrunners,” making sure the show progresses. A producer in television has a producing job similar to movie producers in that they deal with budgeting and scheduling, but they also do some writing.
If you’re an international student trying to figure out which type of producer you want to be, first understand the different media outlets you have available and this will help guide your decision.
